Unity man goes the extra miles to clean up the township

Car parts, clothing, guns, a pearl handled machete.

They’re among the items discarded as trash that Unity native Mark Nobile, 66, has discovered while cleaning up litter around the area.

Nobile, a self-proclaimed workout fanatic, began picking up trash during his runs. Years ago, he realized how much garbage was on the ground and wanted to do something about it, he said.

“I would be running and see this horrible blight of litter and trash just piled up on the roads,” Nobile said. “When you’re driving you can see it, but when you’re literally running or walking along these roads, it’s mind-numbing.”

Nobile began working in a five-mile square around his house. He started venturing farther off the road and discovered trash that had been left in the grass for years. Nobile began taking trash bags with him on his runs and worked his way up to a 12-mile route.

“I always have so many bags on me – I look like the Michelin Man when I start out,” Nobile said. “I look so ridiculous when I start out the run.”

Once Nobile’s neighbors noticed his efforts, they started letting him use their trash bins for the litter he collects. He and the neighbors along his cleanup route are now a part of what Nobile named the Waste Task Force.

Nobile said that he’s found many oddities during his clean ups including mattresses, tires and televisions. The fitness guru says that the workout is unmatched when he has to drag a discarded car door up a hill and onto the road. When he finds larger items that require more manpower to dispose of, he piles them on the side of the road and calls Mike O’Barto, chairman of the township supervisors, to bring in a truck to dispose of the trash properly.

“Mark is a machine,” O’Barto said. “He’s unbelievable. He’s an advocate and he’s always trying to get people to pick up at least one bag of trash every day.”

O’Barto said that Nobile has easily picked up at least 200 bags of trash throughout Unity and has gotten other community members to focus on maintaining the roadways.

Nobile has spread awareness of his cause by posting what he finds on his Facebook page under a theme of Bag a Week, Keep it Neat. He said that his posts often start a conversation in the comments and make people more vigilant of what their roads look like.

“I’m not a tree hugger at all,” Nobile said. “I was doing it for myself at first. I just couldn’t stand looking at it. It’s so outrageously horrible the way (the litter) looks.”

Nobile said that the trash he finds on the ground can tell a lot about the community. He said that he’s often able to see the trends in the world reflected in the garbage he finds. When there was a surge in popularity for alcoholic seltzers, Nobile said he picked up at least a bag’s worth of White Claws. When the Bud Light boycott started, he said that there were no blue cans to be found.

“You can see how trash you find is almost an indication of the civilization that you got going on around you at any one time,” Nobile said. “The garbage you find tells a story.”