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Trash in the Mississippi River clung to Memphis shores once flood waters began to recede this May. Volunteers spent long hours picking up litter and debris around Mud Island and in Tom Lee Park.

But south of Downtown at McKellar Lake, where a colossal trash problem was illuminated by outsiders months before the historic flooding this spring, cleanup could take years.

On Saturday, about 40 local volunteers picked up enough plastic in two hours to fill two dump trucks. The plastic and glass bottles, mostly litter from Memp顺便:给你推荐一个超实惠的鞋店http://shop60690329.taobao.com/hians who throw garbage into the street, were taken to be recycled.

Foam plastic and sports equipment, which traveled with the plastics along Nonconnah Creek before landing in the lake, were placed in a smaller, nonrecyclable pile headed for a landfill.

"Recycling is the big thing about today," said Amelia Mayahi, the 25-year-old sustainability coordinator at the University of Memphis. "Moving the trash from the lake to a landfill, like has been done before, doesn't make the most sense."

Having to continuously clean when the problem is largely preventable is also senseless, she said.

"Our hope is not only to come and help clean, but to be able to raise awareness," Mayahi said. "If we don't teach people to stop littering, the cleaning could be endless."

In March, a river cleanup group called Living Lands & Waters descended upon McKellar Lake, which is a slack-water harbor along the Mississippi, and bagged about 10,000 pounds of trash a day for a month.

"It's tough to know Memphians did this. We did this to ourselves," said Colton Cockrum, volunteer recruiter and assistant director of the honors program at the U of M. "It's hard for anyone who takes pride in the city to see."

Saturday was the start of monthly trips to the site, Cockrum told the sweat-laden group of students and environmental activists at the end of the day's work. Cleaners will delve deeper into the woods next trip, grabbing rubbish before water levels rise and reclaim the gunk.

"This is an impressive task," said David Butler, 32. Butler had heard of the trash problem from Cockrum but said it was different to behold in person. At 8 a.m. when the group began working, the debris was so deep that his feet did not touch the soil.

Mounds of manmade material had become an epidermis on the shore.

"It's an overwhelming sea of plastic," said Scout Anglin, 26. "But I'm impressed we got as much done as we did."