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Springfield Clean Up Day – 2008

by Bill Dusty

It was an overcast and damp Saturday morning as eager volunteers signed up at the four designated staging areas around Springfield for the annual “Keep Springfield Beautiful” Cleanup Day, a part of the national Great American Cleanup Day beautification program that took place on May 3rd.

Organizers passed out trash bags and gloves at four locations: Duggan Middle School, Chestnut Middle School, the Rebecca Johnson School, and Forest Park Middle School. There was also plenty of bottled water, coffee, and food for the volunteer workers.

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Last year, according to organizer Mary Ayala in this Bax & O’Brien radio interview [listen to Part One here, Part Two here], the local cleanup collected about 170 tons of trash in seventeen neighborhoods. Organizer James O’S. Morton said in the same radio interview that over 3,000 volunteers pitched in last year, logging in over 12,000 hours of labor, and that they were hoping to surpass that number this year.

But whether it was the weather, the promotion, or just the mood of the city, volunteer numbers appeared to fall well short of even matching last year’s effort. By 10:00am, the Forest Park staging area estimated over a 100 people coming in, while the Rebecca Johnson School staging area estimated about 50 sign-ups at the start of the morning along with dozens more having signed up beforehand. Duggan Middle School reported over 100 sign-ups by about 11:00am. We didn’t make it to the Chestnut Middle School, but barring some miracle in volunteerism, it’s assumed the numbers were probably similar. It’s important to remember those numbers did not include many group sign-ups, where one person would sign in for several volunteers working together. Still, organizers at both Rebecca Johnson and Duggan reported that their volunteer numbers were substantially lower than last year’s count.

Regardless of the number of volunteers, the day brought huge results as Dumpsters were filled to their brims with garbage, including appliances, mattresses, furniture, and old computers and televisions. Graffiti removal was also a big part if the day.

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Tires are loaded into a Dumpster at Rebecca Johnson School.

Volunteers Amanda McCabe and Carlos Minueza help out on Roosevelt Avenue.

Filled Dumpsters at Rebecca Johnson. As these photos were being taken, trucks filled with trash continued to arrive, only to be diverted to Duggan School.

Junk computers and televisions, usually found dumped in vacant lots, found their way instead to the Duggan School staging area Dumpsters.

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Springfield Cleanup Day Video
A short video of our travels around the city on Cleanup Day.

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Posted by Bill Dusty on May 7th, 2008 and filed under Cities & Towns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.