Our Stacks joined forces across the country (and beyond!) to spread the love throughout their communities this April for a Spring Cleaning Earth Day event!
If you would like to get involved with your local chapter of The Stacks and participate in events like these, please check out more information HERE. No Stack in your area? No worry! Learn more about working with us to establish a Stack in your area HERE.
Stacking Up at Holloman Air Force Base
The Holloman Stack was all-in on the All Stacks Earth Day Cleanup! We coordinated to clean up one of our biggest and most developed parks in the area and got the word out!
This was a great event for our vets, active duty, and families. The kids were having a blast getting out and socializing while cleaning up their local area. We had a pretty good turnout, and following Easter, the park really needed some help!
In the end, everyone had a great time and really appreciated the effort. The park managers over at the attached train museum appreciated our efforts so much that they gave the kids a ride on the train that goes around the park!
Stacking Up in Dayton, OH
The Dayton Stack linked up with another local group that holds regular city cleanups. We jumped in with one of their river cleanups to help rid our riverbanks of trash!
A city official was present to help direct the cleanup and provide tools, trash bags, and other resources for the crew. From there, we paired off and went to work!
The Stack had a couple of attendees to add to an impressive number of participants, and we cleared about a half-mile stretch of the riverbank! As the Stack gains traction in the area this year, we look forward to working with this group again to help keep our city clean.
Stacking Up in St Paul, MN
In support of the StackUp collective for Earth Day, I initiated a plan with local veterans to plan for a clean-up in the local St. Paul area known as Frog Town. It was an interesting process, this being our first event. Initially, looking for an event to partake in turned out to be a bit more difficult than anticipated, so I created one with a local group called the Asian Safety Squad. I discussed my plans with their organizer, and he told me what and who he had contacted to inform the area about the group's objective. I asked for their contact information as well. I was able to contact a few of the city personnel and got some assistance with clean-up supplies from the city.
On the day of the event, we met up with the Asian Safety Squad to brief the plans as we prepared to clean up and patrol with them in the area. We were also accompanied by a local news reporter and photographer from Korean Quarterly, who wanted to take pictures and see what the group activities consisted of. It was good to get some assistance with this other group, as we could pick up a good amount of trash together.
The article the Korean Quarterly wrote can be found here.
Overall, It was an excellent event with a local group to bring two ideals together and help support the community. We look forward to working with other groups in the future at more events to better the community.
Stacking Up in Northern VA
I was the only one from my Stack, though there were others like the family who were checking in ahead of me, a Mom, a Dad, and two little girls. They all had their vests on, grabbed some bags, and the coordinator made suggestions on where to go.
When I arrived at about 9 am, the coordinator gave me some bags, a vest, and one of those extended reach picker-upper gadgets. (A trash grabber.) He sent me to one end of the main drag, which intersects with a four-lane divided highway. I worked for a couple of hours filling the bags with your standard roadside trash, including soda and alcohol bottles and cans, fast food trash, etc. There were some broken car bits and pieces, mirrors, reflectors, and whatnot. Some interesting things found: fishing tackle, a jar with a pipe, a lighter, and some weed in it, about two dozen security tags likely ripped from perfume with the Ulta logo on them and an unbroken beer glass from a local brewery. I kept the glass.
When I got back, the coordinator was not there, so I left the items he lent me in their original places.
Stacking Up in Los Angeles, CA
Stephen and I walked along the river trail and picked up a lot of loose trash--it was a fantastic day out, and since the trail was next to the beach, it doubled as a bit of a vacation.
We didn't think there was much to pick up, but just a foot off the path, we found a lot of debris; bottles, cans, cigarette packs, and even someone's weed bag.
The trail was wonderful, although dirty enough to need a pickup in the brief hike we took. Many people actually stopped by and thanked us for picking up trash. It was a wonderful experience on a wonderful day!
Stacking Up in Delaware County, PA
The Delco Stack was beyond excited to get down and dirty for a good cause for this year's All Stacks Earth Day Cleanup! We originally coordinated to do a "Park Hop" and had 4 different locations mapped out to clean up.
Once we got into the weeds (literally) of our first cleanup spot along the path many children take to the local grade school, we realized it was a much larger undertaking than what we had mentally prepared for! We ended up spending hours cleaning just this area, which housed a small graveyard of full dog poop bags, discarded pallets, ladders, and other large waste, in addition to more than 5 full heavy-duty trash bags worth of litter.
While we didn't have the chance to hit everywhere on our list, we feel like this was the best use of our time to make the biggest impact. This is where our town's children go to school, and many of them take this public path to get there and come home every day. Giving kids a safe, clean journey to school was well worth missing the other locations. We're still excited to host additional cleanups moving forward!
Stacking Up in Huntsville, AL
The Richard Martin Trail Clean-up event was created by Randy Malone and the "Keep Athens-Limestone Beautiful" organization as a continuing effort to clean off the Limestone county area clean of litter and refuse.
The volunteers from all organizations were split into 4 different groups To begin and end at different parts of the 10-mile trail to collect all trash and waste left along the trail by litterbugs and recent storms.
Though we do not have a final count of the amount of litter collected (aside from the giant tractor tire seen in the last photo, we're still wrapping our heads around that), we had an amazing time doing our part. We made connections with several event organizers in the community with the hopes of helping with projects in the future.
Stacking Up in Boston, MA
Muddy River Volunteer Cleanup: A group of 25 volunteers picked up trash in the hard-to-see places of Olmstead Park in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.
Yay Earth.
Stacking Up in DC
The DC Stack could not do the intended clean-up in DC due to security concerns. So we decided to organize some local street clean-up in ocean city instead. We worked on the main street (Coastal Highway) in Ocean City.
We met up with the 3 additional volunteers in OC and proceeded to pick up and remove trash. The stack did 1.5 miles of clean-up before the weather ended the excursion.
While it wasn't our initial intended clean-up plan or location, we did the best we could to help our community and raise awareness to Stack Up as a whole.