NYC ex-litterers among volunteers for ‘Adopt Your Spot’ clean-ups: ‘Someone has to pick it up’
Down-and-dirty New Yorkers are bagging everything from beer bottles to strollers — to even the kitchen sink — as part of a volunteer "Adopt Your Spot'' program to clean up trashy parts of the city.
Some of the best volunteer trash troops admit they are former litterers.
"I didn't think much of it — it was a natural habit," Queens native Joyce Xu, 29, recently told The Post of her littering — as she used a special gizmo to pluck up everything from Shake Shack wrappers, 7-Eleven cups and KFC chicken bones along a pedestrian pathway near the Queens Center Mall.
"But as I grew up, I was getting to a stage where it felt wrong, because someone has to pick it up," said the Rego Park resident — who now nets as many as five garbage bags of trash every other week from her clean-up spot as part of the program.
Xu is one of more than 300 New Yorkers who have pledged to maintain a spot free of litter for a full year through the effort, which launched through the city's Department of Sanitation's nonprofit partner, the Sanitation Foundation, this past spring.
The fleet now picks up between 1,200 and 6,000 pounds of litter a month, the foundation said.
Brooklyn artist Avani Patel, another clean-up volunteer, "adopted" the 85-acre Calvert Vaux Park in Gravesend as well as the Brooklyn Army Terminal, the Shore Parkway bridge and parts of Cropsey Avenue.
Patel began picking up trash himself three years ago, after noticing an abundance of garbage strewn around after the pandemic lockdown.
"After COVID, I realized the city was getting polluted," Patel, 47, told The Post. "It was bothering me that we're destroying our beautiful city. ... I think it's been getting worse and worse day by day."
Since formally taking over as a volunteer groundskeeper, Patel has cleared up to two trash bags of garbage a day – with findings ranging from beer bottles to tires to strollers and diapers.
Larger items, such as kitchen sinks and mattresses, have even been found, she told The Post.
"It's like a dumping ground," Patel said. "[The Department of] Sanitation has trucks come in, but they turn around and don't pick things up. Things like that drive me crazy. Why are we paying tax money, and they're not doing anything?"
The cleaning time for volunteers ranges from a few minutes every week to sometimes several hours.
Patel spends up to two hours during cleaning sessions three times a week – sometimes lugging as many as two garbage bags after a successful clean.
Patel said she is consistently thanked for her efforts by park-goers at Calvert Vaux — and even a Parks Department worker.
"Elderly people come up to me like, 'Oh, my God, you're doing such a great job,' " she said. " 'I'm a veteran, I see people taking care of the city and the litter problem, that makes me happy.' "
Xu said of her own pick-up spot, which is near a food court, "You couldn't even see the grass [when I started].
"People have a habit of throwing trash," she said. "I'll clean it one week, and it gets littered again."
The program comes in the wake of both COVID-related city-agency budget cuts during the pandemic and a renewed effort to clean up local streets in the aftermath.
The Preliminary 2024 Mayor's Management Report said the Department of Sanitation is "aggressively cleaning more parts of the City than ever before" – and an additional $3 million in Sanit funding announced earlier this year is slated to bring a record number of trash pickups.
The new clean-up program wasn't a direct result of COVID-related cuts but an "increase in disposable items," according to Sanitation Foundation President Pam Harris.
"It's just related to the rise in disposable items like coffee cups ... just more trash," Harris said.
The volunteers said they hope to ease the burden by doing their part.
"Technically, the rule for the city is that the property owner is responsible for up to a certain amount of inches into the street ," said volunteer Richard Lesmes, a sanitation worker who "adopted" a small tree pit outside his church in Ridgewood, Queens, this summer.
The 39-year-old Woodhaven resident has since transformed the littered patch of land into a flourishing tree bed with mulch – donated by congregants – as well as a small fence to keep the wind from blowing debris into the soil.
"I always blamed the city," he said. "To me, I guess I've always been looking for a reason to take care of an area that's important to me – and as a result, it's going to benefit the community."
Xu said, "I've had a couple of friends who say, 'It's not your job.'
"I think that's not the most productive way to look at things. When I'm cleaning up, it makes me feel good: I'm doing a good thing for the environment, the grass can finally breathe."
While the volunteers are happy to lend the extra hand to beautify their neighborhood, some told The Post that there are still things the city can do to help the trashy situation – including adding garbage bins in notoriously littered areas, adding signage in different languages and enforcing littering fines.
"I can see why people litter sometimes – the trash cans near the [Queens Center] Mall are already filled to the brim," Xu said. "There's either nowhere to put trash or no trash bins at all. It really leaves people with almost no other options."
Lesmes described the clean-up effort as being part of "the culture of being thoughtful.
"I think through social media, through programs like the Adopt Your Spot, we're pushing that culture of, when you throw something on the street, someone else has to pick that up and take responsibility for your actions," the volunteer said.
"We need to come together and just be more mindful of the things that we do."
