Keeping it Clean
by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay
Managing Director UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station
For the past seven years I have had the good fortune to be involved in the Nantucket Clean Team (www.ackcleanteam.org) as a Co-Captain with my fellow Co-Captains Bill Connell and Grant Sanders. Nantucket is blessed in many ways, not the least of which the infectious spirit of volunteerism exemplified by members of the various volunteer organizations on island. The Nantucket Clean Team is a rewarding, successful and growing volunteer organization started by a fireball of enthusiasm, summer resident Bill Connell. Every Saturday from mid April until Stroll (first week of December) the Nantucket Clean Team meets for one hour from 8 am till 9 am at a different location around the island to pick up litter on the islands’ beaches, roads, conservation lands, and neighborhoods. The Clean Team has more than 400 people on its mailing list and on an average Saturday approximately 20-30 people show up to pick up, on average, a half ton (1,000 pounds) of trash. The Department of Public Works’ General Foreman John Smith shows up promptly at 9 am in a town of Nantucket yellow F250 pickup truck to haul our collection to the Waste Options waste treatment facility. The Clean Team separates the trash into glass, metal, and plastic to be recycled to conform to our strict and extremely effective recycling laws that allow the Town of Nantucket to divert over 92% of our solid waste from the landfill. This accomplishment means Nantucket diverts more of its solid waste stream than any other community in America.
The Clean Team has been so successful that it has generated a couple of small “franchise” teams, like the one that meets downtown in front of the Grand Union grocery store at the intersection of Candle and Salem streets led by Lyle Howland and Peggy Tramposch. This team makes sure downtown is spic-and-span every Saturday. Disposable gloves and heavy duty clear plastic bags are provided to all volunteers who show up at any of the team locations. Another franchise team is led by Sybille Andersen, and that group takes care of Surfside Beach several times each summer. The Clean Team also has several “ad-junk” members who pick up trash in their neighborhoods, keeping the majority of the island free of litter. These members report via email to Bill Connell each week so that we have a running total of the amount of trash recovered and an idea of what parts of the island need our attention.
Everyone knows how dangerous litter can be when it becomes wrapped around a marine mammal, shorebird, or a propeller on a boat. Extra effort is need to patrol our beaches and educate people about the dangers of water-borne trash. A ban on dumping of plastics at sea and the visibility in the news of the extremely depressing Pacific Gyre Garbage Patch may have helped to reduce the amount of trash in our oceans.
The Clean Team participates in several large beach orientated efforts including the annual fall Coast Sweep a Massachusetts state beach clean-up associated with the Ocean Conservancy and a April cleaning of the Great Point and Coatue beaches in association with the Trustees of the Reservations, the Nantucket Conservation Foundation, and several other area associations. Each summer Boy Scout and Girl Scout groups, large families and other organizations contact the Nantucket Clean Team to clean different areas of the island.
In the early spring or late fall the Clean Team often takes advantage of the leafless trees and reduced vegetation to scour areas off the beaten path where trash previously hidden by high grass or bushes suddenly becomes evident. Some of the more challenging areas include the Delta playing fields and some of the dirt roads behind the airport such as Bunker Hill Road where thoughtless islanders leave piles of beer cans, deer guts, tires, mattresses, brush, and trash. These areas might require 2 to 3 trucks and substantial man- and woman-power to clean and restore the forest and conservation land. A significant part of the Land Bank, Massachusetts Audubon, the Nantucket Conservation Foundation and the DPW’s man hours each year is dedicated to picking up trash on conservation or public land. Why people think it is okay to trash the island, marshes, beaches, forests, and moors is beyond me
On our beaches we typically are cleaning up material that can come from anywhere in the surrounding East Coast area, some days we pick up balloons and flotsam and jetsam that come from New Jersey, Long Island, and other points south. Other days, material that comes down from Boston and the Gulf of Maine may make it onto our shores. Each person has an area of the island or a type of trash that bugs them the most, so some volunteers might concentrate on picking up beach trash versus those that feel more strongly about keeping our neighborhoods clean. Our bright green T-shirts, grabbers, and plastic bags go a long way toward educating people not to throw things away.
When you see us on the side of the road your first thought is “wow I can't believe people have to pick up trash on Nantucket” and your second thought might be (we hope) “I’ll make sure that's not my trash they are picking up.” The Clean Team always provides orange vests to protect the safety of our Clean Team members along the roadsides. As the director of the UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station, I am able to provide plastic bags, paper bags, buckets, and the famous blue nitrile gloves in a variety of sizes to fit the smallest child's hand to the largest man's hand so that your hands stay clean and you don't have to worry about an allergic reaction from latex gloves.
Lots of folks and organizations give small donations to offset the cost of supplies. People have designed various items to pick up trash including long poles with screws installed at an angle in order to snag defiant beer cans hiding behind the poison ivy. Many of us use industrial grabbers or pickers that aid in picking up trash beyond the “pricker” bushes and poison ivy and help greatly reduce back injuries. Children are amazingly good at picking up trash; they’re close to the ground, excited to be there to help, and they're very good at picking out that bright piece of plastic that you might have missed. Every Saturday we have two or three children that assist us; a few of the regulars include town Manager Libby Gibson’s kids, Grace and Alex; Cassie, the daughter of Georgen Charnes (who also maintains the Clean Team web site, our calendar listing, and our social media sites like Facebook); William the son of Kat Grieder (I am naming moms because they are who brings them), and many visiting and summer resident kids who give up their morning rituals on Saturday to come pick up trash and make our island cleaner. Many other families show up often each summer, so please forgive me if I didn’t list you.
Some of our members are specialists and even more adept at picking up trash in the beaches versus the marsh. We look forward to picking up in our favorite locations on island. Doing a variety of locations and rotating them between roads neighborhoods and beaches allows families to join us frequently in child friendly locations and ensures that eventually we’ll be cleaning up in an area near your home. We also have a lot of tourist and summer visitors that come join us for one cleanup while they are here. Only on Nantucket will you be likely to find $10 bills, even hundred dollar bills and unopened champagne and wine bottles with the accompanying glasses while picking up trash which is certainly an incentive! Jewelry, cell phones, and wallets are relatively frequent finds that we turn into the police station, or if we know the owner, promptly returned. Of course, if you are dumb enough to leave some ID with your trash, we turn that into the police too so they can follow up by giving you a hefty fine. It pays to keep your eyes open, literally.
We are always on the lookout for the largest and strangest items, competitive even in our litter picking. We have found spars and masts from boats, mattresses, many bicycles, pieces of docks, lots and lots of fishing gear and netting and buoys, cars parts, toys, small appliances (some in the boxes!), lawn care debris, umpteen million Bud Light cans (the beer choice of litterers), “nips,” and sleeping bags. We share tips for trash collection baskets and buckets, the best gloves, good boots, or the perfect pair of poison ivy impervious pants to wear while cleaning, not unlike a gardening club. Most might think of us as a very strange gardening club.
Picking up litter is a major campaign across United States. One of our members, Richard D. Hofmann, is also a member on the board (Directors Emeritus) of Keep America Beautiful and each year he provides information on how that large organization provides support and information for 1200 affiliated groups across the United States. Other municipalities carry out cleaning efforts by concentrating their work into large events with many participants that occur one weekend each year. We find going out frequently and cleaning for a short time works well with our busy summer schedules and engages the most volunteers without taking up too much time. You'd be surprised what we can do in an hour. In a typical week for instance, if we meet at the Mill Hill across from the old Mill we’ll clean up a large part of Prospect Street, Mill St., Mill Hill Park, the area behind the hospital, the adjoining cemeteries and roadways and bushes for about a 3/4 of a mile in any given direction. We've even been able to pick up “historical trash,” which is trash that is been there for several years. Once you do this for a while you can certainly tell if a beer can is been sitting there for a year or two years or 10 years.
Some areas that had been typically known as dumping grounds are much cleaner now because of our efforts. For instance, in ‘Sconset at Codfish Park right near the beach parking lot there used to be piles and piles of beer cans and food containers hidden behind the vegetation. One thorough cleaning by the Clean Team back in 2006 removed 25 years worth of littering. This material could not only entangle people but can leach metals and chemicals into the soil and into our waterways. Not only is litter an aesthetic nightmare but, it can contribute to pollution in our soil and groundwater and surface water. On our beaches it not only becomes an entanglement issue for people swimming, surfing, or kayaking, or boating, and for animals and birds, but it also greatly reduces the beauty of the beach.
One of the biggest treats involved in being a member of the Clean Team is in reading Co-Captain Bill Connell’s extremely entertaining weekly emails describing the previous week’s haul and encouraging us to get out there and make the next week’s clean up even more thorough. Now I know you are raring to join us, we’re fun, you’ll get some exercise while doing something good for the island and by 9:05 am each Saturday, you’ll have done your good deed for the weekend. Email Bill Connell at wconnell@connellwiener.com or fill out a form at our website http://www.ackcleanteam.org to be added to the mailing list, keep an eye out for our calendar listing and look for us on Facebook and Twitter. Keep an eye out for us in our green Clean Team t-shirts (available for only ten dollars when you come join us), send us your kids and houseguests, and honk if you hate trash!
