Mini-Grant Support "Trash Amnesty & Education" Event

In May 2019, with Mini-Grant funding support, the Healthy Neighborhoods Council collaborated with Lewiston’s Public Works department to host a large-scale Trash Amnesty & Education event in the heart of the Tree Streets.

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A week before the event, neighborhood Block Captains distributed event fliers and 3 construction-grade 42-gallon trash bags to 1000 households in the Tree Streets neighborhood. On the 2 days of the event, Friday May 3 and Saturday May 4, Public Works closed one block of Bartlett Street (between Pine and Walnut) from 7AM-5PM. 

Volunteers transformed the vacant, City-owned double lot on one side of the street (114-120 Bartlett) into a downtown Transfer Station, exactly matching the layout and sorting categories of Lewiston’s Solid Waste Facility. Six roaming trash pickup crews circled the 12-block neighborhood continuously, loading trailers with unwanted items and bringing them to the event where other volunteers helped unload and sort. Other residents transported their own items and pitched in to help. 

Across the street at the Pop Up Garden (PUG), volunteers signed in, received complimentary “Growing Our Tree Streets” beanies and work gloves, and got to work. The rest of the PUG was set up as an education center, featuring trash management and recycling tips and materials. Residents from throughout the neighborhood came to learn and to receive free 32-gallon trash and recycling bins with zip-tied lids, labeled with each resident’s address. All 120 trash bins and 30 recycling bins were distributed to households of all sizes, serving a total of 437 neighbors. Food trucks by Shut Up and Eat It, Isuken, and the Good Food Bus, along with music, mural-making, and seedling-planting, rounded out the event.

The roaming crews did a final sweep on Saturday at 3:30PM and couldn’t find anything to pick up. The temporary Transfer Station was open but unattended on Sunday. On Monday morning the event wrap-up volunteers noted that even more items had arrived over the weekend, neatly sorted and stacked. A final roaming crew circled the neighborhood at 9AM, and still found nothing to pick up. The neighborhood looked beautiful, punctuated by new covered bins on every street.

When all was said and done, neighbors removed 63,268 pounds (31.5 tons) of unwanted items:

• 12@30-yard dumpsters of bulky and household waste

• 7@4’x4’x4’ pallets of electronics (mostly TVs and printers)

• 1@26’ U-Haul truck filled with metal (many appliances)

• 1@26’ U-Haul truck filled with wood (mostly furniture)

• 1@6x12’ U-Haul cargo trailer filled with recyclable cardboard

• 1@6x12’ U-Haul cargo trailer filled with tires

The event was organized with the understanding that trash removal is a multilayered issue in the neighborhood, especially for residents who do not have a way to transport trash and unwanted items to the Transfer Station several miles away. This event brought roaming trash pickup crews and a Transfer Station to the streets!

Everyone wants their neighborhood to be clean and tidy, so when trash issues arise, residents must be experiencing barriers that prevent them from succeeding. This event aimed to remove as many barriers as possible, provide educational materials and trash management tools, and solicit feedback to help design longer term, systematic solutions.