'Worcester Is Such A Dump': Insult Spurred City Resident To Mobilize Litter Pickups

WORCESTER, MA — Whether the cause is the yellow trash bag system, a windy day combined with scores of open recycling containers, City Hall neglecting of large parts of the city or just thousands of litterbugs, Worcester's litter problem is undeniable.

Gutters, drains, fence lines, yards, parks, empty lots and sidewalks across large swaths of the city are just caked in refuse like nips, aluminum cans, McDonald's wrappers, cigarette butts — and even animal bones (more on that later).

The problem has birthed plenty of initiatives over the years to combat the waste problem, from the city's Keep Worcester Clean program to decades of April REC Worcester litter pickups. But there's a new initiative in Worcester that's a little bit cooler, more irreverent than anything that's been tried before.

The person behind the Instagram account ipickupworcesterlitterverywell has been documenting their litter pickups for years, but it was only recently after someone from out of town insulted Worcester that they stepped up the effort. The person (anonymous for now) is not only making fun Instagram posts about litter, but also doing guerrilla-style advertising around town to rally people to help pick up litter (very well). The pickups are focused on refuse like nips and aluminum cans that are recyclable — and thus free to dispose of through Worcester's zero-sort recycling system.

Ipickupworcesterlitterverywell spoke to Worcester Patch recently about the renewed effort as the city gears up for annual litter pickups around the Earth Day holiday on April 22.

Can you tell people a little bit about yourself, like what you do for a living, what part of the city you live in?

I’m a lifelong Worcester resident, born and raised and now live in the Worcester State/Mill Street area. In my formative years (grade school through high school) I spent most of my time between Granite Street and Grafton Street. I guess you would call me just a kid from Grafton Hill. When I'm not picking up litter very well, you can find me working in higher education at a local college since the early 2000s, first in a support staff role for many years and now as a support technician.

What was your inciting incident for trying to tackle litter in Worcester?

A few months back, I was with a group of random people, each person from different towns in central Massachusetts. During some downtime, someone from out in the Brookfield area made a comment about how Worcester is such a dump, and they just come here when required and leave as quickly as possible.

At first, I laughed it off because it felt easier than disputing that in a group of people at that moment. But as I thought about it, it bugged because Worcester is my home. Let’s be honest, there’s not much appealing for a Grafton Hill Kid in the Brookfield area besides some foliage, apple orchards and some friends that have homes there. At that point, I have been doing @ipickworcesterlitterverywell for 4 years, so it felt right to get more people involved if they wanted to. In the few years the Instagram account has been active, I received random DMs to see if they could help with cleanups but at those points, it wasn’t on my radar. Plus, two of those years were the Covid years, so human contact was tricky.

Were you picking up litter for a long time and then created the Instagram account, or did those two things happen together?

My earliest memory of picking up litter was at the Tom Ash Little League field [on Grafton Hill] back in the 80s/90s. Every spring, we would get the fields ready before the season and rake and ready the field. My family has always lived on busy cut through streets, so we were always picking up our sidewalks and driveways and playgrounds so we could play in them with our friends.

But when I moved to my current location about 10 years ago, and rescued our dogs, I started noticing litter in our neighborhood on our daily dog walks. I just started to randomly pick up litter. Some days it was just a single piece, some days a few, some days none. I really try to pick up at least one piece of recycling litter very well every walk. The Instagram account came to be in 2019 when I just started to video or photo random litter I discovered.

How has social media helped you? Are you able to organize cleanups better?

I'm the farthest thing from a social media expert, so I hope I’m doing something right with it! I find it's a great way to get an instant engagement. A few of the random clean-ups have been like-minded folks messaging @ipickupworcesterlitterverywell on Instagram and us going out there and getting it done. I think social media is a way to engage with anyone that wants to hear/see a message without knocking on their door or screaming from a soapbox.

I know for my goal to pickup litter very well, when I see other grassroots movements doing similar community first focused things, I want @ipickupworcesterlitterverywell to be aligned with their community-first missions on social media and IRL (shout out to: @woofridge, @halo_worc, @worcester.knitty.council, @thevillageworcester, @worcestercarib just to name a few off the top of my head).

And Mike Hsu has been following the Instagram account since almost day one and has been a supporter of the content and now helping with the on-the-ground work. If anyone is a Worcester advocate, it’s Hsu.

There’s about 10 folks in our WhatsApp talking litter logistics, so if you want to hang out in the virtual word, link in bio as we say in the social media world.

How did you pick the name for account?

I started following @ipeelorangesverywell at some point, then @ipickupworcesterlitterverywell was launched into the Metaverse. @ipeelorangesverywell is just a very funny handle and it felt right. Besides a few random encounters in each other’s comment sections and DMs, I don’t even know who they are. But could there be a collab in the works? Let’s find out!

Litter seems to be a perennial problem in Worcester. Do you think there’s any way to solve or reduce this problem more permanently?

Permanently? I don’t know about that. Dumping unwanted items has always happened. Sunken treasure and ships, tea into the Boston Harbor, discarded cars in Lake Quinsigamond, a random couch on the side of the street just past Linder’s junkyard on Granite Street, a burned out car left at God’s Acre on Swan Avenue, the random safe I found kayaking Coes Pond a few summers back. I hear there are cameras in the works for known dumping areas and might that help capture the act in action but will it solve a problem, only time might tell…

Some ideas I think would help:

• Public trash cans that get emptied before they are busting at the seams, like the cans on Chandler Street.
• Residential recycling bins that aren’t flung to shatter after being emptied by the contracted recycling vendor.
• People should stop throwing their nips, fast-food containers, vape pens, cigarette butts out their car window or leaving them wherever they want (especially the Mill Street divider between Mill Swan School and Jerry’s Speedway Garage that @ipickupworcesterlitterverywell cleared a month ago).
• Free Public access to Dumpsters for trash pickup events.
• Join @ipickupworcesterlitterverywell on a cleanup.

Are there any neighborhoods that you particularly focus on, or do you do pickups all over town?

No neighborhood or stretch of road is off limits. There are areas that I personally see as I make my way around the city, some are more gnarly than others. I randomly picked up recycling litter (hard plastics, paper) on the street I grew up on about a month ago. I randomly cleared out a good amount of recycling litter away from the rain grate on a family member’s street after getting Easter breakfast.

Do you think a little bit of Worcester's charm would be gone if there wasn't so much litter?

If the litter wasn’t here, what else would the random cranks from bordering towns of our fair city opine on?

One interesting thing you pointed out is that plenty of litter can be put into the recycling stream, which is free in Worcester, as opposed to the yellow bags. What common litter items can go in the recycling?

Our city uses a zero-sort recycling into a single bin. Straight from city’s website, items into the bins include the following:

• Aluminum & Steel Cans (Foil & Empty Food & Beverage Cans)
• Boxboard (Dry-Food Boxes, Egg Cartons & Rolls)
• Corrugated Cardboard (Wavy Center Layer)
• Glass Bottles & Jars (Empty Food & Beverage Bottles & Jars)
• Newspaper, Junk Mail, Magazines & Office Paper (Paper Bags, Envelopes & Catalogs)
• Plastic Bottles, Jugs, Tubs & Lids (Empty Kitchen, Laundry & Bath Containers)

Honestly, the City’s website has great information on the zero-sort Recycling program in Worcester. I highly recommend following this guide to make your residential curbside experience not terrible. Straight from https://www.worcesterma.gov/trash-recycling/recycling

What did you do with those bones you found at Beaver Brook Park?

A follower of @ipickupworcesterlitterverywell slide that picture into the DM. When I drove by the next morning, they were gone, or I didn’t see them. But I would tell you this, @ipickupworcesterlitterverywell focuses on recycling litter and currently does not have the logistics for anything that went into or came out of a living body.

Is there anything you want to say about litter or Worcester in general that I haven’t covered here?

If any Dumpster or trash hauling folks in Worcester want to partner with @ipickupworcesterlitterverywell, hit us up. It would help us in our work to go street by street picking up litter very well.