Volunteer action helps clean up community
The idea of Beautify Fresno was born out of complaints of litter problems that plagued Fresno during Mayor Jerry Dyer’s run for office. Once in office, Dyer introduced the clean-up project, putting retired radio show host and past Communications Director Mark Standriff in charge of the organization. Since January 2021, Beautify Fresno has had two goals in mind.
“One: internal, which would be having the City of Fresno sanitation crews going out and proactively cleaning up in some of the troubled neighborhoods.” Standriff said, “Now we’re focusing on education and enforcement. So now the enforcement aspect of it is to try to establish a new status quo, because it’s all about attitude and accountability when it comes to litter and graffiti.”
In the last year, the organization became successful in making Fresno a cleaner place, through volunteering and working with the sanitation department.
“All you have to do is sign up, show up, clean up, that’s it. We have all the materials, they’re all sanitized and clean. So everybody feels healthy. You have a specific area that you’re assigned to clean up.” Standriff said, “It’s easy for people to raise their hands to say, ‘I want to be part of this.’ And then once they have a great experience, they tell their friends.”
This year, the Mayor introduced a new aim, The Million Pound Challenge, to further clean up the streets of Fresno. The goal of The Million Pound Challenge is that over the course of the year, sanitation crews pick up 900,000 pounds of trash, while volunteers, through clean-up sights, pick up 100,000.
“Our goal is to remove a million pounds of trash off of our streets, highways, trails, and parks. Our crews working for the city of Fresno are going to remove 900,000 pounds.” Standriff said, “But we’re hoping that either through our volunteer events or individuals, like your fellow students, walking around, see a piece of trash and pick it up.”
Volunteering for Beautify Fresno is very easy, and safe in accordance with CDC standards, and only takes two hours of someone’s time.
“We make it as easy as possible for you to get out and volunteer. It’s only a two hour stretch of time. We provide all the materials for you.” Standriff said, “And it takes no skill or training whatsoever to handle a trash bag and a paper picker.”
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High school students are equally encouraged to volunteer in any one of Beautify Fresno’s clean-up projects. The organization also works with high school students and their schools to form clubs, where students organize groups for city clean-up projects.
Keep America Beautiful, which Beautify Fresno is an affiliate of, did a study last year that came out with two disturbing statistics: 90% of trash on the ground is less than four inches, and 85% of litter was thrown on the ground intentionally.
“90% of the trash that you see is actually four inches or smaller, like a soda can or smaller. And the biggest problem is cigarette butts, believe it or not, that are very toxic. When they decompose, they start to leach into our ground system and create environmental problems.” Standriff said, “85% of all the litter and trash that you see out on the streets and the parks or wherever is intentional. Somebody made a conscious decision to throw their garbage wherever they felt like it.”
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Standriff attributed the trash and litter problems that we face in Fresno to the Broken Windows theory. In this theory, if a shop owner has a broken window, most people see the broken window as a reflection of the service they would receive, and the window provides no inspiration for other shop owners to fix their window.
However, if one shop owner fixes his window, and other shop owners see this, they are encouraged to fix their own windows. The same applies to a group of volunteers cleaning up just one part of the community.
According to Standriff, the biggest problem is not the homeless, who are only responsible for about 30% of littering in Fresno, but the behavior of everyday citizens, who casually dump trash wherever is convenient.
“Trust me, the homeless aren’t our problem.” Standriff said, “I mean, it’s a problem, but the vast majority, I’d say 70%, of all the trash that you see out there is because of someone who just decided to drop it or just leave stuff out.”
Now, in 2022, with a combined focus on both cleaning and educating, Beautify Fresno plans even more success in its goals this year compared to last year.
“The more that we do together to say that we’re going to try to make this place look as good on the outside as we possibly can,” Standriff said, “We’ll make people feel like it’s a great place for us to live for, for us to work and to invest our time, to be able to start to raise families, and just make it a better community.”
How can Fresno Christian students help make their community a better place to live? Fresno Christian High School has the opportunity to incorporate a student-run volunteer club through Beautify Fresno.
Today, Fresno Christian hosts Serve Day 2022, in which high school students go out into the community, whether it be to a church, a food bank, or a park, and help in any way they can.
For more articles by The Feather, read Column: Amplifying student voices in an evolving state of journalism or Student Leadership: Behind the Scenes.
