From Picking Up Litter to Building a Movement: The Story of Worcester Litter Incorporated

By Paul Ledoux

In August 2019, I started picking up litter while walking our dog, Sadie, in our quiet neighborhood in Worcester, Massachusetts. I didn’t have any thoughts of forming an organization, developing a strategic plan, or receiving grant funding. The word nonprofit never crossed my mind. I just started picking litter while walking my dog because I would see the same types of trash in the same pla

Over time, I began sharing what I was finding and doing online using my Instagram @ipickupworcesterlitterverywell and began to get some local followers to be interested in my content. In 2023, those individual cleanups began turning into something bigger. People started asking how they could participate. Neighbors, friends, businesses, artists, community organizations, and other volunteers began becoming part of the effort.

What started as one person picking up trash eventually became Worcester Litter Incorporated, a grassroots nonprofit focused on community cleanups, mutual aid, civic participation, and finding creative ways to think about litter and waste in general. The lesson I keep coming back to is simple: You don’t have to wait for an organization to exist before you start building one.

Start Where You Are

Litter is one of those problems that can feel simultaneously enormous and incredibly personal.

You can look at a street covered in trash and think about how it got there. Was it a lack of municipal budgets, infrastructure, enforcement, recycling systems, consumer behavior, corporate responsibility, and environmental policy? Those conversations matter. But sometimes the most useful place to start is simply picking something up. That first action creates an opportunity for a second action. Then a third. Eventually, other people notice.

For Worcester Litter, community cleanups became a way to bring people together around a very visible problem while creating opportunities for civic engagement about much bigger issues. A cleanup isn’t going to solve all the waste problems by itself. But it can create relationships, build awareness, develop community pride, and give people a reason to participate.

Community Before Infrastructure

One of the ideas that has shaped Worcester Litter is mutual aid: people working together to meet community needs and sharing resources with one another. That philosophy has influenced how we think about cleanups and events we host or participate in. Not everyone has a vehicle to transport supplies. Not everyone has grabbers, buckets, gloves, safety equipment, or a place to store reusable cleanup materials. Not every neighborhood has the same resources or the same relationships with local organizations.

So one of our goals, still to be discussed, is a community-centered system where people can borrow cleanup supplies rather than everyone having to purchase their own equipment. Our vision is a community cleanup supply library: grabbers, buckets, gloves, safety vests, bags, and other equipment that can move from neighborhood to neighborhood. The equipment is useful, but the relationships it creates are even more important.

Different Organizations. Different Strengths.

One of the biggest lessons from our work is that no single organization can do everything.

• Worcester Litter can organize cleanups and bring people together.
• Creators & makers can tell stories and make people see waste differently.
• Businesses can help provide resources, spaces, materials, or sponsorship.
• Schools can engage young people.
• Technical organizations can help develop tools and solutions.
• Musicians and creatives can build culture around an issue.
• Community organizations already have relationships and trust within neighborhoods.

When these groups work together, something different becomes possible. For example, Worcester Litter has explored ideas ranging from community cleanup equipment sharing to sorting waste in business districts, building relationships around bike-lane maintenance, and working with technical organizations on tools that make cleanup easier. Not every idea will become a permanent program. That’s okay. Grassroots work is often about trying things, learning, adapting, and trying again.

Every Piece of Litter Has a Story

One way I’ve tried to communicate this idea is through art. Over the years, I’ve collected some pretty strange things during cleanups: Worcester nips, skateboards, a bike seat and post, signs, discarded business materials, a photocopy of a handwritten poem about the author’s depression, and even a bumper connected to a crash involving a fire hydrant. Individually, these objects are trash. But they also tell stories about the people, places, businesses, infrastructure, and behaviors that make up a city. That became the idea behind a sculpture and broader creative project:

Every Piece of Litter Has a Story.

Waste isn’t just a material-management problem. It is also a cultural and community issue. If we want to change our relationship with waste, we need more than better disposal systems. We need people to see the materials around them differently.

You Can Start Something, Too

Worcester Litter Incorporated is still growing. We’re figuring out what works. We’re building partnerships. We’re developing our board and organizational structure. We’re looking for resources, volunteers, and organizations willing to experiment with us. But the core idea hasn’t changed since I started picking up litter while walking my dog.

See something. Do something. And feel free to participate.

You don’t necessarily need a nonprofit. You don’t need a large budget. You don’t need permission to care about your neighborhood. Start with the problem you can see. Find a few people who care about it, too. Share resources. Build relationships. Try something. Learn from it. Then try something else. Maybe it becomes a cleanup. Maybe it becomes a tool library. Maybe it becomes a neighborhood project, a business partnership, an art project, a youth program, or something nobody has thought of yet. That’s the exciting part of grassroots work. You don’t always know what you’re building when you begin. You just start picking things up, and see where it takes you.

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