Cleanup Club Chicago Tackles Urban Pollution

At 10 a.m. on a Sunday morning, a group of about 30 people meet on a River North street corner. They plan to spend their Sunday doing a usual weekend activity — cleaning. 

But not their own trash.

Cleanup Club Chicago, a city-wide environmentalist organization, is comprised of volunteers who host roughly once a week clean-up events around the city. During these events members pick up unattended litter and remove hazardous materials from public spaces.

Armored in gloves and safety vests, armed with grabbers, trash bags and water bottles, the group sets a perimeter and designates teams to the filthiest areas in their vicinity — just where they want to be.

“Every cleanup is memorable in its own way,” Marnie Thompson, a North Side captain in the club from Ravenswood, said. “That’s what keeps it kind of fun, too. I mean, we found a high heel shoe in a field once, we found a bunch of adult toys on the side of the road — there’s weird stuff that people throw away.”

The group was founded by Katherine Tellock and Miranda Carrico in July 2020, after a Friends of the Chicago River event was turned into a personal clean-up challenge due to COVID-19. Tellock said she took on the challenge and never stopped.

“I wanted to see a cleaner city,” Tellock said.

The first group cleanup was held in Clark Park — an area so overwhelmed with trash Tellock appealed to Facebook for assistance.

“I was like, ‘I need help,’” Tellock said. “There’s no way I can do this myself. And so that was really where that started.”

That first cleanup had about five volunteers, Tellock said. Now, an average of 20 volunteers attend each clean-up, with a mix of returning and new members at each.

“We’re trying to find ways to bring people together, build community, raise awareness about other environmental issues and the waste issues at the root cause of some of the litter problems we have, while also making a difference in the community and making people feel good.” Tellock said.

As of Sept. 7, the group has collected over 3,000 kitchen-sized bags of litter, and almost 30,000 pounds of trash throughout Chicago, according to their website. Every year they set a goal of bags collected, and break it every year, according to Tellock.

Thompson said she discovered the group in spring 2021, looking for a safe way to get involved in her community during the pandemic.

“Once it was presented to me, it was in the back of my head, like, ‘Yeah, this is what I should have been doing for a long time,’” Thompson said.

During her first cleanup along the Ravenswood Metra tracks, workers at Begyle Brewing noticed Thompson and another member cleaning and gave them free beers as thanks. Thompson said she’s participated in around 15 clean-ups since then.

“I was always more concerned with environmentalism on a larger scale,” Thompson said. “But participating in Cleanup Club has just made me so much more aware of what a difference these small steps can make. Small in the grand scheme of things, but still, what we’re doing feels meaningful, and it is. It can make an impact.”

Thompson said one of her most impactful clean-ups was on the Chicago River, where the team found a small island overrun with trash they’d dubbed “Turtle Town.” They decided to take on the challenge, and found the next year their work held up.

“There were actually more turtles and animals living on this little island,” Thompson said. “It was so heartwarming to see. We made a difference — we cleaned up these animals’s habitats, and now they have a place to thrive, even in the middle of the city.”

North Side captain Jonathan Horak said he joined the group in 2022 as a way to give back to the community.

“I had a high school band director who asked us to pick up three pieces of trash a day, and I kept doing that ever since, like, my entire adult life,” Horak said. “This really felt like it was in line with everything that I believe in, so I really wanted to give it a shot.”

Horak has participated in 11 cleanups since, and said he’s felt a difference from every one.

“There’s a sense of accomplishment, also a sense of relief at the end,” Horak said. “I did something, I gave. This environmental problem that we’re facing is worldwide, and we did something about it. It’s kind of small, but it has made an impact.”

One disheartening piece of trash found during their River North clean-up was a pile of about 20 bags of dog waste, which Carrico and two other volunteers cleaned. A nearby resident, Halie Corcoran, stopped to thank them for addressing a problem she said has  been there for months.

“There’s no excuse for why people should leave their trash there,” Corcoran said. “No one does anything about it.”

Thompson acknowledged the cleanups can be disheartening at times when faced with the sheer amount of senseless trash, she said.

“Sometimes all you can do is shake your head,” Thompson said. “It can be upsetting or make you disappointed in humanity at times. But then you can look back and say, we are the ones that are making a difference.”

The next clean-up will be held Sunday, Nov. 3 at 1818 W. Peterson Ave. in Edgewater. Prospective volunteers can register on Cleanup Club’s Eventbrite.