After six years of hosting clean-ups, I finally feel the momentum. My friends and I have picked up over one million pounds of litter with over 3,000 volunteers. Our mission is to rid the entire City of Cleveland from litter in one single day. This also includes about 40 cities surrounding Cleveland. With over two million people in the area, there are plenty of people to make this happen. The LitterBugz is a registered nonprofit in the State of Ohio and soon to be a public charity. Our mission is to stop people from littering while proactively cleaning up litter.
So many people are joining the #iHateTrash movement; it is only a matter of time before we accomplish our goal. We hope to accomplish our goal by 2020. The year 2020 represents perfect vision. We are fully committed and locked in. We host about three clean-ups each month somewhere between Lakewood and Euclid in efforts to spread the bug. To entice people to join the cause, I perform rap music on stage with kid-friendly lyrics about the environment.
We had 48 volunteers pick up litter in Broadview Heights, Ohio on August 26 and registered over 50 volunteers at the Garfield Heights Summerfest. This summer alone, we have had over 1500 people pick up litter. Our next big event this fall is the Great International Clean-Up. This is a peace clean-up. The LitterBugz (our Cleveland team) is in direct competition with The Home (the Jerusalem team). The Home was founded by Inon Dan Kehati in efforts to bring Palestinians and Israelis together. The LitterBugz brings white and black people together. It is well known that litter disturbs the mind. We all benefit from a clean community. While their slogan reads #CleaningTheHate and our slogan reads #iHateTrash, it is quite the coincidence that both groups put the word hate in them.
The Great International Clean-Up will be held on September 23 with five meeting locations.
Meeting Locations for September 23
- Lakewood Park, Lakewood ( hosted by Crystal Muscatello )
- Kurtz Park, Parma Heights ( hosted by Nina Rossi )
- Veterans Memorial Park, Parma ( hosted by comedian Matthew Scott )
- LED Signz, North Randall ( hosted by Amid Yousef )
- Shaw High School, East Cleveland ( hosted by Jeff Schlekie )
Volunteers will meet the leaders just before 1:00pm and divide into groups of five. We canvas neighborhoods, parks, playgrounds, and highway exits and entrances for litter. Since the directors lead by example and pick up litter with volunteers, we clean the environment extremely fast. Each volunteer collects an average of two trash bags in just two hours.
Next spring we will be doing a school assembly tour to get the youth involved. It is important to get kids outside doing positive things. They feel the positivity. Many children request to host their own clean-ups. Please reach out if you are a teacher, principal, or youth athletic coordinator.
On April 21, 2018 we are hosting the annual, Great Cleveland Clean-Up. We will have 25 meeting locations throughout Cuyahoga County and greater communities.
Please reach out at jeff@thelitterbugz.org or 440-829-4703 so I can register you as a volunteer.
Absolutely the funnest time I had in 2 hours cleaning up both times makes so much of an impact I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed actual clean up pick it up later do it don’t look up to give any gratitude from anyone just do it between you and yourself and God
I enjoyed it as well.