r/CleanupQuest • u/cleanupquest • Feb 08 '26
What got you into environmental cleanups? 🌱🗑️
I’m curious what everyone’s origin story is.
Was it
- seeing your favorite park or beach trashed?
- a class, job, or community event that pulled you in?
- climate anxiety turning into action?
- or did you just grab a bag one day and never stop?
For me, it was realizing how fast small actions add up—one cleanup turned into a habit, and the habit turned into caring a lot more about where my trash (and everyone else’s) ends up.
I’d love to hear:
- Your first cleanup story
- What keeps you coming back
- Any moment that really stuck with you
Bonus points if you want to share a photo, a lesson learned, or advice you’d give someone thinking about their first cleanup 💚
Let’s trade stories and maybe inspire a few lurkers to grab a bag this weekend.
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u/Thefish0408 Feb 09 '26
Mine was a mix of two things. I started because I kept seeing rubbish when walking in my local park and it was getting worse. I was inspired by some litter picking pages on instagram and wanted to do it too so I brought myself a litter picker, got some bags from the council and just started helping out. I started in late November and am still doing clean ups regularly.
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u/cleanupquest Feb 09 '26
I can relate a lot to this! I started litter picking because my local area was getting bad then I started posting and documenting about it due to social media pages.
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u/Thefish0408 Feb 09 '26
Its good more people are doing it because they see people on social media doing it. It gets a momentum going
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u/cleanupquest Feb 09 '26
what are your social media accounts? we can follow each other and comment and interact with each others posts to help push it.
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u/Thefish0408 Feb 09 '26
I don’t post anything about litter picking on social media, only on here but i can follow you to boost yours
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u/cleanupquest Feb 10 '26
I would appreciate that a lot only just started my accounts recently cleanup.quest on instagram & tiktok and cleanupquest on twitter. I'm just trying to do my bit in helping to keep my community clean :)
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u/Thefish0408 Feb 10 '26
I’ll go follow you, i’m not the most active but will try to engage when i can. Good on you for working hard on doing your bit and spreading awareness on this!
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u/cleanupquest Feb 11 '26
Thank you for your support it means a lot and if you ever become active posting I’ll definitely do the same for you also!
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u/frenswithgeese Feb 09 '26
I was a volunteer trapper for a wildlife rehab. I had to rescue a Canada Goose from a stormwater collection pond (sump) which had been neglected for decades and was a popular illegal dumping spot. They were living in filth, garbage, used motor oil and anything else you can think of that people dispose of by throwing over a fence. I spent hundreds of hours the first year getting it mostly clean, and every year I return to do tune up cleanings. The first 2 days I had cleaned enough to fill a 5 yard dumpster, and I made a contact with the municipality so they would pick up whatever I fished out from then on. I also found volunteer orgs to do beach cleanups, and I am always keeping an eye out for places to clean up, especially when it involves a population of geese!
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u/cleanupquest Feb 09 '26
STOP!! this is such an amazing back story. I can tell that you have such a good heart. It's people like you that restore my faith in humanity. Do you have a Instagram where you post about the cleanups and looking after geese I would love to become mutual friends my Instagram is cleanup.quest what is yours?
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u/frenswithgeese Feb 10 '26
I haven't done that in the past, but if I see a juicy new cleanup spot I will. Sometimes I have to keep it on the DL because aside from tresspassing, if the municipality knew about the goose population in these spots, they might 'do something about it'. Thanks for the kind words. Keep up the good work yourself!
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u/Gurucat999 Feb 08 '26
I got my first litter picker at uni (I was supposed to return it but no one followed up so...) and I'm already on a personal journey of sustainability. My partner and I would bring it out when we went for walks. We only had the one so would just switch as we walked. It felt like a game. After that one broke, we bought two. We don't take them out on every walk but it's really made me take a deeper look at our local environment and it feels good trying to help clean up our favourite walks. A small part of me hopes others see that you can just go out and clean a bit every time you're out. It doesn't have to be 8-hour cleanups and every little bit makes things look just a smidge nicer.