On Saturday morning Andrea Bixby, her mother, Lani Bixby and sister Kaitlyn Festeau enthusiastically greeted the slow trickle of cars that pulled up to the Public Works Department building to pick up supplies for the annual Green Up Keene event.
The mother-daughter team wielded forms, blue trash bags and gloves for volunteers getting ready to pick up litter throughout the Elm City.
This year participants across roughly 66 groups, many of them veteran volunteers, helped with the seventeenth annual Green Up Keene event. The springtime initiative began in 2008 with beautifying the Elm City in mind. Each year, the city recruits volunteers to help pick up litter all over Keene. On Saturday and the week leading up, hundreds of people and groups from local businesses, nonprofits and schools picked up litter in their assigned areas, according to the City of Keene.
Different groups took charge of cleanups on Maple Avenue, Marlboro Street and Wheelock Park, just to name a few.
Last year, volunteers collected over 5,300 pounds of trash. By Saturday, most of the groups participating in the 2025 effort had already picked up their supplies from the Public Works Department. As of Saturday morning, volunteers collected 1,800 pounds of trash across the city.
These figures are likely underestimates, said Andrea Bixby, who works in the Public Works Department, because some groups dispose of trash on their own rather than waiting for public works crews to pick up their bags.
The cleanup often coincides with the first signs of spring and when everything thaws, errant food packages, bottles, cigarette butts and other detritus collect near drains, on sidewalks and parking lots and on the side of the road.
“Once the spring hits and everything starts blooming, we want the city to look as beautiful as everything else,” Andrea Bixby said.
On Monday, public works department crews will pick up the blue bags of trash teams collected, and Andrea said she will have a final tally next week.
Near Winchester Street, a group of Keene State students in rain jackets carried blue trash bags. They were part of a crew of roughly 30 athletes, cleaning up around and near Keene State on Saturday.
Some working on Wilson Street, just off of Winchester, felt it was important to go out and support the community that gives so much to them, and which they say is a big part of themselves.
Sophomore soccer player Bryn Dickinson was there with teammates Allison Kenyon and Paige Smith, who are also sophomores. It was their first time helping with the annual event.
“Being in a city, there’s a lot of people, and not everyone picks up after themselves, especially on a college campus,” Dickinson said. “A lot of these houses are college students who live here, so it’s good to just go out and clean up the community.”
Other volunteers come back year after year.
Mark Filippini, 61, is one of many returners. He was waiting for the rain to stop before he went out Saturday.
He has been coming to the annual spring cleanup since he moved to Keene from New Jersey in 2021. Before learning about the initiative, Filippini would pick up trash he saw anyway while out on walks with his dog, he said.
“It’s so beautiful around here, and so nice … I love where I live there, and I just want to keep it, you know, as clean as I can.”
Sophia Keshmiri can be reached at 603-283-0725 or skeshmiri@keenesentinel.com.
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