Sam Norton
Student Life Editor
Plastic bottles, fragments of paper, and shards of glass, litter Keene’s surface, concealing any notion of an eco-friendly environment.
This compilation of trash is one that is not new to the city of Keene, but efforts to dispose of this trash and foster a clean environment is accomplished in a new way thanks to the Green Up Keene event.
Green Up Keene on April 14 is the fourth year where community members have volunteered their time to clean up the streets around the campus. Last year, volunteers collected two tons of trash during Green Up Keene. This day helps promote awareness about the city of Keene’s efforts to go green.
[singlepic id=1027 w=320 h=240 float=right]
However, it is not just the residents of the city that are participating, college students are participating as well. Seniors Jackie Keaveney and Alyssa Arcieri, helped plan this year’s Green Up Keene and promoted awareness among the campus community. Keaveney and Arcieri, who are interning with the Public Works Department, said that this is the first year that the campus has publicized the event in an effort to promote awareness among the campus.
“The campus is a big part of the city, we add a lot to the population, especially during the year,” Keaveny said. This pollution can be seen on the streets that are closer to the Keene State College campus, like Elliot St., Proctor St., Davis St., and Blake St.
“Those (streets) are all college students for the most part and that is where most of the trash is, after parties. We are getting them involved in picking up stuff that they are contributing to,” Keaveney said.
Volunteers that attend Green Up Keene are given a street designation, along with gloves, trash bags, and a map that shows where the trash drop-off sites will be located. On Monday and Saturday, Waste Management will pick up this collected trash.
Allison Riley, coordinator of student and community relations, said “It’s a designated day where everyone is out and about and it’s a group effort.”
“The off-campus student population lives in and among the residential neighborhoods around campus, so I feel like it is important that there is an effort made to keep the city in a good condition, that we are helping to beautify it in a way,” Riley said.
Riley said that the off-campus population helps contribute to the amount of trash accumulated near campus due to the parties that are being held.
“Students that live off-campus and participant in get-togethers off-campus and parties and so forth, if there are particular areas where they normally are, I think it’d be wonderful to be working side-by-side with some of the residential folks that live there permanently in those residential areas,” she said.
However, despite raising awareness among the student body, Keaveney and Arcieri said they both would like to see Green Up Keene continue to grow and develop. “It would be nice for the students to actually care about the quality and care about their city and the campus,” Arcieri said.
Garett Kopczynski, one of the principle organizers of Green Up Keene, said that over the last four years this event still continues to grow.
“The first year that I ran it, we got maybe 15 people. I would say we are easily in the hundreds now. This year has been a really good year for involvement from the college, so that’s one example of a group that has taken on more. We have a lot of involvement from local companies that expands every year,” he said.
Involving college students is an essential part of fostering the growth of Green Up Keene. College students working side-by-side with neighbors is an aspect of Green Up Keene that both Riley and Kopczynski said they desire to see.
“I think it builds a sense of community. Even though students may not live here full time it’s something that they can take with them. If they pick up some trash and sort of involve themselves, wherever they end up in life they have that sense of pride in civic duty and certainly we appreciate any help we can get in keeping Keene beautiful,” Kopczynski said. Despite how much Green Up Keene has grown over the last five years, Kopczynski, Keaveney, and Arcieri, said they want to see the event develop even more.
Ultimately, they said they would like to see Green Up Keene turn into a spring festival that is centralized around Keene’s efforts to become more eco-friendly.
“The sort of big long-term goal for what Green Up Keene could be is not just a liter pick up event, but an actual festival that celebrates the green principles of the city and allows different organizations and people to take pride in the sustainable aspects that this community fosters,” Kopczynski said.
This long-term goal for what Green Up Keene could be stems from the philosophy surrounding the Broken Windows Theory, Kopczynski said. He said the theory was the idea of seeing a broken window and if it remained unfixed, it possesses the potential to impact the rest of the community.
“In trying to maintain and pick up litter and get involved, I think it brings people out and makes them more connected and that pride extends to other aspects of living in the community. Maybe somebody is more likely to pay attention to the issues that are going on because they’ve been out, they’ve seen the community, and they’ve picked up trash,” Kopczynski said.
Sam Norton can be contacted at
snorton@keene-equinox.com