If you walk down a street, you’re probably going to see some litter there. But what if there was a way to clean your street while also making a friend or two along the way? Sophia Casa has more.
Roughly 40 people gather around a bubblegum pink van on a street in Chicago. They span a range of ages from elementary-school kids all the way to senior citizens. They grin as a woman takes their photo. Meanwhile, a few feet away 33 bags of trash, pink and orange buckets and trash-pickers sit on the curb.
They’re not paid to be here, nor are they from out of town. The volunteers all live and work in Chicago and today they’re working to clean up litter from their streets in an event run by grassroots environmental non-profit Garbage Gals.
Founded in August of 2023, Garbage Gals has a two-fold mission to pick up litter and make friends. Multiple times a month, the group will gather volunteers in a neighborhood in Chicago to pick up trash for 45 minutes to 1 hour before moving to either a coffee shop, local restaurant, or a park for a picnic.
“It didn’t start necessarily because I wanted to pick up litter,” said Sophie Rallo, the Founder and Executive Director of the organization. “I thought if I like [collecting trash], I bet some other people would like it and maybe I could make some friends along the way.”
After flyering across her neighborhood of Wicker Park, Garbage Gals held their inaugural event in September of 2023. Besides Rallo, only three other people showed up. But that didn’t deter her, she continued holding clean-ups and Garbage Gals slowly began to grow. After six months, a friend recommended she look into making the organization a non-profit.
This proved to be a game-changer for the group. Non-profit status allowed Garbage Gals to table at events like The Wicker Park Farmers Market. Membership expanded as a result, leading to more frequent clean-ups and satisfaction of the organization’s social mission.
“Maybe at the event, you meet someone,” said Charlotte Sechrist, a member of Garbage Gals’ Associate Board of Directors. “And then you get to chatting and you realize maybe there’s other things in the city you want to do together.”
One such success story is Claire Larson. “I had recently moved to Chicago,” she said. Since March, Larson has attended five Garbage Gals events. “This was a great way for me to meet like-minded people that also want to meet other like-minded people as well as do something that brings out a good change in the community.”
The environmental focus of the group hasn’t let up either. Besides running clean-ups, Garbage Gals now runs a clothing swap and a kids program, Garbage Owls. The hope is for the latter to become a summer camp in 2027. Additionally, through a successful fundraising campaign, the group raised $17,391 to purchase their new van without needing corporate sponsorship.
Now Garbage Gals is picking up more trash than ever. Currently, the group is in a friendly trash pick-up competition with other environmental beautification groups in cities like Philadelphia and Los Angeles. While the group sits in second place, that could soon change; “after this weekend, we may or may not be in first after all,” said Sechrist.
But Garbage Gals aren’t resting on their laurels. The group is excited about expanding beyond the West and North Side. While Rallo says the group’s policy is to be invited into communities rather than going in and assuming what is best, volunteers from other areas of Chicago are eager to help bring them there for future visits.
Additionally, while every person there is unpaid, Garbage Gals is interested in what opportunities future corporate sponsorship could hold, “So that we could include the social element in the free aspect,” Sechrist said.
Rallo hopes that through more events and potential sponsors, more people can experience the joy and purpose Garbage Gals has given her. “When you start to beautify the streets that you actually live on, it starts to feel like home,” Rallo said. “It just made this community of Wicker Park, Bucktown, and West Town so much smaller for me.”
As the cold creeps in, the group will go into semi-hibernation for the winter before reemerging in the spring, ready to clean-up and connect the city they love.
