New York City’s notoriously filthy streets are bringing people together.
A growing number of volunteer groups that collect litter on sidewalks have popped up across the five boroughs in recent years. They’re made up of people looking to get a buzz off cleaning up the city — and meeting new friends in the process.
Rachael Cain, who formed a club called the Pick-up Pigeons in 2023, leads groups of litter-pickers to neighborhoods across the city. She said members pride themselves on having taken trash trips to all five boroughs, and get excited by especially dirty blocks.
“If you cut me open, I’d be just styrofoam and bird feathers,” Cain said.
The Pick-up Pigeons get big kicks off of trash they find on the street, including unsmoked blunts.
During a recent outing, about 15 Pick-up Pigeons gathered for dinner at Neirs Tavern, one of the city’s oldest bars, before embarking on a two-hour trash tour through Cypress Hills. Cain led the group, pushing a trash can, while members posed for photos next to long-rotting piles of trash and bottles filled with urine.
The members estimated they picked up about 200 pounds of garbage.
Cain, 39, acknowledged her group’s effort is a mere drop in the city’s trash ocean. But the Pick-up Pigeons reflect a new generation of New Yorkers who are hungry for new ways to be civically active.
Tom Aulenback, leader of the Greenpoint Trash Club, leads regular litter pickup outings in his Brooklyn neighborhood.
While Cain’s group operates across the city, other groups focus on individual neighborhoods. In Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Tom Aulenback, 30, has led the Greenpoint Trash Club since 2024 in its effort to tidy up the area’s sidewalks. Each week, the group draws roughly 40 volunteers who fill bags with litter before heading to different local bars to unwind.
The trash can used by the Pick-up Pigeons effectively captures the group's vibe.
“Literally every single day when I’m going to the grocery store or the gym or something, I’ll see someone that I know from this,” Aulenback said.
“You get a nice walk in and then you get to socialize as well,” added Danish Jawaid, another member of the Greenpoint Trash Club. “The biggest thing for me is just the energy and the positive vibes.”
Cleaning up a neighborhood is tough work. That's part of the fun for the Greenpoint Trash Club.
While members of trash collection groups said they complement the daily work of the city's sanitation department, new regulations are beginning to stand in the way of their efforts. A rule change put forth by Mayor Eric Adams in 2023 requires that all of the city’s commercial waste be put out to the curb in secured containers to curb the rat population.
That’s a problem for many volunteer groups, who tend to leave their trash bags near public litter baskets on sidewalks.
Catie Savage, the leader of The Litter Legion, during a trash pick-up event in Hell's Kitchen.
“They’re saying if you’re doing street cleaning for the purpose of beautifying the neighborhood, you have to put your bags in a container for collection,” said Catie Savage, a self-proclaimed “trash queen” who runs a group called The Litter Legion. “You can’t put it next to a public litter basket, which is stupid. I continue to put it next to public litter baskets because, in my mind, this is public litter. It is not my litter.”
Cain said the Pick-up Pigeons simply pile their gathered garbage bags in a single area following an outing, often near a public litter basket. If the haul is especially large, she said they'll call 311 to “report that somebody dumped a bunch of trash” to make sure it gets collected.
The Pick-Up Pigeons leave no stone unturned and no subway pillar unsearched in their search for street trash.
Cain acknowledged it’s an imperfect solution, but takes solace in the amount of garbage her group has removed from the city’s sidewalks.
“We estimate that we’ll have all of NYC cleaned up in about three weeks,” joked Pick-up Pigeon member Zach Levy during the group’s Cypress Hills outing.
