How to clean up your community

Solar energy is all about providing sustainable, renewable, and clean energy for you. This comes with plenty of benefits, such as a cleaner planet, which promotes fresh air and starry nights in your community. But cleaning up the planet goes beyond better energy. Sometimes, things just get untidy, and a neighborhood is no different. But, with a little effort and teamwork, everything can look new again. If you can organize a group to help, you’ll get a lot more done and it’s more likely to stay that way. People don’t usually want to mess up something they put their own effort into.

Make a plan

Coordinating with a large group of people is never easy. Making a plan beforehand is going to help with that a lot. You’ll want to make sure you have a few things locked down, like: a date and place to meet, a list of things to be done, a list of the supplies needed, permits and licenses you're going to need for the cleanup, and some sort of itinerary. A community cleanup project is usually more than grabbing just a few plastic bags and walking around to pick up trash, so solving these things ahead of time will make things go a lot more smoothly.

Find your volunteers

Finding a date that works for everyone becomes more difficult the more people you add to the mix. So begin recruiting early. You can send out an email to a community email list, put up fliers, or post to online community bulletin boards. You might even consider going door to door to let people know, or you can tell local community leaders (such as for a church or other organizations) and ask them to put up your fliers in their buildings. Remember, it’s best to pick your date and let people make time for it. We’d recommend you start spreading the word at least a month before the actual event.

Get your supplies

You’ll want to create a list of things you need to do and figure out what tools you’ll need to do it all. Some likely items are trash bags, gloves, wheelbarrows, shovels, and rakes. Once you have a list of supplies that you’ll need for your event, you need to find a way to acquire them. Supplies for a large group can be expensive, so you can reach out to local businesses for donations. Hardware stores might even be able to simply donate or lend the tools themselves. Your city government might also have supplies on hand for just this kind of thing. Send an email or make a few phone calls and you have everything you need, or very close to it, without spending any money.

Choose a leader

When you have a bunch of people, they’ll want someone to instruct them. Find someone who is good with people but can get people’s attention. With a good game plan established beforehand, your leader’s job doesn’t have to be very hard. But having a single person that volunteers can turn to for questions will alleviate a lot of stress on the day of the event.

Delegating

You’ll want to assign your tasks to individuals. Or, if you have enough volunteers, assign groups, and give each one responsibility over a task, then you can let them handle the details. Group work and responsibility make it so the leader has a lot less to think about and it makes it easier to check-in and report which things are done. Depending on how much there is to do, you might want to set a time limit on clean up. If people are working but have no idea when it’s going to end, they might be unmotivated or might leave early. Setting a time limit helps your volunteers know what to expect.

Give your volunteers something to look forward to

Whether it’s a treat at the end of the workday or a party some other day, reward the people who helped. Celebrating together helps solidify the team feeling and gives people a moment to be proud of the work they’ve done. Donuts might do the trick, or a barbecue in whatever area you cleaned. Whatever you do, take the opportunity to commend your volunteers and thank them for doing a great job.