Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave's On the Ground Battle Creek series.

Janet Pawlak does a fair amount of trash-talking – in a good way.
 
Since April 2020 she and a group of volunteers have been picking up trash at various sites throughout the city of Battle Creek. Known as “Litter Ladies and Lads”, they go out about three times each month to areas they identify or are alerted to and fill garbage bags with trash.
 
Pawlak, a retired Program Specialist with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, says the idea for the group came about through discussions with Sophia DiPietro, Executive Director and Co-founder of All Species Kinship, a local nonprofit that saves domestic fowl, rescues injured wildlife, and renews hope for 24/7 outside dogs through proactive street outreach.
 
“They go to different areas and rescue wildlife and there’s a ton of trash they see when they do their rescue work. That trash is harmful to the wildlife,” Pawlak says of All Species Kinship. Sophia said that picking up the litter would improve the life of the animals.
 
Litter Ladies Jan Pawlak ( on left) and Sue Coller.Armed with trash bags Pawlak and a fellow volunteer went to Irving Park in April 2020 and filled four garbage bags with trash they picked up. That initial trash pickup led to the formation of Litter Ladies and Lads and regularly scheduled work days.
 
“We advertised what we were doing and asked if anyone wanted to help us. We’ve grown to 10 dependable volunteers,” Pawlak says. “Depending on the weather, we try to go out three times a month,” Pawlak says. “We’ve already had about five events this year. We usually know where trash is. We drive around and find it everywhere.”
 
On Saturday, April 22, Litter Ladies and Lads were among several community organizations that participated in “People for the Planet” – A Community Earth Day Celebration at Trinity Neighborhood Center.
 
The event included crafts, information and demonstrations, hands-on community garden projects, a neighborhood clean-up, and a community art project.
 
“Creating a safe, vibrant place for people to live and grow begins with taking care of the earth, our first home. The more we work together, the more we can create the kind of community we want,” said Janet Wilson, Executive Director of the Neighborhood Center, in written comments.
 
Just an example of what Litter Ladies and Lads find- liquor bottles, masks, fast food containers, glass, cigarettes….Trash that is dumped in various areas of the city reflects on the community as a whole, says Todd Gerber, Field Services Superintendent for the city of Battle Creek, especially when it’s in visible areas or public recreation spots like the Linear Park Trail.
 
He says the work being done by Litter Ladies and Lads is a huge benefit to the community and enables the employees in his department to concentrate on the maintenance of the city’s streets and parks.
 
“I don’t have crews assigned to this role. They do it as time permits,” Gerber says. “We fit it in among other projects that we have going on. We really rely on a lot of volunteer groups to help us with this effort and they’re pretty consistent. Last year we had seven different events when they helped us pick up trash.”
 
If cleanup is done along city-maintained right-of-ways, Gerber provides garbage bags which are collected by his crew after they are filled up. He says trash seems to be everywhere.
 
“I’ve seen people throwing trash out of their car windows. It seems to be a never-ending job keeping up with trash collection around town,” Gerber says. “It’s especially bad on more heavily-traveled roads because of the number of cars. You see it on both primary and residential roads. It’s more visible in early Spring and late Fall when grasses are low.”
 
Litter Lads and Ladies group selfie!Pawlak says fishing gear such as fishing lines, masks, empty liquor bottles, fast-food containers and cups, and cigarette packaging are among the most common items they are picking up. She says they happened upon a dead cat during one of their cleanup efforts which upset quite a few of the volunteers.
 
“It saddens me and surprises me and us that people don’t care more,” Pawlak says. “The thing that’s very disturbing is that they take it somewhere and dump it when garbage cans are not that far away. Why couldn’t they have made the effort to take two more steps to put it in the garbage?”
 
Since they began three years ago, members of Litter Ladies and Lads have increasingly been finding items left by unhoused individuals. What they’re finding are soiled blankets and bags of soiled clothes and human excrement, among other things.
 
Pawlak says these discoveries are larger and more disturbing because of the potential health risks for humans or animals who come into contact with these discarded items.
 
“We’ve found tampons and lots of condoms where people have obviously lived,” she says. “We wear gloves and protective equipment, but scenes like this are just heartbreaking. They’re often behind businesses along the Beckley Road corridor where we’ve found whole encampments.”
 
A typical cleanup event yields anywhere between 12 to 16 bags filled with trash. Sometimes if there are enough volunteers, Pawlak says they’ll divide up and go to three different locations.
 
Garbage filled 33 gallon bags after a two hour litter event.“It’s a big health hazard,” she says of the trash she sees. “I wish all cities could just see that and put more funding and awareness towards it.”
 
As much as she appreciates the focus placed on the environment on Earth Day, Pawlak says it needs to be a year-round concern with actions to match.
 
“The pattern I notice is that when Earth Day comes along, there’s lots and lots of excitement,” she says. “Once Earth Day’s over and the cleanup activities are over, you don’t see many people coming back to do monthly events the way that we do. Once the Earth Day excitement is over, they don’t come back until the next Earth Day.”
 
Although the intent behind the founding of Litter Ladies and Lads was not about setting a trend, Pawlak says she hopes that “maybe we can influence others to do what we do on a regular basis. It needs to happen all year long, not just on Earth Day.”