By Anne D’Urso-Rose
Did your mom ever tell you to leave a place cleaner than you found it?
The 40+ folks who showed up for the first Neat Streets event were doing just that, as they trekked down Salem Street with trash bags and various tools for picking up litter. Trailing behind was “Bessie,” Malden’s new sidewalk sweeper, operated by City Councilor Michelle Luong, local artist Naomi Kahn, and Karen Buck, president of the Friends of the Malden River.
“Not only do ‘neat streets’ bring pride to the neighborhood, but all that trash that gets picked up means less trash going to the Malden River,” Buck told Neighborhood View.
Yes, it’s true. Those storm drains that keep the roads from flooding also serve as a conduit for trash that makes its way through the grates and then empties into the river.
“I’m a big walker,” said Devyn Davila DiMarco, a rising senior at Malden Catholic. “There’s just a bunch of trash on Salem Street. So today is mostly about saying ‘Okay, maybe we try and clean up these streets more.’ There’s a storm drain adoption program where you can adopt a drain, make sure that none of that flows into the river.”
Davila DiMarco and fellow Malden Catholic students, Eliana Estrada and Caitlyn Hurley, were part of a cohort of interns with the Friends of the Malden River this summer. They learned about how street trash can pollute the river. They also learned about community outreach. The team visited local businesses on Salem Street and distributed flyers for residents, inviting them to the clean-up and stressing the importance of keeping the streets free of litter.
“We were just kind of chatting it up with business owners,” said Estrada. “It was pretty good because most of them were friendly, and they were willing to go and willing to put up flyers or give us something to work with, like a little gift card.”
The gift cards were used as prizes for all the folks who turned out for the clean-up. At the opening gathering, the interns set up games and snacks for a post-cleanup celebration, where the gift cards were raffled off.
Buck initiated the Neat Streets program through a Community Connections grant filed on behalf of Friends of the Malden River. The grant supports outreach and education efforts and covered the cost of the new street sweeper, which Buck intends to bring out for cleanup efforts in neighborhoods throughout the city.
“Not only does it do a good job sweeping the streets, but it’s an attention grabber,” said Buck. “We want to grab people’s attention and alert them to how and why we should keep our streets and neighborhoods clean.”
“I think it’s really good for bringing the community together,” said MC intern Hurley. ‘I think everyone’s excited to be a part of something that helps the environment, like cleaning up Malden streets, starting with Salem Street and just continuing to build the program.”
The Neat Streets campaign will continue in different neighborhoods through June 2027. The next cleanup will begin at Idle Hands Craft Ales before their annual Oktoberfest on September 12. The campaign invites residents of the City of Malden to identify hot spots of errant trash. Email friendsofthemaldenriver@gmail.com.
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