Philadelphia hosted its 5th Annual Philly Spring Cleanup this past Saturday, April 14th from 9 AM – 2 PM.  Over 350 projects across the city encouraged citizens to volunteer to make our city a prettier place.

The theme of the Cleanup is “Keep Up the Sweep Up”, which emphasizes residents and organizations to sustain the effort towards a cleaner & brighter Philly year-round.

Although we haven’t received the exact stats from this past weekend yet, the past 4 cleanups have boasted 45,000 volunteers, collected over 5.8 MILLION pounds of trash – which is enough to fill Lincoln Financial Field up to 17.4 feet high.

As we mentioned, we hosted a Philly Spring Cleanup Day site at 8th & Poplar this past weekend.  The fields are a host to many PSSC leagues, and many local residents use the fields for soccer games, taking kids & pets.

At first glance, the fields didn’t seem too bad. But when we started looking around, there was a lot of litter:

As well as dangerous areas for children & pets (and adults)!  Like this entire pile of broken glass:

Luckily, we had 20 volunteers come out for the cleanup effort.  Good thing we put all of this cleanup equipment to use!

We had lots of smiling faces as friends, old and new, helped clean up the site:

Your GPB authors, Beth & Julie, organizing & helping the clean:

Many volunteers conquered the fields and surrounding area to get as much litter as possible.

I’d say the before and after difference was definitely noticeable:

And what would a wrap-up post be without a big, happy group shot?

We had lots of help, with volunteers staying the entire time or just take a shift when they could.  The weather was definitely in our favor, as it reached a high of 70* on Saturday!  We kept our volunteers hydrated and well-fed with the basics like bagels, vegan muffins, fruit & caffeine dosages when necessary.

Overall, we filled 50+ bags of trash and recycling from the site. Thanks to EVERYONE who helped out and donated their time – we couldn’t have done it without you!

For more pictures of the day (including before and after shots), check out our Facebook Page album.

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Julie Hancher is Editor-in-Chief of Green Philly, sharing her expertise of all things sustainable in the city of brotherly love. She enjoys long walks in the park with local beer and greening her travels, cooking & cat, Sir Floofus Drake. View all posts by Julie Hancher