It all began with one person.

Now, dozens have donated supplies or their time to help Orange resident Justin Holden make a cleaner community. For the last four months, Holden has been up at 4 a.m. to clean different sections of town, inspired by the trash he’d see while out riding his bicycle.

“Ever single day I would ride my bike down the road and see nips and needles,” he said while out with a team of volunteers on Thursday.

As word got around that he was cleaning trash, Holden began to receive donations of bags and from there, people began to join him. Now, he said around 90 volunteers have been part of different cleanups. Locations where they have worked include the area by the Orange Police Station, near the route of the River Rat Race and Orange Municipal Airport. He’s also done a cleanup in Greenfield that attracted roughly 200 volunteers.

So far, volunteers have filled 40 bags of trash, which are picked up later by refuse services. Nip bottles, beer cans, used diapers, car parts, syringes, prescription drugs and more have been found along roads and in parks.

“There are kids in the towns and I don’t want them to get hold of those [syringes] and poke themselves with it,” he said.

As the lengthy cleanup effort progresses, Holden plans to work around McDonald’s, Lake Dennis and Lake Mattawa, among other sites. People can also suggest areas to clean. As the team makes their way toward the town lines, he wants to expand into Athol and Gardner. He said the areas with the most litter in Orange are Butterfield Park and near the Police Station.

Holden said he’s always looking for more volunteers or donated trash bags, gloves and snacks for volunteers, and people can reach out through his Facebook page or the Orange MA, Out and About page.

As Earth Day rolled around on Saturday, Orange wasn’t the only town gathering volunteers to clean up their public spaces. In Turners Falls, volunteers, dubbed “little patrol,” gathered at the Great Falls Discovery Center to clean up the Canalside Rail Trail.

“It is way more pleasant to come to a park not ridden with trash,” said Great Falls Discovery Center Supervisor of Visitor Services Janel Nockleby.

She noted the Discovery Center focuses on improving water quality (being adjacent to the Connecticut River), and providing an opportunity for volunteers to clean up litter is a great way to keep trash out of the water supply. Plus, Nockleby said volunteers enjoy the activity so much that many return year after year.

“Picking up trash is satisfying and it is good for team building,” Linda Hickman, a Wendell resident who is the president of the Friends of the Great Falls Discovery Center, said while searching for trash in the field behind the center. Hickman was joined by fellow Friends members Sarah Doyle and Steve Winters.

On the other side of Franklin County, a group of Hawley residents did a similar cleanup activity, albeit in a different context. Each April, Hawley volunteers gather on three Saturdays to clean up the town’s three publicly owned cemeteries.

“Sometimes it falls on Earth Day, and sometimes it doesn’t,” explained organizer Melanie Poudrier. This Earth Day, volunteers worked at East Hawley Cemetery.

The cemeteries are mowed by town employees, but other than that, the upkeep of these spaces is reliant on volunteers. The Historical Commission is working on restoring and cleaning the gravestones, and this group of volunteers does the landscaping.

On Saturday, the group picked up fallen branches. Poudrier explained all the cemeteries are surrounded with very old maple trees that often drop branches.

Because of the weather, the group did not rake the fallen leaves, but that task is also done by the volunteers.

“I started cleaning up the cemeteries because I walk by them,” Poudrier said, “and I thought other people would care about the condition of the cemeteries.”

Some Earth Day cleanup efforts proved to be a family affair, with Greenfield sisters Emily and Patricia Greene taking to a half-mile wooded stretch of Mountain Road to collect wrappers, bottles and various other types of debris. By the end of the day, they had filled two trash bags.

“It was literally all covered in unsightly trash of various kinds,” said Emily Greene. “We’re hoping that next Earth Day we can find others who want to go out and clean up litter in various places like this along our roads in town.”

Bella Levavi can be reached at 413-930-4579 or blevavi@recorder.com.

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