Hinesburg's Green Up Day a Success
Despite the rain, the cold 100 brave souls turned out to help clean up along the town's roads, a long-time tradition.
By Ian Kreinsen
VT Community News Service
About 100 residents came out in the pouring rain to clean up Hinesburg on May 3, taking part in a 55-year-old Vermont ritual. But behind the scenes, organizing the annual event takes weeks of preparation and coordination.
For 25 of those years, Rep. Phil Pouech, D-Hinesburg, has been the driving force behind Green Up Day in the town. Mobilizing his neighbors is deeply meaningful to Pouech.
“We all work together. Everyone can do it,” Poue
ch said. “It doesn’t matter how strong you are, or how rich you are, or what political party you’re in. It shows that the community works together.”
Since taking the reins, Pouech has streamlined Green Up Day.
“I was on the Hinesburg Conservation Commission, and I didn’t think it was as organized as it could be, and then somebody said, ‘Well, why don’t you do it?’” Pouech said.
He introduced an early pick-up system for bags, allowing residents to prepare up to a week and a half in advance. He launched a SignUpGenius system so volunteers can claim sections of highway ahead of time. To lighten the load on participants, he coordinated with the town to collect filled bags, eliminating the need for volunteers to haul trash to the transfer station.
“People would say, ‘I want to Green Up, but I’m bringing my kids to soccer on Saturday.’ Well, that’s not an excuse right now. You can clean up whenever,” he said.
Pouech doesn’t run the event alone. In addition to community volunteers, he depends on a dedicated team to help keep Hinesburg clean. That includes lifelong friends Chuck Reiss and Rocky Martin, who have been participating in Green Up Day since they were kids.
Reiss recalled the days when he and other kids were packed into a school bus to clean the roadsides.
“It’s a rite of passage, coming out on the first Saturday of May,” Reiss said.
“If you need something done,” Martin said, “I’d go to a small town.”
While Reiss and Martin help where they can, they cite Pouech as the visionary.
“Two years ago, Phil said he’s not going to run it anymore, and we said, ‘No, sorry, you have to,’” Reiss said.
On Green Up Day, the trio drove pickup trucks through town, gathering green bags of garbage. They brought it all to the Chittenden Solid Waste District drop-off center in town.
Bill Scott helped unload the garbage into much larger trucks for further transportation. Scott is part of the Hinesburg Conservation Commission, whose members help oversee Green Up Day.
Scott volunteered for the 1 p.m. shift at the drop-off center. Unlike Reiss and Martin, he’s only participated in Green Up Day for the past two years.
“It’s a nice thing, and people shouldn’t take it for granted,” Scott, a New York native, said. “It’s the only state that’s doing it.”
Although Scott and other recent recruits bring renewed vigor to Green Up Day, the veteran Pouech stays humble about his decades of service.
“People thank me for organizing it — and it takes a little bit of work — but I’ve got the process down,” he said.
“If somebody can do the organizing, the volunteers will come out.”
Despite the rain, Pouech said the number of volunteers remained strong.
“I don’t think it bothers too many people,” he said.
By noon, Pouech reported that the Hinesburg volunteers had already cleaned all their assigned sections of town.
Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship program. This initially appeared in The Citizen.