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INSIDE OUT

INSIDE OUT

By Jessica Laskey Giving Back: Volunteer Profile

amount of trash, so we decided to focus our efforts on local waterways.”

The four founders belonged to other volunteer cleanup groups when they formed the alliance in January. Thanks to connections with public agencies, including the city of Sacramento, Sacramento County Department of Regional Parks and American River Flood Control District, they hit the ground running.

“Public agencies either cannot or will not (do cleanup),” Ford says. “They’re limited by jurisdiction control, lack of resources and staff, and liability. It’s up to citizens like us to be the boots on the ground and get in there and remove that trash, but we partner with public agencies to actually haul the trash away. It’s a great public-private partnership.”

In the first three months of 2023, the alliance donated 1,271 volunteer hours and held more than 40 volunteer cleanup events, resulting in the removal of more than 205,150 pounds of trash.

“We’re really just scratching the surface. There are millions of pounds of debris in our parkway right now,” says Ingram, the self-described “data guy” of the group. “I recently started collecting the most contaminating parts of the cleanups that do the most damage. In just six weeks, I collected more than 3,000 used hypodermic needles and 5,000 discarded batteries, as well as countless ‘honey buckets’—buckets of human feces.”

Without wanting to get too political, Ingram notes 90% of the debris is from illegal encampments. He says they clean active camps only with

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