By Erik Bell

My name is Erik Bell and I run a community cleanup group in West Seattle called A Cleaner Alki.  During the pandemic I struggled with feeling down, not sleeping well, and feeling untethered. My work life as a designer had fallen off a cliff and I struggled with even knowing what to do with my time. To get my days going I found myself walking and cleaning up along Alki Beach each morning, doing this for an hour got my day moving and I found inspiration to keep it up. After several months of this morning ritual my spirits began to lift, I was meeting daily walkers along the beach and making connections and felt if this was working for my well-being it might work for others too. 

I made a post on the Facebook page West Seattle Connection inviting people down the next morning a for a beach cleanup and ended up getting quite a few takers, some of whom also identified as feeling disconnected at the time. Upon arriving back home that day, and buoyed by that positive experience, I started a Facebook group for A Cleaner Alki on July 2, 2021 and we have been actively working around West Seattle ever since.

We started with small weekend beach cleanups and like-minded neighbors started showing up. The action of getting out and doing something proactive in the community felt good and meeting new friends was making a big difference in my sense of connection with the environment, and I think it was being felt by others too. Within a short period though it became apparent that the beach only needed so much cleaning, so we ventured off the beach and out into other neighborhoods and began expanding our scope and numbers of cleanups each week. We visited parks, schools, and business junctions at first and became involved with Seattle Public Utilities' Adopt a Street program which started collecting our growing piles, recording our data and supplying us with gear.

Still new to the cleanup scene, my attitude around the trash I was seeing around town was pretty negative. I did a lot of complaining and making up stories about who was to blame. A friend heard me out several weeks in a row before suggesting I had two options; give up the cleanup business and go on complaining about it, or simply get busy with the activity of cleaning up because that's the community I wanted to live in. He thought that was the only way to make it a healthy, sustainable practice and he was spot on. I'm not perfect with this mindset but it is what I try to practice in my daily cleanup activities. In fact, there’s very little complaining about the messes we encounter at cleanups and much more laughter and camaraderie in the common cause of making something better than we found it. It’s actually very satisfying, enjoyable work. 

In our second year I mentored my daughter and two of her troop mates on their Girl Scouts Silver Award service project which culminated in Block Drops, a passive invitation for neighbors to clean up local neighborhoods on their own time. Each day a mobile cleanup station (A-frame sign, buckets and grabbers) moves to a different location in West Seattle and is then picked up at the end of the day, and the trash collection is removed and reported. 

Reporting our data to Seattle Public Utilities helps us track progress and set goals. Over the course of our first year and a half our planned cleanup events along with Block Drops removed 14 tons of trash out of West Seattle with the help of 3,000+ volunteers. 

Documenting these efforts through photography and seeing these growing numbers helps inspire and bring more people into the movement. It still amazes me how much can get done with a dedicated crew working for a common cause. 

Now that we’re doing multiple cleanups a week we try to vary the types of events we host to appeal to as many community neighbors as we can. Block Drops are a very good entry into cleaning up on your own and are always set up in family friendly areas. Our organized events run the spectrum of beach, park and school cleanups all the way to highway, greenbelt and encampment cleans. We’ve also recently started to do cleanups that spruce up parts of neighborhood infrastructure that has been overgrown with foliage. It’s fun to see the different groups of people that each cleanup type attracts, and also see the people that enjoy the team atmosphere and will show up to anything we put together. 

A majority of the regulars who come out to our planned events are retired neighbors who are finding a great sense of camaraderie in the team dynamic and the satisfaction of completing our weekly neighborhood projects. They are some of the most dedicated and hard workers I’ve ever met!

Heading into year three I’m more passionate than ever about the work we’re doing and I’m looking at ways to make this a sustainable endeavor. I recently received a grant from the Department of Ecology that will help pay for some of the time I’m putting into organizing and facilitating our work. We’re also saving for a work vehicle through a GoFundMe if people would like to help support our efforts. All in all I’m very grateful I landed on this path with the friends who are joining in. It has brought me much happiness and a stronger sense of community to be doing this ongoing work.

Thank you to all who continue to show up and pitch in – Together we can, by and by. 

Erik Bell

Erik Bell is a West Seattle resident and the creative director, designer, and photographer for Bell/Fortino a Seattle Brand Design agency. He is also the winner of the Orville Rummel Trophy for Outstanding Service to the Community for 2023.