Eliyahu Gasson | opinions editor

Most people would prefer to spend their Saturday mornings inside, but for the six volunteers who showed up to the Uptown Partners office on Miltenberger Street, this Saturday morning was for picking up trash around the neighborhood.

Uptown Partners, the community organization for the neighborhood near Duquesne, organized the team in the 2024 Pittsburgh Garbage Olympics, where neighborhoods compete to see who could collect the most trash in their communities. Pittsburgh’s Department of Public Works and the Clean Pittsburgh Commission provided bags, gloves and litter grabbers for each of the 52 neighborhood teams around the city in conjunction with National Clean Up Day.

In high visibility vests and holding garbage pickers, Aviel Chism-Parks and Robert Lawler were two of the volunteers to make their day off about cleaning up the Bluff.

Chism-Parks, a resident of the South Side Slopes, said she was happy to contribute to Uptown’s beauty, even if she didn’t live there.

“It gives me a sense of pride to make sure these areas are safe for people that commute through here,” she said. “I drive right through here, and it’s nice to give back because even though I don’t live here, I frequent it.”

Her boyfriend, Lawler, from Uptown, thinks of this work as a way to not only help his community, but to experience things he wouldn’t otherwise

“You can go out, and you can have a good time, but this is something that really helps to build yourself and your character and that’s really awesome,” he said. “It’s nice to explore the neighborhood you’re in so often. There’s neat little houses and other neat things to see. Go a bit deeper than you do everyday.”

Uptown Partners board member Andrew John sees the event as a way to help improve the neighborhood’s reputation.

“People think Uptown is a dump or just neglected,” he said. “There are people in the community that do care about the well-being of the area.”

The Uptown team didn’t count how much trash they collected. They brought their full bags back to the office and threw them in their dumpster.

The winners were announced that afternoon The South Side Flats placed third, Allentown came in second and Mount Oliver finished in first with 150 bags of trash, 125 tires, 92 televisions and 250 bulk items.

John said that improving the neighborhood was more important to him than the competitive aspect of the Garbage Olympics

“I think we just care to come out and pick up some garbage for a couple of hours to make some sort of impact,” he said. “I think it’s just about seeing where we can help and just make the smallest impact, not really focus on competing with other neighborhoods.”

Dashinique Johnson, the community event organizer for Uptown Partners, said that the organization holds a similar trash cleanup event on the third Saturday of every month. It just so happened that the Garbage Olympics were happening on the same day as their monthly cleanup event.

Still, the biggest hurdle is getting people to show up.

“The biggest hassle for us is trying to find volunteers,” she said. “I want us to get a steady group of volunteers … people who actually want to do these things whenever we have these events.”

Executive Director Brittany McDonald-Pierce said that the amount of volunteers is smaller than it was last year, though adequate. She also said that it seemed like there was less loose garbage around the neighborhood. McDonald-Pierce attributes that to their collaboration with the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, who’s Clean Team walks through Downtown and parts of Uptown, picking up trash and emptying garbage cans.

“That’s kind of a testament to that actually working since it’s not that bad out there,” she said.

Anyone interested in learning more about Uptown Partners can follow their pages on Instagram and Facebook, or visit their website at uptownpartners.org.

“Get involved where you see opportunity. You make time for the things that you want. And I want the whole city to be cleaner. So I encourage anybody to come out,” Chism-Parks said.