The cleanups involved over a million pounds of garbage and 10,000 volunteer hours
PRESS RELEASE – October 27, 2023: We Heart Seattle, a grassroots non-profit dedicated to making Seattle safe and beautiful for all, released new data today on more than 300 cleanups that took place between October 2020 and October 2023. In that time, it is estimated that We Heart Seattle volunteers collected around 1,017,100 pounds of garbage.
“I am thrilled at what we have accomplished to date. We are truly going where no one else will go – tackling trash from active and abandoned encampments, illegal dumping and venturing into hard-to-reach terrain. It’s very challenging work, but our public spaces are simply too precious to neglect” said Andrea Suarez, We Heart Seattle’s executive director.
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The cleanup efforts have involved hundreds of volunteers throughout Seattle and over 10,171
volunteer hours.
“I am continually amazed at the dedication, grit and good will of our volunteer base. This is not easy work, but we are building a community of park stewards and galvanizing civic engagement city-wide” commented Tim Emerson, We Heart Seattle Program Manager.
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The areas of the city where We Heart Seattle carried out the most encampment cleanups were:
- Kinnear Park (28)
- SODO commercial district (23)
- MacLean Park (18)
- Othello/MLK neighbourhood near the 7500 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Way (17)
About We Heart Seattle
We Heart Seattle is an action-based, boots-on-the-ground movement that organizes trash cleanups in
our public spaces and offers resources to those in need. Through our direct civic engagement, we lead the way to a more compassionate and healthy community. To meet these goals, We Heart Seattle organizes regular volunteer trash cleanups in public spaces; offers individualized outreach services; connects unhoused individuals with safe housing, shelters, and treatment facilities; develops partnerships with like-minded stakeholders; and works cooperatively with city and county employees and leaders. Having hit the one-million pound mark of trash collected and celebrated its three-year anniversary, We Heart Seattle felt it was timely to release data on its city-wide cleanup efforts.
Media Contact
Andrea Suarez
Founder and Executive Director, We Heart Seattle
andrea@weheartseattle.org
206-850-4290
https://weheartseattle.org/