It’s not glamourous but it’s neccessary! Here are some tips on an important part of keeping your playground tidy, less attractive to rats, and pleasant for all to enjoy.

Though your custodial engineer and staff cleans your playground regularly, they can’t be there all the time. Any help you can give will make a tremendous difference. Clean-ups can be organized with a recess crew, after school club, or during a volunteer event. You are always welcomed to just go rouge and carry a few pieces of litter over to the playground trash cans and recycling bins. If you’re doing a big clean-up, always ask your custodial engineer where to leave or toss your trash bags at the end.

Basic Materials:

• Garbage bags – make sure you have a whole roll, you never know when you’ll get excited and start weeding!
• Clear recycling bags for the rigid plastics
• Gloves – either rewashable cloth gloves, or plastic gloves
• Hand santizer if you don’t have easy access to a sink with soap right after
• Scissors – sometimes ribbon, string, or tape is wrapped around a tree and it can be useful to have these to free the tree.

Bonus Materials:

• A fancy trash-grabber. Kids love using these!
• A vest or pin to elevate your clean up crew. The vest or pin might declare your membership to the garden club or playground crew.

Tips:

• Beware of broken glass. Ask a grown-up to use a shovel to toss any broken glass or other sharp looking objects that may have been discarded in the playground. Make sure everyone knows which bag the sharp stuff ended up in.
• Market your clean-up! Put up flyers or QR codes to have people RSVP to help.
• Make it a recurring event – so people always know when they can show up.
• Pair it with other fun garden or playground activities like planting, pruning, or harvesting.
• Talk to your custodial engineer to find out when the most help is needed.
• Get under those shrubs, the leaf litter, and into the corners of the garden. The wind tends to blow litter into nooks and crannies. There’s usually a layer against the fences.
• Leave the dirt! It can be temping to scoop up a bunch of leaf litter and soil when your cleaning up. We want to natural materials to stay and break down, but the trash to get thrown out.
• Prevention: if litter is turning out to be a problem, you might try adding more trash and recycling bags to the fence of your playground. Be sure to tie them securely. This is a good idea before big events.
• During any big community event, have a few people (ideally, kids) play the role of reminding people not to litter and cleaning up along the way.
• Signage: add signage or art about caring for your playground if the message isn’t being heard.
• and Make it FUN: I like to set a timer and see if we can all get 10 pieces of litter in 2 minutes!