© 2025 Spencer Buley
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: DeTrash Syracuse
ERIKA OLLER, ORGANIZER OF DETRASH SYRACUSE: Our grand total for today is 172.3 pounds of trash.
SPENCER BULEY, REPORTER: DeTrash Syracuse has been cleaning the city for five months. Erika Oller started the group in June of this year.
OLLER: I just put up some posts on Reddit and Facebook and people found me.
SPENCER: DeTrash meets monthly. Oller finds a location, and posts it to social media.
OLLER: I take a scouting walk and try and find trash around. More often than not, there’s trash readily available.
SPENCER: DeTrash has picked up over 900 pounds of litter, and their impact is being felt even here at City Hall.
SOL MUÑOZ, SENIOR PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICER: It is a huge help.
SPENCER: Sol Muñoz, Syracuse’s senior public information officer, says DeTrash is helping sanitation workers.
MUÑOZ: Although we have our environmental service crews that do go out and litter pick, they obviously can’t cover the whole city.
SPENCER: Oller says the problem starts small.
OLLER: They must not care or think it’s an issue.
SPENER: But builds up over time.
OLLER: People think, oh, it’s already bad, what more will my contribution make it worse?
SPENCER: As DeTrash continues to work.
OLLER: Getting on your hands and knees, wow.
SPENCER: Picking up a wide variety of items, from cigarette butts to car batteries, a community is coming together.
OLLER: It’s the heart of why I made this, right?
SPENCER: For what started as a therapeutic activity has turned into a monthly gathering with more than 30 volunteers.
OLLER: I started feeling hopeless about the world and just the state of the world, and I was like, well, is there anything I could do? I guess it’s picking trash. I had no idea this would happen.
SPENCER: In Syracuse, Spencer Buley. NCC News.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) – A group of volunteers has removed nearly a half a ton of litter in Syracuse over the last four months.
DeTrash Syracuse is a volunteer social group that meets monthly. Erika Oller, the group’s organizer, picks a route, sets the date, and invites the community to join her via Facebook and Reddit.
“I first and foremost come up with a place for socialization,” Oller said. “Then, I take a scouting walk and try to find trash around. More often than not, there’s trash readily available.”
DeTrash has removed 914 pounds of waste through five cleanups, including one that involved approximately 700 pounds of material from an illegal dumping in an abandoned lot near the intersection of Fayette and Almond Street. They compile the trash for pickup under Syracuse’s Adopt-A-Block program, and the city disposes of the waste.
Sol Muñoz, Syracuse’s senior public information officer, said DeTrash is providing a valuable service to city workers.
“Although we have our environmental service crews that do go out and litter pick, they obviously can’t cover the whole city,” she said. “They are often doing other tasks like our bulky pickups or litter picking for an event.”
Oller said she started picking up trash as a coping mechanism during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I started feeling hopeless about the state of the world,” she said. “I felt like everything was out of my control, and I was just like, well is there anything I could do? I guess that’s picking trash.”
Picking up and disposing of litter started as her own therapeutic activity but has grown to nearly 30 volunteers per event.
“I had a couple of friends join me, and they were like, you know, this is actually great,” said Oller. “And with their encouragement, I decided to try and open it up to a wider group and see what would happen. I had no idea that this would happen.”
Ian Laih, a volunteer, said the group provides a realistic way to make a difference.
“Any city is going to have trash, and you see it and you’re like, how do I as one person handle that?” said Laih. “Sometimes you just get paralyzed and don’t know what to do. It’s so enriching and encouraging to have this group that Erika has created to have like-minded people that want to make a difference.”
Oller said making an impact starts with small steps.
“It’s good to get involved and have a sense of agency and initiative in the place that you live,” she said. “I don’t think that, you know, we can necessarily change the whole world, but we can do a little something once a month.”
Muñoz added that one of the best ways for individuals to help mitigate litter is to make sure their trash carts are completely shut, especially as winter nears.