Medway Clean Sweep a Neighborhood Affair

It began five years ago, when the Medway 300 committee was putting together celebrations for that year. A Medway cleanup was to become an annual event, and five years later, Medway Clean Sweep is officially a thing.
This year, the event will take place on April 8, 2017 (the same day as neighboring town Millis’ Millis Beautification Day). Volunteers work with officials from the town and the town DPS to spruce up Medway after a long winter.
“We get a core of volunteers that help us every year,” says Allison Potter, Assistant Town Administrator for the Town of Medway, who says more are always needed. “National honors society and the peer counselors and then the Medway Community Church always has a group that cleans up. There’s St. Joseph’s peer group, the Green Team at the Middle School.
Some folks, says Potter, like Annalisa Michielli, organize their neighborhood. “We’re trying to encourage more of that,” she says, “to get neighborhoods to get together and clean their streets.”
Michielli, who lives near Fisher Street, says, “My street is like a conduit between Route 16 and 109, and we get a lot of traffic and trash. We have a little wooded area, and I run by it all the time. It makes me crazy, and I thought, we should be doing (the cleanup).” Michielli says she makes flyers to remind neighbors of the upcoming cleanup.
“I just didn’t like seeing the garbage,” she says. “Hopping Brook is right in my back yard, and there are spillways all over the place. Every time I do this, I pick up Dunkin’ Donuts cups.”
Michielli jokes that the first year her neighborhood did the cleanup, “it as so fun, because it was like a competition to see how much garbage you could get.” Since she lives close to Holliston, she’s even joked to the Holliston PD, who have driven by on their end of Fisher Street, about Medway “cleaning up their town.”
“We get a good sprinkling of people,” says Michielli. Although the town does a little bit of a breakfast on cleanup day, her neighborhood doesn’t take part. “We just want to clean up and go on with the rest of our day,” she says, noting busy weekend schedules. Now that her children are older, she says, they do a larger share of the work and help her distribute the flyers.
In general, Potter says the Medway Clean Sweep is focused on places around town that need attention. Areas officially included in the cleanup are:
• Milford Street
• Oakland Street
• Fisher Street (north of
Milford Street)
• West Street
• Adams to Winthrop (to approx. Lovering Street)
• Lovering Street (from Winthrop to Summer Street)
• Schools (High School, Middle School, Burke-Memorial Elem., and McGovern Elem.)
• Choate Park
• Oakland Park and Senior Center
• Trails (High School to Summer St)
“We try to find roads, Route 109, stretches where plenty of people litter, along the high school, Fisher Street – so we pick up those main streets and we hope to get volunteers to cover all those spots, but if there are any we haven’t thought of that have an accumulation of litter, we hope those neighborhoods would focus on their (areas).”
Team leaders for each area, she says, are give supplies – gloves and trash bags – ahead of time.
“The majority of Clean Sweep is just picking up trash,” says Potter. “and we have t-shirts for volunteers, until we run out.”
On the day of the Clean Sweep, says Potter, organizers have a table set up at the Medway High School with a light breakfast, including muffins and donuts. The effort gets a lot of help from Medway DPS as well as Medway resident Brett Davis, who works for TransCanada and helps pick up large items. Girl Scout Troop 3376 is also a big contributor, says Potter.
Potter also gives a nod to Medway Clean Sweep sponsors, who include RE/MAX Executive Realty – Team Rice, Medway Cable Access, Muffin House Café, Medway Lions Club, EPCO, Long Distance Tire, Patriot Real Estate and Waste Management.
If you would like to take part in Medway Clean Sweep, come on down to the Medway High School, 88 Summer Street, at 8 a.m. on April 8th, rain or shine. (The event will run until 11 a.m.) You can get an assignment there on that day, or call (508) 533-3264 or email cleansweep@townofmedway.org to volunteer.