On a crisp morning at 9 am sharp, a group of seven people equipped with rubber gloves, hand sanitizer, and plenty of garbage bags gather on a street corner near Lake Merritt. They greet each other with smiles, asking if anyone needs extra trash grabbers.
"The common thing that you hear a lot in Oakland–maybe anywhere–is someone should do something about that and what we want to tell people is that they're someone and they can do something about it.”Richard Shirk, co-founder of Trash Falcons
This is Trash Falcons. A self-described ragtag neighborhood group that meets here every Sunday morning. Rain, shine, Christmas, New Years– they’re here, geared up and eager to pick up trash around the neighborhood.
The group is made up of a broad span of ages and genders. Most of them live in the Adam’s Point neighborhood on the north side of Lake Merritt, but did not know each other prior to joining the group. “We’re all neighbors,” says Trash Falcons co-founder Richard Shirk, “who probably have seen each other’s cats in the windows.” Trash Falcon Michael Lang teases Shirk, “We still haven’t seen your cats. We look every single time. We think you’re making up these cats!” Laughter bubbles out of the group.
Shirk, alleged cat owner, co-founded the group with a friend in 2020 as a COVID-safe activity. Now Trash Falcons has grown through word of mouth to more than 50 total people. About five to ten show up on any given Sunday.
As the Falcons make their way to the shores of Lake Merritt, they scan the ground for things to pick up. They find all the things you might expect – drinking straws, plastic wrappers, broken glass – plus some unexpected objects like a tin of butter cookies and a microphone. “It’s a toy, a cute little toy,” Lang exclaims as someone fishes a small plastic chicken out of the lake with a grabber. Someone snaps a photo for the group’s Instagram page, where the Falcons showcase their most intriguing finds.
For items far out in the water, Trash Falcon Ana Marie Jones has gotten creative, inventing trash-capturing contraptions. “We call that the witch’s finger” says Jones, holding out what used to be an extendable feather duster. Jones removed the feathers exposing a pliable wire that can be molded to hook tricky-to-grab trash. When Trash Falcon Ethan Gregor spots something further than what the witch’s finger can reach, Jones tells him, “You could go for the grappling hook. ”
Gregor takes a few attempts to throw a hook tied to an extendable dog leash at the trash. When he finally hits it, the whole group cheers as he quickly reels it in with the dog leash. It’s like a sport, explains Jones, “It is just unbelievably charming to watch because some of [the Falcons] have sports in their veins, like from when they were in high school [or] college. So they’re literally pitching it with zeal and gusto.”
Jones’ creativity with trash-capturing inventions has earned her the nickname Q, like the James Bond gadget-making character. As a regular, she’s seen her fair share of trash gems. “My most favorite thing that Trash Falcons have ever collected while I was there is what we called ‘trash diamond,’” says Jones, referring to what was actually a large glass paperweight. Shirk found it the perfect object to reenact a proposal to his wife. Jones says the moment was a poetic reminder that, “In the midst of trash, there is beauty. There is love. There is just so much goodness.”
Though, in the midst of all of that goodness, Lang says there’s also, “just the most cigarette butts I feel like in the entire world.” They also find waterlogged cardboard boxes, condoms, half-eaten bags of chips, and too many miscellaneous pieces of plastic to count. Everything they find is met without judgment. Mostly, there’s a sense of delight in the air - a positivity that Richard emphasizes is key to the main goal of Trash Falcons:to empower everyday citizens to improve their communities.
“The common thing that you hear a lot in Oakland–maybe anywhere–is someone should do something about that,” says Shirk, “and what we want to tell people is that they're someone and they can do something about it.”
Jones explains that the group has changed her relationship to garbage. “All of us now, the regulars, we can look at [a] pile [of trash] and go, ‘We can hit that in 5 minutes. We could totally clean that up.’”
The Trash Falcons clear out as much trash as they can. But there’s a lot of trash in Oakland to clean up, and Trash Falcons is just one group of people covering a few blocks in a large city. Trash on that land can make its way into the watershed, says Jessie Olson, Habitat Restoration Director for nonprofit Save the Bay. “In total, Oakland's watershed comprises 15 main creeks and over 30 tributaries.”
Rain leads trash to storm drains. Storm drains lead into the creeks and Lake Merritt. And those drain directly into the Bay and the ocean.
Some cities, like San Francisco, collect and filter nearly all of their stormwater. But most East Bay cities, including Oakland, do not.
Oakland does have about 200 trash capture devices installed in waterways to catch trash before it gets to the Bay, including 6 in Lake Merritt - but all of these devices only account for the trash coming from just over 3% of Oakland’s total land surface. “We don't have enough of them,” says Olson, referring to the devices.
They’re effective, but they’re not a catch all - literally. Sometimes trash capture devices overflow with trash or heavy rains, spilling trash into the Bay. Additionally, installing and maintaining more trash capture devices is expensive. So are stormwater drainage treatment facilities. So for now, says Olson, “You would need to employ a huge army of volunteers and students every single day in order to make an impact, a very substantial impact, and clear all of that pollution out.”
Oakland has also been working on upstream solutions like street sweeping and plastic bag bans to prevent trash from getting into storm drains in the first place. To meet requirements by The SF Bay Water Quality Control Board is now requiring Oakland to reduce trash discharges to zero by 2025. That will be challenging and costly for the city. As for Lake Merritt, because of the trash, it is still considered an impaired waterway by EPA standards.
As Trash Falcon Jones puts it, it’s a never ending amount of garbage. Back at the lake, Jones reflects on what the Falcons would do if one day they all woke up and the trash was just gone. “One, we'd have a phenomenal party. There's no question about that,” says Jones, “But if for some reason we wind up in a situation where for whatever reason, there's just no trash to pick up, there are other things that need to happen in the neighborhood– things that need to be cleaned, things that need to be repaired, things that just need people to love and care. So I have no doubt the Falcons would find a new thing.”
Community love and care is at the center of what Trash Falcons inspires. Jones, whose career is in emergency management, says, “One of the things you can do to make your communities exponentially safer and better on all fronts is to get to know each other and to be close to each other. And whether it's something like Trash Falcons, whatever it is, find a way to shamelessly love your community, to know your neighbors, and you will see all sorts of things getting better.”
To fully stop pollution from entering the bay, it will take a lot more than a single group of neighbors. But Trash Falcons’ goal is not to single handedly fix the Bay’s trash problem. It’s to remind people that they are someone, who can do something - whether with their time, work, votes - rooted in a belief that community care is contagious. That’s at least a drop in the bucket, or or a few hundred cigarette butts in the trash bag.
