He picks up public litter. His story lifted the lid on my own personal trash.
Sam Farrell of West Palm Beach launched the Regrowth Project to inspire others to take pride in their communities by filling one plastic grocery bag with litter every day.
Happy Labor Day! BEFORE I INTRODUCE my latest story — about Sam Farrell, the remarkable 25-year-old trash-talker who goes around town picking up litter nearly every day — allow me to lift the lid on some personal trash of my own.
Once upon a time, I was a goofy kid in a large family living in a comfortable house in the blissful Pittsburgh suburb of Bethel Park. If my six siblings were charged with doing any household chores, I honestly don’t remember.
But nearly 50 years later, I vividly remember that I had a chore, a weekly task that brought dread and anxiety.
I was charged with taking out the trash. I did it every Sunday night, for early-morning Monday pickup, as I recall. Sounds easy enough. Except that I’m here to tell you it was anything but.
Our house was perched on a tree-spotted hill above our street. The route from the adjoining garage, where we stored the garbage before pickup day, to the side of Stoltz Road, where the public sanitation truck stopped every week to collect it, was a good 40 yards or so down a curving and sloping driveway.
For me, a scrawny 10-year-old with glasses, the simple task of taking out the trash was often an arduous ordeal that each week tested the strength of both my skinny arms and fragile psyche. (Think I’m exaggerating? Go check out 1453 Stoltz Road on Google maps.)
I’d like to think there were probably many weeks when taking out the trash was a relative breeze. But what I remember most were the countless trials and ordeals, such as:
My struggle to hoist the bulging plastic Hefty bags across my bony back.
My delicate stutter-step down the driveway, trying to prevent the bags from shifting and pulling me to the ground, which happened multiple times.
Those frigid winter days when the bags broke apart along the way, spewing discarded cat food cans and moldy vegetables across the driveway, the result of my miscalculation that the bags could be dragged on the snow without hitting a melted patch of exposed concrete.
Go ahead, have a good laugh. My siblings certainly did.
One late-‘70s Christmas morning, we were taking turns opening presents in front of the fireplace. A large cheerful gift with my name on it was pushed my way. The box was so big and heavy! What could it be?
I tore the Santa wrapping paper off and found a rectangular cardboard box, which I pried open to find … stacks of neatly folded black plastic industrial-size garbage bags! The ideal Christmas gift for the sibling in charge of taking out the trash!
Ha-ha. Very funny. (Looking back, it was pretty hilarious.)
So imagine my reaction some 50 years later when I stumbled on social-media videos of young Sam Farrell cheerful opining on the virtues of his near-daily routine — collecting litter from streets, parks and swales around West Palm Beach.
Farrell is the man behind the Regrowth Project, an environmental conservation company with a goal to inspire people everywhere to perform a relatively simple task — filling one plastic shopping bag with litter from around your neighborhood.
At first, I assumed Sam might have fallen off a garbage truck and hit his head. After all, you wouldn’t have found 25-year-old me picking up litter on my lunch hour! (My trash collecting days ended when I left home for college. Amen.)
But after spending time with him, and after talking to his family and friends, I consider Sam a local hero who deserves a bigger spotlight than I’m able to give him.
Here’s his story. Please consider doing Sam a solid by sharing it wide and far:
Trash-talking garbage man on a mission to clean up after litterbugs, one bag at a time.