How one man’s 100-day cleanup transformed a trash-filled block in Washington heights

In New York City, something magical has happened along the sidewalk in Washington Heights that can best be described in a metaphor.

In the East, the lotus is not only a food source and a religious symbol, it also serves as a convenient allegory — because it grows best in the dirtiest water.

So it was with David, a young New Yorker who felt “powerless” to change the circumstances on his block at 171st between Broadway and Fort Washington. Everywhere a piece of litter could be, it was. Whether wrapped around the bolts securing a fire hydrant or choking the tree plots on the sidewalk, litter was everywhere.

So David bought some bags and a grabber stick and announced on his TikTok account @trashtalk_nyc that he was going to clean the litter off of a single NYC block every day for 100 days.

What started as a solo cleanup has grown into a broader community movement. The project revealed a caring community hungry for change, just waiting for someone to show that it was possible to do something.

“When this account went viral, I learned that litter was correlated with pride and a sense of community,” David wrote in his 100th day montage video. “I could have picked up trash my whole life, but instead I want to give people a reason not to litter.”

The reason was simple: that littering would spoil the beauty that David and an ever-proliferating number of local volunteer comrades worked to bring about.

It wasn’t long before many of his neighbors were right beside him, picking up litter, badgering city officials to make more of an effort to keep streets clean, and cultivating beds of flowers and plants where the city’s trees grow on the sidewalk. Local businesses began donating plants, lumber and equipment to help improve neighborhood spaces.

For this was the ultimate culmination of David’s good work. As much as his videos went viral, so too did his idea of fencing off little flower beds under the trees, laying down soil and mulch, and planting flowers to encourage neighbors and passersby to keep the streets clean.

“Litter can kill plants, but plants can also teach people not to litter,” David says. “People don’t notice a dying tree, but when flowers magically appear for the first time in decades, people notice when they die.”He’s so far spent some $2,000 buying fence and gardening supplies to beautify the tree plots along his own block, enriched by giving hands inspired by his creative solutions to litter control.