Vincent Yuen, the organizer of the third annual “On a Mission on Mission” cleanup, pauses to coordinate with other volunteers.
It’s 1:15 p.m., and he’s about halfway to his destination at the other end of Mission Street — and ahead of last year’s pace, with 70 filled bags of trash. More volunteers means more collected trash.
“I’m always a bit giddy, it’s like a birthday,” says Yuen about waking up at 4:45 a.m. for the longest day of the year.
Yuen is the founder of Refuse Refuse and a man obsessed with trash: His group hosts a clean-up almost daily around San Francisco, relying entirely on volunteers to haul out trash.
On Wednesday, Yuen and others marched across the city, clad in high-viz vests and using trash pickers to collect all manner of garbage. Mission Local caught up with them as they went along Mission Street.
Neighborhood chiropractor Barbara Berkeley meets Yuen and discusses his creative efforts to get more people involved in cleanups while he prepares new bags.
“I do have a singles cleanup in the Marina,” Yuen says. Berkeley tells him there’s a market closer to home: “Of course it’s in the Marina … I think you need singles in the Mission, and homosexuals in the Castro!”
Some of those who joined Yuen on Wednesday also regularly pick up trash on their own, while others join organized cleanups.
Refuse Refuse has organized 1,300 cleanups in the past two years. Yuen said he had an “awakening” when he first started picking up trash during the pandemic — and started seeing a noticeable difference in his neighborhood.
In most neighborhoods where there are weekly cleanups, Yuen said he has seen a 75 percent reduction in the baseline level of trash, and consistency is key.
Andrea Stern and Emily Hedges, who joined the daylong cleanup at Mission and Cesar Chavez streets, discuss the trash they’ve found, aside from cigarette butts, the most common culprit.
“We made a fruit salad.” — “There was a whole mango.” — “A Duran Duran poster!” — “A sock.”
Stern says she even did a cleanup as part of her wedding weekend, and wore a bedazzled vest for the occasion. “That’s how much she loves San Francisco,” Hedges says.
Bob Fuller, a Commission Affairs Manager with the Public Works Department, struggles to fish a cigarette out of a crevice on Mission Street.
He first met Yuen at a men’s workout that combined picking up garbage and exercise — and the two started talking trash.
“This is the cleanest I’ve ever seen this street,” says Fuller, who lives in the neighborhood.
Part of that credit goes to DPW, which he says has been addressing its staffing shortages. “More hands doing the work makes it more effective. It’s not the easiest work to hire for, either.”
Yuen weaves through a throng of people at the 24th Street BART plaza, pausing to chat with curious onlookers. At one point along the journey, a woman asks Yuen what he is doing, and ends up putting on a vest to join the cleanup for a stretch.
At some point, Dena Emmerson gets separated from the group. “You follow the trash and you get, you know, zeroed in,” she explains. As part of a New Year’s resolution, Emmerson picks up a bag of trash a day in her free time. “Vince inspired me.”
To get involved in upcoming cleanups around the city, or in your specific neighborhood, visit the Refuse Refuse website.
Photo by Eleni Balakrishnan
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Luv this endeavor and applaud all the volunteers for getting this done!
Vince Yuen, founder of RefuseRefuse, has been working tirelessly for some time now to clean up the city by getting neighbors actively involved in taking responsibility for their own neighborhood. He’s organized over 1,300 cleanups and disposed of tons of litter and garbage on our streets. He puts his money where his mouth is. Vince is a force of nature and allows nothing to deter him from his passion. I have nothing but respect for him. Go Vince!
What do we pay the SFDPW street cleaners to do?
Would that these people organized politically to end the corruption that las rendered SF a filth palace instead of virtue signaling by offering charitable donations of their time.