In Waterbury, Green Up Vermont hails volunteer Guinness World Record
September 20, 2024 | By Lisa Scagliotti 
Unveiling the official Guinness Book of World Records certificate are (l to r): Green Up Vermont board member Erin Desautels, board President Parker Riehle, WCAX-TV General Manager Jay Barton, and Green Up board member Lucas Herring. Photo by Lisa Scagliotti
It was an ambitious goal that in retrospect was entirely realistic.
Earlier this year, Green Up Vermont Executive Director Kate Alberghini put out a call to her legions of local organizers around the state to see if they could sign up as many people as possible ahead of Green Up Day 2024. The call came while there was still snow on the ground and the first Saturday in May seemed eons away.
Why the urgency to get people to plan months ahead of time to pick up trash on May 4?
As it turns out, there was no record in the Guinness Book of World Records for people pledging to pick up trash in one day.
Green Up Vermont's Guinness World Record certificate. Click to enlarge. Photo by Lisa Scagliotti
Given that Vermonters have made picking up trash on Green Up Day a habit for the past 54 years, it seemed like a worthwhile and attainable goal. Guinness required at least 5,000 eager trash collectors.
Alberghini and Vermont’s organizers said: Hold my Green Up bag.
The signups began and the list grew right up until May 3.
On Tuesday, Alberghini, members of the Green Up Vermont board of directors, representatives of some of the annual event’s lead sponsors, along with about 50 spectators that included students who won the 2024 Green Up art, writing and video contests gathered in Waterbury for a big announcement.
Outside of the Pilgrim Park Darn Tough sock manufacturing facility, the official certificate from the esteemed world-record authority was unveiled. Stamped with an “Approved World Record” seal at the bottom, the certificate states:
“The most pledges for trash cleanup in 24 hours is 6,833 and was achieved by Green Up Vermont, Inc. (USA) in Montpelier, Vermont, USA, on 4 May 2024.”
A giant poster alongside the podium touted key 2024 Green Up statistics including: 404 tons (1,329,697 pounds) of trash collected across Vermont by 30,176 volunteers (up 30% over 2023 participation).
Green Up Vermont board President Parker Riehle addresses the crowd as fellow board member Erin Desautels looks on. The wooly sheep is a Darn Tough mascot. Photo by Gordon Miller
A Green Up Vermont Board member for the past decade, board President Parker Riehle led the ceremony calling Green Up “a year-round state of mind.” He noted that volunteers across Vermont have a common goal and hope each year.
“We all share the same dismay when we go back out a year later and there’s just as much trash – sometimes even more than there was a year before. So our efforts are more important than ever,” Riehle said. “Our unofficial mission is essentially to put ourselves out of business at Green Up Vermont and not have to have a Green Up Day but that day doesn’t seem to be coming, so in the meantime, we’re going to continue doing this every single year.”
Riehle’s father Ted Riehle was a member of Vermont Gov. Deane Davis’ administration in 1969 when the idea for Green Up Day took hold. He was on the steering committee that launched the first Green Up Day as a cleanup along the interstate highways on April 18, 1970. The tradition continued and eventually Green Up shifted to early May overseen by an official nonprofit organization that today even has a spot on the state income tax return where Vermonters can make donations.
Tunbridge Green Up Coordinator Eliza Minnucci addresses the gathering. Photo by Gordon Miller
Tuesday’s ceremony at Darn Tough opened with youngsters performing an original Green Up Day song they wrote for the 2023 jingle contest. Green Up holds multiple contests each year to involve Vermont K-12 students. A quartet of Essex middle school students who produced this year’s winning video for Green Up Day attended and their clip was played at the gathering. Fourth- and eighth-graders Elliott and Casey Kendall from Ryegate (also two of the jingle composers) read their winning 2024 poems. And Essex eighth grader Adelyn Ophardt, attended to receive a mounted version of her winning 2024 Green Up Day poster art.
Tunbridge Green Up Coordinator Eliza Minnucci attended the ceremony along with several young volunteers from her town. She told how she solicited Green Up Day pledges at Tunbridge’s Town Meeting in March which kicked off her town’s effort to help with the world-record quest. Tunbridge turned in 286 pledges from a town with just over 1,000 people. “Signing up kids for a world record was easier than lining up for recess,” remarked Minnucci, a public school teacher.
When it comes to promoting a message of conservation and environmental stewardship, Minnucci said Green Up appeals to an individual desire to be empowered. “There is a sort of dark and pervasive sense that no one is coming to save us,” she said. “Or at least they’re not coming fast enough. But the message from Green Up Day is we can save ourselves.”
Speakers from Green Up corporate sponsors included Carra Cheslin, social impact program manager at Lawson’s Finest Liquids in Waitsfield. She remarked on how her company and many Vermont businesses value Green Up Day as a way for employees to give back to their communities and demonstrate their values and mission to keeping familiar roadsides clean.
“Each year we are so shocked to see how much litter can be picked up on these streets that we drive and walk every day and we think are beautiful. It’s an important reminder and a great feeling to be able to clean up so much waste around our community,” she said.
Green Up Vermont board member Erin Desautels thanked Alberghini for spearheading the world record campaign along with organizing this year’s Green Up efforts. Desautels also read some prepared remarks from Alberghini who was recovering from illness.
“We are the only state in the nation to organize a statewide volunteer-based cleanup program and we are the envy of many,” she said, pointing out that involving young people in Green Up is key to instilling values across communities and generations about litter and waste reduction that can improve the planet. “This event is a celebration of volunteerism and also an accomplishment for everyone” from children learning about community service, to volunteers committed to maintaining clean public spaces to businesses recognizing the importance of a healthy environment to the economy, she continued.
Green Up Day is held on the first Saturday in May with volunteers in each Vermont community cleaning up public spaces such as roadsides, parks and neighborhoods. The state coordinator works with volunteer organizers in each city and town around the state who help direct the efforts from distributing the event’s trademark bright green plastic trash bags printed with the help of corporate sponsor donations to tracking areas to clean up and the collection and disposal of the filled bags. Waterbury’s effort this year, for example, involved more than 200 volunteers who collected 1.75 tons of trash, according to the local signup and the Green Up dumpster weigh-in reported by Casella.
Waterbury Roundabout reporter and editor Lisa Scagliotti volunteers as Waterbury’s Green Up coordinator. Learn more about Green Up at greenupvermont.org.