Dozens gather to clean veteran memorial, school and church streets for Earth Day

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Mother Earth smiled down on dozens of volunteers in Great Kills today as groups from all over Staten Island came together to clean three different areas in the neighborhood.

The borough president’s office teamed up with the South Shore Business Improvement District, the Grace Foundation, Nonprofit Staten Island, the New York State Assembly Minority Conference, the American Conservation Coalition, Green Environmental Services, Councilmember Michael Tannousis’ office, and the Natural Resources Protective Association to tidy the streets and green areas around the Great Kills Veterans Memorial, P.S. 8, and the Archangel Michael & Saint Mena Coptic Orthodox Church.

“It’s Earth Day. What better way to celebrate than to come out and do something like this? We love doing it,” said Ian Yanda, Tannousis’ chief of staff.

This is the South Shore BID’s — which represents Annadale, Eltingville, and Great Kills — second time partnering with the borough president’s office to clean up these communities.

“By people seeing us out here, hopefully it encourages people to not throw stuff in the street,” said Anthony Rapacciuolo, the executive director of the BID. “It’s at the heart of what the BID does. [The t]own’s clean, safe, and better to work, shop, and live in.”

The borough president’s Litter Liaison and Constituent Services representative Tiffany Arguello and Community Coordinator Pete Trivelas joined the festivities, picking up trash and debris from the streets.

This isn’t unusual for them — every Friday, the pair go out to different places on the Island to clean up garbage, often gathering over 20 bags of trash between the two of them, Trivelas said.

“When people from other boroughs come to Staten Island, they see garbage to a point and graffiti. So, by us cleaning up all points, it’s just a better ambiance [and] atmosphere. People feel good,” Trivelas said.

“This area, especially over here [at the Great Kills Veterans Memorial], needed help. Next to P.S. 8 needed a little bit of love and support. What we like to do is show the whole Island love, make sure that we are hitting all of the hot spots,” Arguello explained. “When we finish, and we see all of the bags… it feels so good to accomplish something and to know that we contributed, and we really did a good thing all together.”

Among those helping to pick up the garbage littering the streets was a handful of volunteers from the Grace Foundation: Matthew Alonso, Christina Gatti, Brandon Girard, Zainab Jundi, Daniel Jackowitz, Nicholas Manfredonia, and Hunter Verderosa.

“Earth Day is really about cleaning up for the environment and being happy for the Earth. And when you pile garbage everywhere, it’s bad for the Earth,” Alonso said.

Pulling on the patterned gloves provided for the event, they, along with other volunteers, sought out the garbage strewn about the community. Among one of the volunteers was Chrias Fabiano, the founder, president, and CEO of the Warrior Outreach Project and Mrs. New York, Nicole Doz-Pillarella.

Fabiano brought his camera to document the event, which is a part of Staten Island’s very first Climate Week programming

“I’m retired military, so I have a little bit more free time on my hands than a lot of people, and Staten Island is my community now. I’ve been here for almost five years, so, you know, got to take pride in your community and got to help out in any way you can,” Fabiano explained.

Doz-Pillarella, a member of the Natural Resources Protective Association, came out to help on her day off from work. To her, Earth Day is the “best day of the year.”

“It’s just nice to see how many people recognize that our environment is so directly related to us and our health and how keeping it clean is so important,” she said. “…especially in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week.”

Nonprofit Staten Island’s program manager and leader of the Community Climate core at the organization, Robert Grosso, was thrilled by the turnout.

“This is what you live for. You see these events like in your head [and] you’re hoping [for] a grand thing and then putting it in action where people are actually showing up doing the work, taking their time to come out and do these things — whether it’s coming from different organizations, whether it’s just a few people off the street or anything like that. You know they’re here, they’re given their time to help clean up a couple of streets,” he said.

“For us, it’s super important because our whole thing is trying to get New York City to be zero waste. And we want everybody to know the three R’s like the back of their hand: Reduce, recycle, reuse,” said Daliah Bell of Green Environmental Services.

This event is just one of many being held this week in honor of Earth Day and Staten Island Climate Week. To find out about upcoming events, you can visit siclimateweek.com.