Clean Green Springfield is back for a fifth year. Anyone can register to take part in several city-wide cleanup activities in April and May.

One event – Neat Neighborhoods 2025 funded by the Hatch Foundation – offers prizes for cleanup and greenup projects. There are three categories: Community planning; public places, parks, roads, streets and alleys; green spaces; and tidiness and litter control.

You can also sign up to help with clean up segments of streams and roadways. The city will provide trash bags and will pick them up when filled.

The city will host a cleanup of a section of Kansas Expressway where it meets Jordan Creek near Grand Street. You can sign up to help with that event from 9 to 11 a.m. on April 12.

Several neighborhood drop-off events will be held this spring where you can take large items for disposal. And on October 4, a citywide drop-off event will be held at the Hammons Field parking lot. Volunteers are needed to help with those.

Last year, neighborhood cleanups served 1,301 households at eight events with the help of 298 volunteers. A total of 170 tons of bulk waste, from furniture to mattresses, was discarded. The events collected 33 tons of brush and 27 tons of scrap metal.

Clean Green Springfield began in 2021. Since then, nearly 4,000 volunteers have given an estimated 8,000 service hours to collect litter and beautify the community, according to the City of Springfield. Volunteers have helped remove a total of 3,500 bags or an estimated 55 tons of litter from Springfield streets, neighborhoods, waterways and other public spaces.