Beautify St. Joseph volunteers continue mission to keep the city clean  

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. (KQTV)-- A local nonprofit is continuing its mission to make St. Joseph a cleaner place to live, one trash bag at a time.  

Beautify St. Joseph hosted a community cleanup on Saturday, July 25, as volunteers came together to pick up litter around the city.  

According to organization president Terry Turbak, the group's goal goes beyond collecting trash—it also hopes to inspire residents to take pride in their community.  

“Our focus is on litter control, messaging to the public that we can all work together to help limit the amount of litter that we have in our community,” she said.  

Beautify St. Joseph has been around for nearly five years and is now in its sixth summer of organizing cleanups.  

From early April through October, volunteers clean a different area of the city each month, usually on the fourth Saturday.  

The organization also encourages people to organize their own cleanups and share photos on its Facebook page.  

“We are keeping a yearly bag count of how many bags of trash we get off the streets in one year,” Turbak added.  

So far this year, Beautify St. Joseph volunteers have collected 165 bags of trash from around the city. 

Turbak said every cleanup is about more than just picking up litter. She believes it gives people the opportunity to make a real difference in their community while inspiring others to get involved as well.  

“I was brought in six years ago now to help inspire head this effort and since then its just grown and grown,” she said.  

Residents can stay up to date with Beautify St. Joseph by visiting beautifystjoseph.org, where the organization posts upcoming cleanup events and other news. 

The nonprofit also publishes a monthly newsletter at the end of each month, recapping recent cleanup efforts, previewing upcoming events and sharing its current annual trash bag count.  

“Our youngest volunteer is three years old and our oldest volunteer is 90 so we will accept anyone who want to come out and help in whatever capacity they can,” Turbak said.  

Turbak said the organization has two goals: keeping St. Joseph's streets clean and encouraging people to think twice before littering. 

She said much of the trash volunteers pick up comes from careless littering and Beautify St. Joseph hopes to inspire people to take greater pride in their community.  

“Not thinking of St. Joseph as their home but thinking of it as a site where they don’t care and we want to make people care and realize this impacts not just you but the community,” Turbak said.  

Turbak said she used to walk past litter without giving it much thought, assuming it was simply part of the landscape. 

That changed after she joined Beautify St. Joseph. She said she began noticing just how much trash was around the city and realized that instead of waiting for someone else to fix the problem, she could be part of the solution. 

Turbak said that mindset is what has kept her committed to the organization's mission over the years.