ATLANTA — Too much trash on the street, no recycling bins, and far too few public trash cans -- that’s what Cam Kirk saw everyday walking to his Downtown Atlanta studio.
“If you are walking to work everyday, stepping over trash when you get to work," Kirk said. "You're kind of like why does my neighborhood have to look like this."
In 2019, the Morehouse graduate decided to do something about it. He founded Spin the Block, a community initiative aimed at cleaning up Atlanta neighborhoods.
"The initiative is really based upon teaching and educating on sustainable measures, that we can actually beautify our own neighborhood without waiting on anyone to do it for us,” he said.
Since 2019, Kirk said that a group of people meet monthly or quarterly to pick up trash and recycle items found on the street. It’s the Spin the Block initiative. The “spin” is the photo walk -- an opportunity for photographers and creatives to take photos and create content highlighting the beauty of the community.
Kirk told 11Alive part of the trash and recycling issue is a lack of education on sustainability as well as a lack of access to public trash cans and recycling bins.
“We honestly just thought about it like, well the reason why we don’t recycle is because we don’t have an option and the reason why there is a lot of litter is because we don’t have enough trash cans,” Kirk said.
In a partnership with Sprite and Coca-Cola, the Cam Kirk Foundation donated $25,000 to the city to purchase trash cans and recycling bins for his neighborhood. It was a move the organization made in hopes of helping clean up their city.
Now the work continues. The next Spin the Block will take place Saturday starting at 9 am at Cam Kirk Studios, located at 236 Forsyth St. SW #405 in Atlanta.