Not all trash is treasure. The majority of it needs to be properly disposed of but, in Colorado Springs, too much of it is becoming an eyesore known as litter.

That’s the premise behind Richard’s Rubbish Roundup, a nonprofit that formed five months ago to perform weekly cleanups using volunteers.

Founded by longtime local business owner and former vice mayor and four-time City Council member Richard Skorman, the organization is expanding with daily cleanups and tools for residents throughout the region to do their part in reducing refuse.

“Our purpose is to equip the general public — the volunteers — to help them handle trash, by providing them with everything they need to be safe,” he said.

That includes extended grabbers, gloves, garbage bags, poop scoopers, whistles, cleats, waders and nets for retrieving trash from a stream, cans for used needles, a first-aid kit, yellow vests and assistance with disposal.

People can stroll around their neighborhoods or take to their favorite trails or parks, whenever they can, whether it’s a few hours a week or a month.

“If we can think of it as Earth Day every day, if we could have ownership of the streets and parks and streams, it’ll make our lives better,” Skorman said.

Thursday marks the launch of the organization’s region-wide daily litter pickup campaign. A 24/7 hotline for people to report litter that on-call volunteers can respond to also is in the works, Skorman said.

“Whether it’s Olympic City U.S.A. or the Pikes Peak region that millions of tourists come to, people love the outdoors and trails and parks, and they’re very proud,” he said. “This is a way to harness that pride. We are a city of doers, and we want to make our beautiful city more beautiful.”

Colorado Springs already hosts two yearly cleanups, Fountain Creek Watershed’s Creek Week, Sept. 28–Oct. 6, and The Great American Cleanup on April 27, both of which draw thousands of participants.

Among other efforts, the Trails and Open Space Coalition has a new campaign that encourages outdoors advocates to pack a garbage bag when they are enjoying nature.

And the city’s Neighborhood Services’ Code Enforcement Unit focuses on reducing urban blight, including dismantling illegal homeless camps.

Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful, a 28-year-old nonprofit, deploys volunteers to rid former homeless camps of trash after they’ve been vacated.

“Immense amounts of trash” typically remain in inactive camps, said Executive Director Dee Cunningham, sometimes to the point of hoarder levels.

“Folks that are unhoused want to keep everything because they don’t have anything, but most of it really is trash, and when they leave, they leave landfills behind,” she said.

Skorman said his organization does not enter homeless camps and leaves that type of cleanup to the professionals.

But his organization has provided garbage bags for homeless people to use, and he said he’d like to supply such areas with trash cans.

“What we’ve found is that the homeless people themselves want to help,” he said.

Also in the realm of litter prevention, Skorman is calling on commercial and residential Dumpster users to secure their receptacles with locks.

As one of the founders of the Fountain Creek Watershed District, Skorman said a big concern is waste and detritus entering Fountain Creek and flowing into the Arkansas River as pollution.

Since its creation five months ago, Richard’s Rubbish Roundup, or R3 for short, has been hosting 25-40 volunteers every Tuesday from 4 to 6 p.m. to pick up trash around Monument Valley Creek and the surrounding park, where copious amounts of litter can be seen.

Volunteer picker-uppers are treated to free pizza and beverages afterward from his restaurant, Poor Richard’s. They’ve collected more than 31,000 pounds of litter so far.

That program will continue, Skorman said, and he hopes to recruit other businesses to sponsor cleanup crews in other areas of the city.

The volume of intentional and flyaway rubbish has exceeded the ability of existing programs to respond in a timely fashion, Cunningham said, calling the increase “exponential” from when her organization began its work nearly three decades ago.

“I think every citizen should take responsibility for picking up litter in a safe manner wherever they see it,” she said. “If everybody did that, wouldn’t it be much better for all of us?”

Editor’s note: This article has been corrected to reflect the amount of trash collected over the past five months of weekly cleanups is 31,000 pounds.