Students and community members woke up early Saturday morning to pick up trash at the North Westwood community cleanup.

The volunteer event – which took place from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. – was a collaboration among the North Westwood Neighborhood Council, the office of Los Angeles City Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, UCLA Advocacy and the UCLA Volunteer Center.

Eighteen volunteers were given tools such as reach extenders, visibility vests, masks and gloves and taught how to submit 311 requests to the city, a way to report bulky items that can be picked up by the city.

The volunteers split off across the Village in groups of twos and threes, starting the cleanup from the corner of Gayley Avenue and Strathmore Drive.

Golden Bachelder, a graduate student in public policy and member of the community health, homelessness and safety committee of the NWWNC, pitched the idea for this event shortly after the January LA County wildfires when he noticed debris in the area, said Andrew Lewis, vice president of the NWWNC.

Bachelder added that he and other volunteers noted the positive impact their presence had on nearby residents while picking up trash on Gayley Avenue.

“We were picking up trash in front of some unnamed fraternities, and an unnamed fraternity member threw a can of beer onto the curb and then saw us and then picked it up and put it in the trash,” he said.

Gabrielle Andrade, a fourth-year cognitive science and political science student, said she was happy to participate in the event as part of Sustainable Bruin Move Out – a UCLA program that aims to help students reduce waste when moving out of dorms and apartments.

“I usually don’t wake up this early on a Saturday, but I want to put myself out there just volunteering for the weekend,” Andrade said. “I actually found out that Sustainable Move Out is also here, and we’re working on promoting this event, where students who have items they do not need anymore – they could donate to us, and then we could repurpose it and give it a new home.”

Cassie Haydis, a third-year geography and political science student, said she found out about the event through a volunteer website. She added that she likes to volunteer at events such as the community cleanup whenever she sees them and has free time.

The volunteers picked up a variety of trash items, mainly including fast food wrappers, cups and discarded flyers. Andrade also submitted a 311 request for a discarded couch on Gayley Avenue.

Lewis said he was not surprised that only a small number of people came out to volunteer, given the event’s early start. He added that he wants cleanups to be a regular Westwood occurrence, and he aims to hold future events at a later time of day.

“We’re going to push it later next time, but it’s good,” he said. “We have a lot of people packed into North Westwood that live here, … like 14,000 people in a less than one-mile radius area. So obviously, trash gets on the street, and so we just want to do our effort to pick it up, and hopefully this can be a recurring thing.”