Members of the Fairmount Trash Pirates scour West Magnolia Street in Fort Worth on Halloween last year. Photo courtesy of the Fairmount Trash Pirates.
Shiver me timbers! It seems ye don’t need to talk like a pirate to be one. Ye don’t even need a ship, matey.
Landlubbers all, the Fairmount Trash Pirates sail mostly on seas of asphalt, concrete and Texas caliche. And their plundering is limited to the refuse people toss onto public spaces. Arrr!
The Trash Pirates, self-described “trash-pillagin’ buccaneers,” are mostly residents of Fort Worth’s Fairmount National Historic District. They exist to keep the heart of their idyllic, gingerbread neighborhood tidy. The group got its start in 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown was peaking, and folks with cabin fever were climbing the walls.
“We were trying to find ways to get outside and also benefit the community at the same time,” said “Fleet Admiral” Ace Eichler, who with his wife Rose (also listed as an “admiral” on the group’s mildly cheeky website) founded the Pirates.
As for that jokey seafaring moniker, “The intent was to have a fun sort of name that would draw people in and participate,” he said.
THE FLEET GOES ON
Five years later, the fun continues. Armed with buckets, wagons, trash-picking sticks, protective gloves and other tools of the cleanup trade, the Pirates gather at least once a month to scour West Magnolia Avenue from Hemphill Street to 8th Avenue.
As members of the Keep Fort Worth Beautiful organization’s Adopt-A-Spot program, they are responsible for maintaining three locations — Magnolia Avenue, Fire Station Park and Fire Station Skate Plaza. And they have laid waste to plenty of, well, waste: Since 2020, the Trash Pirates have logged more than 460 volunteer hours, removed more than 5,800 pounds of litter and have become an official 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
On most trash-picking days, the Pirates show up in 21st-century street clothes, bearing no resemblance to Blackbeard or his scurvy mates of yore. On occasion, however, they break out the pirate gear.
“We do sometimes, but it’s too hot in Texas for about eight months of the year,” Eichler said.
On occasions like Halloween, though, the tricorn hats, eye patches and related apparel make an appearance. A human-size parrot has been known to join in the cleanup, as well.
DIRTY BUSINESS
For the Trash Pirates, there is never a shortage of litter. And some of it can be repulsive. The recurring scenario occasionally drags down the troupe’s lighthearted spirit.
“People love throwing dirty diapers — sometimes bags full of dirty diapers — on the street, in the parks, etc.,” Eichler said. “It is often disheartening to see how some Fort Worth residents treat their parks and streets. I have found that many other cities in the world care about the environment much more than Texas cities.”
He notes that in many countries, it is de rigueur for metropolitan areas to employ salaried trash pickers, minitrucks that regularly wash away dirt and grime, and dedicated streetsweepers that make rounds multiple times per week.
If the ingrained behavior of litterbugs is a challenge that no number of scrubbing machines or cleanup teams can change, those assets nonetheless help local governments stay ahead of the problem. U.S. cities in general, and Texas cities in particular, tend to be more spread out with far more topography to keep clean than the typically compact metros of, say, Europe. (Example: Fort Worth and Cologne, Germany, each have 1 million residents, but Fort Worth sprawls across more than twice the terrain that Cologne occupies.) So, population density combined with a modest footprint can be advantageous when it comes to cleaning up.
Trash is, without question, on Fort Worth’s radar. The city may not have an army of salaried trash pickers, but it does work through partnerships with organizations like UpSpire to hire unhoused citizens to pick up litter around town. And Fort Worth’s street-sweeper fleet recently mushroomed from two vehicles to 12. But with 355 square miles of Cowtown to cover, plenty of junk remains scattered around for the trash-picking volunteers.
“So, [our work] is rewarding in that we are taking action where we see inaction,” Eichler said.
A typical trash pickup session by the Pirates will net anywhere from 30 to 80 pounds of rubbish, he said. The idea is to “eliminate waste in our communities and encourage the reduction of the use of single-use items that comprise most of the waste we see on the high seas,” according to the Pirates’ website.
As they scour a bit of the funk from Funkytown, the Trash Pirates clearly are having fun doing serious work. And they are seriously organized. There are four board members, an accountant and a graphic designer amid a fluctuating number of participants, whose presence depends on variables like availability and the time of year.
Ace Eichler runs the Instagram account @fairmounttrashpirate. Though most hail from Fairmount, with its picturesque concentration of late 19th- and early 20th-century residential architecture, some Pirates sail in from other local communities including Fort Worth’s East Side and North Richland Hills.
Eichler serves as the group’s leader, but says, “Everything is decided on as a group, including dates, expenses and cleanup locations.”
HOW TO ADOPT YOUR OWN SPOT
If you're thinking about putting your own crew together, Adopt-A-Spot is a good place to start. The volunteer program commits groups or individuals to regular cleanups of public areas such as streets and parks. Once certain criteria are met, Keep Fort Worth Beautiful provides a custom street sign displaying the adopter’s name.
“There are currently 41 active Adopt-A- Spots,” said Kim Garvey, a spokesperson for the City of Fort Worth’s Environmental Services department. “Keep Fort Worth Beautiful has pre-selected spots where individuals or groups can choose to clean up litter regularly, or to maintain landscape maintenance, as well.”
The program is jointly administered by KFWB and the city’s Park & Recreation Department, which coordinate with the volunteers for landscape maintenance. Other adopted locations in Fort Worth include Cobb Park, and several areas along East Rosedale Street and Summerfields Boulevard. “Volunteers can choose from pre-selected spots to adopt, such as streets, parks, medians, trails, creeks and stormwater inlets,” Garvey said.
Dallas, Arlington, Mesquite, Irving, Flower Mound, McKinney, and other DFW-area cities host programs similar or identical to Adopt-A-Spot. Around the state, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso and many more cities participate in the program. All are affiliated with the Keep Texas Beautiful nonprofit organization.
If you’d like to volunteer but don’t see your city in the list above, do an internet search for “Keep (Your City Name Here) Beautiful” and then look for “Adopt-A-Spot” on the resulting page. Some cities’ programs, like Keep Cleburne Beautiful, are principally posted on Facebook.
And yo-ho-ho, skallywags: To adopt yer spot ye don’t even have to be a pirate. Arrr!