Collect and Connect: Keep Oceanway Beautiful<\/a>, formed after residents noticed trash piling up in parts of the neighborhood.<\/p>\n\u201cWe noticed a need in the community,\u201d Oceanway resident Susan Shinego said. \u201cThere was a ton of trash everywhere, and we thought, you know, we\u2019re going to buckle down and get something done about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
What started as an idea quickly grew into a Facebook group where neighbors coordinate cleanups and share information about problem areas.<\/p>\n
An Oceanway group brings the community together and tackles trash issues (WJXT)<\/p>\n
The group now has nearly 300 members, with about 20 regular volunteers who go out around Oceanway picking up litter.<\/p>\n
Volunteers say their efforts go beyond simply collecting trash. In some cases, they also report problem areas to city officials.<\/p>\n
Oceanway resident Ruth Nelson-Peeples said the group recently helped flag a property filled with debris and potentially dangerous items near where children walk.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe found some pretty unsavory things down on lots just down the road,\u201d Nelson-Peeples said. \u201cWe got Alfaro from the Blight program involved. He came out and had that lot cleared because we were finding things that you don\u2019t want to find in an area where you have children walking by and stuff like that. So we had that whole area cleaned for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The group\u2019s impact has already been recognized citywide.<\/p>\n
During the city\u2019s Jax Litter League contest, volunteers collected about 230 bags of trash in 60 days, winning the challenge.<\/p>\n
Since then, members say they\u2019ve kept the momentum going \u2014 collecting between 100 and 150 bags of trash monthly.<\/p>\n
An Oceanway group brings the community together and tackles trash issues (WJXT)<\/p>\n
Oceanway resident Risa Grant said volunteers often find more than just small pieces of litter.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s more than just picking up, like, little bits of trash on the ground,\u201d Grant explained. \u201cYou\u2019re picking up little tires, the people have just started, whole chairs, it\u2019s a variety of things, and I like people to see that we\u2019re picking this up ourselves so that maybe they\u2019ll think twice about just throwing it out. There are humans volunteering, their time and energy to help make their community clean.\u201d <\/p>\n
Grant hopes the visibility of the cleanups will encourage others to think twice before littering.<\/p>\n
Shinego said the group\u2019s ultimate goal is to build pride and ownership within the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great to say the city should be doing that,\u201d Shinego said. \u201cBut when the city doesn\u2019t have the resources or the money, it\u2019s great for community members to step up. We want people to have pride in where they live.\u201d<\/p>\n
The group continues to invite more neighbors to join their efforts, saying that keeping Oceanway clean takes the entire community working together.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 In a neighborhood on Jacksonville\u2019s Northside, a group of residents decided they weren\u2019t going to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117,35814],"class_list":{"0":"post-183378","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-jacksonville","9":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","10":"tag-jacksonville-news","11":"tag-oceanway"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}