SOLVE It Sandy 2026 Highlights Environment

By Abby Haney, The Sandy Standard

As winter ends and the flowers start to bloom signaling the start of spring, Sandy citizens work hard to clean up the town in order to prepare for the upcoming season. More people will fill the streets, and events will start shortly after. In order to prepare for this, the Sandy Parks and Recreation Department hosts SOLVE It In Sandy 2026 in partnership with SOLVE. 

SOLVE It In Sandy 2026 is an event where people can venture around Sandy at designated locations to clean up the area. SOLVE is a nonprofit who supports and leads clean-ups all around Oregon to protect the environment. This year, Sandy’s SOLVE event is taking place on April 18 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. 

“It’s one of the established events that have gone on for quite a long time,” Parks and Recreation Coordinator Amy Lytle said. This is Lytle's third year coordinating the clean up event. “It’s an event that we hold in partnership with the nonprofit called SOLVE.”

The event is connected with Earth Day and always takes place close to that date. This year marks the sixteenth year of hosting a SOLVE event in Sandy. 

“It’s our way to celebrate Earth Day,”  Lytle said.

In addition to partnering with SOLVE for this event, Lytle looks for sponsorships to help support the event. Starbucks and Hoodview Disposal and Recycling are sponsoring SOLVE It In Sandy 2026. Hoodview is supporting the event with a dumpster to store the trash and SOLVE provides additional supplies which allows for efficient clean-ups. 

“It’s really nice because they always measure the weight of garbage we collect and that’s something I can report on,”  Lytle said.

Throughout the years, numerous people have shown up to support the community ranging from individuals to groups from local organizations such as the Green Club from Sandy High School. 

“It's inspiring to see just how many community members show up to help us make our community cleaner and safer, especially as the weather starts to get better and more and more children start to access our parks,”  Lytle said.

Engaging with the community is a core value for Sandy Parks and Recreation and the volunteers, such as Sandy High School’s Green Club. At these events, numerous community members join together for one shared goal: to create a clean Sandy. 

“The most important thing to us is to engage with our community. We like to participate in it because it expands our small little clean-ups,” Sandy High School Green Club President Huso Buchanan said. 

Every year, participants can expect the same routine, except for the locations they will travel to. How much attention Sandy locations need in cleaning varies every year but some stay consistent, such as Meinig Park. 

“The only thing that changes are the locations that we send people to clean,”  Lytle said.

The Sandy Police Department, the Sandy Parks Department, and the Sandy Recreation Department work together to establish these areas that need to be cleaned up. Based on the difficulty, workload, and time needed, these sites are ranked into easy, medium, hard, and expert, which allows people to pick the difficulty of their task. 

“We just want to make sure people know what they’re getting themselves into with regard to weight that they have to lift, how much they’re going to walk, go uphill or downhill, and if it’s a paved or unpaved path,” Lytle said. Cleaning Sandy allows the environment to thrive and builds a strong, united community. 

“Coming from an environmental science background, I'm glad the city has a long history of celebrating Earth Day, because it helps to raise awareness about the health of our environment and local ecosystem,” Lytle said. “We also want to encourage people to take local action and ownership of their community and our public spaces by helping us clean up our local parks and streets.” Not only that, it instills the value of protecting our planet and environmental awareness into our youth, the next generation to be protecting our Earth. 

“It’s important to highlight and educate people about days like Earth Day to remind people how connected we are to our ecosystem,” Lytle said. “It’s also important to encourage community service and to help install those values into our youth, because we do get quite a lot of youth participating with their families,” 

In Sandy especially, many people are seen on the roads to enjoy the sunshine. By making Sandy cleaner, it benefits citizens and travelers in enjoying the Sandy experience safely. 

“It’s also a benefit to prepare for the spring and summertime and it’s such a great help to have all these volunteers go out and clean our parks and our streets,”  Lytle said.

The event is available to everyone but Lytle encourages people to pre-regesiter at their website (https://volunteer.solve.org/opportunity/a0CVL00003bVMdj2AG/solve-it-in-sandy-2026?layoutViewMode=tablet). However, registration is available the day of. Lytle also reminds people of the conditions they may face and encourages proper attire and equipment. 

“We do encourage people to bring their own supplies [and] to dress appropriately. It’s always in the middle of April so the weather is very hard to predict,”  Lytle said.

Whether you want to do it by yourself or with a group of friends, go to the Sandy Community and Senior Center on April 18 at 9 a.m. to support Sandy and its environment.