As more than 300 people — wearing green T-shirts that read “#4 Waukegan” — gathered in the Christian Neighbors Church parking lot on the last day of Earth Week, the Rev. Luke McFadden, the church’s pastor, told them their mission was about more than removing garbage.
Telling the crowd they were about to go into different neighborhoods to be good neighbors to their community collecting discarded rubbish, McFadden said being a good neighbor is about caring for people. He asked them to reach out to others as well.
“Love your neighbor by listening,” he said, knowing there were participants from 18 churches and other organizations. “Meet a new neighbor. Talk to someone (in your group) you’ve never met before. Listen to them. Get to know them. Understand them.”
Brian Diamond and Steven Kik of Libertyville belong to the same church — CrossLife Evangelical Free Church — but never met until they were assigned to the same group of about 50 people to clear the area around Belvidere Road and Lewis Avenue of strewn garbage.
Diamond said he grew up at CrossLife, had seen Kik a time or two, but they never had occasion to talk to him. Kik said he recently moved to the area, so now he has a new friend.
“I’m new to the church,” Kik said. “We started talking and learned we had a lot in common. We’ll be doing things together now.”
McFadden was pleased to hear his message got across to Kik and Diamond. He was hoping something similar happened to others.
“God brings people closer together as they serve side by side,” McFadden said in a text after the event. “New connections are made, and relationships are formed as people band together to bless the community.”
Kik, Diamond and McFadden were among hundreds of people on hand Saturday to gather tons of trash on the last day of Waukegan’s fourth-annual Earth Week in a variety of neighborhoods, as well as the beach and harbor.
Starting with a recycling event at the Waukegan Public Library on April 19 and finishing with multiple cleanups on Saturday, the week was highlighted by the city’s Public Works Department providing a Dumpster in each of the nine wards on a given day. There were 45 Dumpsters used altogether.
“It’s grown the last year as more people are learning about it,” Mayor Ann Taylor said as the beach cleanup started. “We learned more each day as people came to the Dumpsters with their spring cleaning.”
As people left the Christian Neighbors Church parking lot, with one group removing trash in downtown Waukegan and the other five cohorts heading to neighborhoods around the city, Sandy Pogue was part of the contingent going to Lewis and Belvidere.
While others were bringing black plastic bags of trash to a driveway near Belvidere Road west of Lewis, Pogue was holding a rusty steel spike at least four feet long. There were several railroad ties among the debris.
“I found it in the field right over there,” she said. “We’ve worked hard. This is the right thing to do.”
Not all the church participants were part of the Christian Neighbors group. The Rev. Mark Rollenhagen, the pastor of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Waukegan, was cleaning the beach with a dozen of his congregants.
“They’re part of the Green Team from our church,” he said. “We used to use a lot of plastic water bottles. Now we use mugs and wash them so we can use them again. They did that. We’re bringing some of that holiness to the beach.”
Along with the people from St Paul’s, 150 individuals who work at USA Blue Book, 30 from American Place casino and other volunteers participated in the beach cleanup. Lisa May, the city’s lakefront coordinator, said trash accumulates over the winter when the beach is closed.
“Look at everything that piled up over the winter,” May said. “We’re going to get everything from the water plant to the north beach. There are some tires which washed up. We’ll help you with that.”
Helping at the beach for the second year in a row, Julie Ivic, American Place’s director of communications and advertising, said this is the second consecutive year the company has participated.
“This is one of the ways we give back to the community,” Ivic said. “We are focused on ways we can do it. In 2026, we’re going to plant trees on Arbor Day.”
Young people were involved as well. Rachel McNutt brought her son, Marshall McNutt, 11. She wanted him to get the experience he helping with something bigger than himself. He had some specific ideas.
“I want to make it safer for sea animals,” Marshall said.
