SPEARFISH, S.D. (KOTA) – A community organization turned non-profit in Spearfish has been helping keep the city clean and sustainable.

Beautify Spearfish has kept the city of Spearfish clean and green since 2018. Originally started as a community organization, it turned non-profit in 2021 in order to expand what it wanted to be able to do around the city.

“We started off with just doing trash clean-ups, which was great, but we also needed supplies for that, and we thought if we were a 501 c3, then we could get some donations to help with that,” said Beautify Spearfish founder Kelly Harnett.

The goal of those donations was to have a bigger sustainability effort around the city.

“It’s also helped us expand to other areas of sustainability, such as native pollinator habitats,” explained Harnett.

With the organization doing what it can to help make the area look better and safer for the natural fauna, this has pushed some community members to help with the various clean-ups to ensure they keep their city in tip-top shape.

“We want to take part in what we call sustainability efforts cleaning up the garbage you know helping the environment and giving back to the community,” said a Beautify Spearfish participating community member.

“If we have a healthy environment to live in, we’re healthier emotionally. We can get out and exercise and enjoy that more than if we went out and were kind of discouraged by everything that we saw. Instead, now I can see beautiful nature,” said another Beautify Spearfish participating community member.

The group is not only making the surrounding area look better but also taking into consideration the impact certain trash items have on the local environment.

“If it’s plastic, plastic doesn’t biodegrade some of it will break down faster than other pieces of plastic, but that plastic never breaks down and goes back into the earth; it becomes these tiny little microplastics,” explained Harnett. “That’s not good for the environment, and nobody wants to go out hiking and see a balloon stuck in a tree or on the trail.”

For Harnett, the clean-up efforts through Beautify Spearfish are a way to inspire the community to help make a better change for their local environment, wherever they happen to be.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re just one person; you can make a change,” said Harnett.

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