When it comes to cleaning up litter along Marin’s freeways, it appears a win-win solution is making a dent.

Caltrans and a San Rafael-based nonprofit, the Center for Employment Opportunities, have struck a partnership that regularly sends out cleanup crews whose time alongside our freeways provides members with income while they are receiving job training and counseling.

The center’s crew is composed of people who have either been released from incarceration or have graduated from rehabilitation programs.

They get prepared for a new start while ridding Marin’s state highways of unsightly litter.

It wasn’t that long ago that Caltrans was getting heat for the collection of litter and growing collections of detritus along Marin’s highways.

Keeping our highways clean obviously was low on the state’s priority list and that was obvious here. Budgetary squeeze and safety worries were often the state’s excuses.

That changed in 2021, when Gov. Gavin Newsom launched his Clean California initiative.

He declared — and a lot of Californians likely agreed — that the roadside trash was “completely unacceptable.”

“Cleaning up public spaces will help us restore a sense of pride and a sense of community throughout the state,” Newsom said then.

That cleanup included Marin, thanks to the Center for Employment Opportunities, which launched the local crews with a grant from a partnership established with Caltrans and the Butte County Office of Education with their “Back 2 Work Program.”

Today, the initiative has grown to 39 counties, 136 crews and more than 5,000 “employees.”

The initiative is more than cleaning up the landscape; it’s about changing lives.

Local crews are equipped with safety vests, hard hats, protective glasses and steel-toed shoes. They also get safety lectures about everything from traffic to poison oak.

People who enroll with the center — among them people on probation — learn how to search for a job, handle employment interviews and write a resume. It also offers classes in self-improvement, mental health and anger management. The center also offers support to help clients keep their jobs.

The center has also served as a portal to apprenticeship programs.

The Marin center, part of a nationwide nonprofit, essentially creates an individualized “road map” for participants to get back into the workforce.

They join the cleanup crews to generate some income while redirecting and rebuilding their lives. The center acts as their temporary employer.

One crew leader estimated the team typically picks up 30 to 40 bags of trash on work days. That’s trash that otherwise would be collecting along the roadside.

Over the years, getting Caltrans to take responsibility for the task has been frustrating. Local volunteers have helped and cleaned up stretches of the roadside.

Of course, if people didn’t litter, it wouldn’t be a problem. But tough fines haven’t been a solution.

Having the center’s crews joining the effort is making a difference.