By Dr. Karen Bell, Keep Liberty Beautiful.
One of our goals at Keep Liberty Beautiful is to promote awareness and achieve a reduction of litter in Liberty County and Fort Stewart. The Liberty County Proud and Beautiful program is a great avenue for that.
We have three events to help us with this goal during October: Rivers Alive, Tire Round-Up, and Georgia’s Coast is Not an Ashtray. On, Make a Difference Day, an annual event on the fourth Saturday of every October, Keep Liberty Beautiful holds Liberty County’s main Rivers Alive cleanup. This year that day is on Oct. 23, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Rivers Alive is our way in the fall of helping to care for our community by taking care of our local waterways. Rivers Alive is a statewide effort to preserve and protect our waterways in Georgia. Rivers Alive is sponsored by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Environmental Protection Division’s Environmental Outreach Program. Rivers Alive events are also part of the international efforts of The Ocean Conservancy.
Remember, due to COVID-19, SNF will not provide the fabulous cookout for our volunteers like they usually do. SNF, Canoochee EMC, and local Cities all pitched in to feed the volunteers this year!
KLB and SNF will provide all the cleanup supplies for our hardworking volunteers. We will also have T-Shirts for volunteers as supplies last. To sign up, use this link: https://forms. gle/Tp5SoymYnBGsmFwk7 Or call the KLB office.
That same day the KLB Tire Round Up is from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Please bring your tires to the Recycle Transfer Station (Lot next to Liberty County DFCS Office), Intersection of W.
Oglethorpe Hwy and Fraser Dr. This tire roundup is possible because of the Bridgestone’s Tires4ward program and the partnership with KLB, the Liberty County Road Department, and Solid Waste! We can only accept cars, SUVs, and light truck tires, and they must be off the rims.
Please visit the KLB website www.keeplibertybeautiful. org for more information.
The campaign, Georgia’s Coast is Not an Ashtray, is a coastwide initiative that focused on cigarette litter near bodies of water: the ocean, streams, rivers, lakes, and ponds. The initiative is now part of the KLB Liberty County Proud and Beautiful program.
KLB has partnered with the Liberty County Chamber, City of Hinesville, ESG, Liberty Transit system, Keep Golden Isles Beautiful, and six other coastal counties to battle against the nation’s number one most littered item: cigarette butts! Cigarette butts are made of cellulose acetate, a type of plastic; cigarette butts do not easily biodegrade. Discarded butts negatively impact land litter, which is bad enough because wildlife can also mistake them for food and eat them. Cigarette butts are blown into storm drains or tossed directly into water sources; this toxic litter becomes marine debris, leaking chemicals into our waterways. With coastal Georgia’s proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and the abundance of streams, rivers, lakes, creeks, salt and freshwater marshes, and ponds, cigarette litter can have a devastating effect on all bodies of water. Because cigarette butts are so small, some people do not think they are littering. We are working with businesses throughout Liberty County to place a Free cigarette butt receptacle in their area. We then ask the owners to collect and dispose of the cigarette waste properly or ship them off to be recycled.
With the Liberty County Proud and Beautiful cigarette litter prevention program, we can
•Offer two types of Free cigarette waste receptacles: Stand Alone, and Wall or Pole Mounted
• Place cigarette waste receptacle educational signage and signage in critical locations and distribute pocket and car cigarette butt containers.
• Provide outreach awareness about cigarette litter prevention through radio public service announcements, local and social media promotions, including one-minute educational videos, and unique drink coaster outreach in local restaurants and bar establishments.
We invite all businesses in Liberty County to request a cigarette waste receptacle if they need one while supplies last. We are also looking for CLPS = Cigarette Litter Prevention Squad volunteers. This group of volunteers would visit the business, help empty the cigarette waste receptacles, and ship the cigarettes off for recycling. If you would like to be involved, contact us at Keep Liberty Beautiful at email klcb@libertycountyga. com or call (912) 8804888. You can also go to our website keeplibertybeautiful. org for information on all our upcoming events and programs.