Keep Liberty Beautiful has been a part of Liberty County since 1983. As a community education and volunteer action program, KLB encourages recycling and discourages litter in the region. For years, KLB has joined similar programs across the country each spring for the Great American Cleanup, a campaign spearheaded by Keep America Beautiful, to encourage litter education, cleanups, recycling drives and other community improvement projects. We are proud to have participated once again in 2010 in this vital effort to make American communities a better place to live.
As this year’s GAC activities come to a close, I would like to share some preliminary results with you and thank the numerous groups, businesses and organizations that help us “Keep Liberty Beautiful.” We still have more cleanups planned in the next few weeks, but let me give you an idea of what can happen when just a small percentage of a community steps up to make a difference.
• We had 39 cleanups covering 42 miles, including seven city-sponsored events and creek and water-area cleanups.
• Hundreds of cleanup volunteers — 811 to be exact — gave 2,733 hours of their time to get down and dirty on roads, streets and highways to make Liberty County a cleaner, more attractive community.
• Volunteers collected seven and a half tons of garbage and debris.
• An additional 621 volunteers also gave 2,682 hours to organize recycling events, collections and educational and awareness activities from mid-February through the early weeks of June.
• Volunteers helped with two Recycle It! fairs, collecting several tons of electronics, household hazardous waste items and household goods for recycling, in addition to the tons of recycling collected at recycling drop-off centers.
• We had recycling drives in 10 local schools.
• KLB hosted nine community events such as our Earth Day celebration, which raised awareness about environmental issues ranging from the value of trees to the importance of recycling and the need for litter prevention and water conservation.
• Read Across Liberty volunteers read environmentally friendly books to elementary school students and gave out more than 3,000 eco-friendly books as gifts to local children.
• For Arbor Day, 190 volunteers planted 158 trees to make our community a greener, healthier place to live.
• Six groups completed beautification projects.
• Ten educational presentations provided interesting, useful information about environmental issues to more than 1,700 children in our area.
• We created and distributed 10,000 Earth Day informational placemats and 7,000 Arbor Day informational placemats to local elementary schools and family restaurants to share fun but important information with children and their families.
I get pretty tired just thinking about all of that hard work. And, incredibly, all of this was accomplished by 1,432 people — less than 1 percent of the population in Liberty County. These folks are no different than the rest of us. They are just regular people — although I think they are pretty darned fabulous!
Our volunteers have busy family lives, hectic work schedules and many other activities such as church, sporting events and civic responsibilities that require huge amounts of their time. However, they are committed to caring for their community. Just think what could happen if we all stepped up to make a difference. Thank you, volunteers!
For more information, call 880-4888 or e-mail klcb@coastalnow.net.
As this year’s GAC activities come to a close, I would like to share some preliminary results with you and thank the numerous groups, businesses and organizations that help us “Keep Liberty Beautiful.” We still have more cleanups planned in the next few weeks, but let me give you an idea of what can happen when just a small percentage of a community steps up to make a difference.
• We had 39 cleanups covering 42 miles, including seven city-sponsored events and creek and water-area cleanups.
• Hundreds of cleanup volunteers — 811 to be exact — gave 2,733 hours of their time to get down and dirty on roads, streets and highways to make Liberty County a cleaner, more attractive community.
• Volunteers collected seven and a half tons of garbage and debris.
• An additional 621 volunteers also gave 2,682 hours to organize recycling events, collections and educational and awareness activities from mid-February through the early weeks of June.
• Volunteers helped with two Recycle It! fairs, collecting several tons of electronics, household hazardous waste items and household goods for recycling, in addition to the tons of recycling collected at recycling drop-off centers.
• We had recycling drives in 10 local schools.
• KLB hosted nine community events such as our Earth Day celebration, which raised awareness about environmental issues ranging from the value of trees to the importance of recycling and the need for litter prevention and water conservation.
• Read Across Liberty volunteers read environmentally friendly books to elementary school students and gave out more than 3,000 eco-friendly books as gifts to local children.
• For Arbor Day, 190 volunteers planted 158 trees to make our community a greener, healthier place to live.
• Six groups completed beautification projects.
• Ten educational presentations provided interesting, useful information about environmental issues to more than 1,700 children in our area.
• We created and distributed 10,000 Earth Day informational placemats and 7,000 Arbor Day informational placemats to local elementary schools and family restaurants to share fun but important information with children and their families.
I get pretty tired just thinking about all of that hard work. And, incredibly, all of this was accomplished by 1,432 people — less than 1 percent of the population in Liberty County. These folks are no different than the rest of us. They are just regular people — although I think they are pretty darned fabulous!
Our volunteers have busy family lives, hectic work schedules and many other activities such as church, sporting events and civic responsibilities that require huge amounts of their time. However, they are committed to caring for their community. Just think what could happen if we all stepped up to make a difference. Thank you, volunteers!
For more information, call 880-4888 or e-mail klcb@coastalnow.net.