General Information The Keep America Beautiful Great American CleanupTM is the nation's largest annual cleanup and community improvement event, which runs from mid-March through May. The Great American CleanupTM stimulates community pride by involving residents, businesses, and politicians at the state and local level in an effort to improve and beautify their local environment. It encourages volunteerism, personal action, and responsibility, and promotes the missions of the Keep America Beautiful organization: litter prevention, beautification, and minimizing the impact of solid waste.
Keep Nebraska Beautiful will furnish trash bags, banners and posters to those Nebraska communities who wish to participate in the Great American Cleanup this Spring. Activities can include cleanups, planting red flowers for a "Grow Big Red" garden, increased recycling collections, tree plantings, etc. Please register any event or activity you wish to do so we are able to keep track of everything happening in Nebraska and report them back to Keep America Beautiful.
Register your Great American CleanupTM activities now!
Download the 2007 Registration Form, print it out and fax it (402-486-4563) or send it in! Download
During the 2006 Great American Cleanup, Nebraska held 814 events with 16,980 volunteers representing 189 communities participating. They collected 2,109,131 pounds of litter, and 15,040 pounds of clothing to donate to charity. Additionally, 3,976 trees were planted as well as 11,808 flowers. Grow Big Red Gardens were planted with red and white flowers. The Great American CleanupŠ was a time to increase our educational outreach. A total of 400 education workshops were conducted with 15,418 people in attendance. We look forward to even better results in 2007!
Contact Keep Nebraska Beautiful to find out when the Great American CleanupTM is happening in your community, and projects your group might do for the 2007 effort.
Great American CleanupTM Project Ideas
The Great American CleanupTM focuses not only on litter removal and litter prevention, but also on other local community improvement initiatives such as Grow Big Red flower gardens and neighborhood beautification projects. By offering many different ways to participate, the Great American CleanupTM hopes to get more and more people involved. Keep America Beautiful believes that hands-on involvement can really influence changes in attitude and behavior that affect our environment.
Litter Cleanup
Litter is a huge problem that plagues all our cities. The Great American CleanupTM helps to bring attention to your community's litter problem so that volunteers can be recruited to remove litter from public lands and neighborhoods during the event. The Great American CleanupTM also hopes to create a lasting awareness of the importance of litter control that will continue throughout the year.
Grow Big Red
Communities and organizations are encouraged to plant red or red and white flower gardens to show pride in our State and pride in our communities.
Recycling
The Great American CleanupTM is an opportunity to conduct a recycling drive. This educates residents and businesses on the importance of recycling salvageable materials.
Graffiti Removal and Neighborhood Beautification Projects
In communities where graffiti is a recurring problem, the Great American CleanupTM encourages painting over defaced public buildings and areas to restore beauty and send the message that graffiti will not be tolerated there.
In addition to cleanups and paint-outs, the Great American CleanupTM is also a forum to incorporate the "greening" of each community with projects to plant flowers (particularly red, white and blue in Liberty Gardens) and tree seedlings.
Clothes Collection
Collecting clothes for the reuse by the needy is another Great American CleanupTM activity that fits right into goals to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Drop-off sites around the community are designated for clothing collection. After collection, the clothing is donated to local charities, shelters, and other social service organizations.
If your Nebraska community is interested in participating in the Great American CleanupTM, call the Keep Nebraska Beautiful office at 800-486-4562 or volunteer by clicking here.
The Keep America Beautiful Great American CleanupTM is the nation's largest annual cleanup and community improvement event, which runs from mid-March through May. The Great American CleanupTM stimulates community pride by involving residents, businesses, and politicians at the state and local level in an effort to improve and beautify their local environment. It encourages volunteerism, personal action, and responsibility, and promotes the missions of the Keep America Beautiful organization: litter prevention, beautification, and minimizing the impact of solid waste.
