PRESS RELEASE

Green Starts Here

Carrollton, GA – (March 8, 2010) – This weekend marked the opening of the Great American Cleanup in Carroll County and hundreds of volunteers were out in full force to make a difference in our community.  Keep Carroll Beautiful and it’s UWG litter lugging group, “Love Not Litter” organized roadside cleanups in various parts of CarrollCounty. Volunteers were busy both Friday and Saturday picking up along miles of roadways. Over eighty bags of trash, a half a dozen tires and a barrel were among the loot collected.

“If each family or business in the County would come out and just pick up the trash along their own road frontage, we could all make a difference in the appearance of our County,” said Keep Carroll Executive Director Jacqueline C. Dost. “We have lots of exciting things going on right now and our roadsides could use a little spring cleaning. With more and more visitors coming to our county and preparations underway for Mayfest, we all want CarrollCounty to be a place that they will want to return to. An added benefit is that people are less likely to throw trash out in an area that is nice and clean.’’

Several church youth groups also got into the action on Saturday afternoon as part of their community service for the weekend event known as “DNow”.   They added several hundred bags to those already collected, making a major dent in the trash along Burns Road and Cedar Street for example.

All of the supplies needed were provided by Keep Carroll Beautiful, including bags, pickup sticks, gloves and vests as part of the Great American Cleanup. In 2009, over 3 million volunteers and participants and 1000 grass roots organizations like Keep Carroll Beautiful contributed over 5.2 million volunteer efforts to the Great American Cleanup. In the state of Georgia, for example, every county held at least one registered cleanup event. KCB was successful in recruiting neighboring counties of Heard and Haralson to participate, in spite of the fact that they do not have a certified Keep America Beautiful affiliate there.

Other benefits for some volunteers included qualification for the Disney “Give a day, Get a day program” and some quality family bonding time. One family was overheard saying “it sure makes you look differently at that candy bar wrapper you just dropped and in the past, may have just left on the ground.”

Keep Carroll Beautiful has many other events planned over the next few months, including our annual Spring E-Recycling event on April 17, Earth Day events throughout the week of April 18-24, KCB Annual public meeting on April 26 and a booth at Mayfest on May 1^st.A complete list of upcoming events is available on our website: www.keepcarrollbeautiful.org.

Keep Carroll Beautiful is the local certified Keep America Beautiful affiliate and March 1 – May 31 marks KAB’s annual great American Clean-up.

For additional information about future litter lugs , please contact Jacqueline Dost, Executive Director, Keep Carroll Beautiful, 200 Northside Drive, Carrollton, GA, 30117. 678-890-2361. www.keepcarrollbeautiful.org                                    Or email: jacqueline@ keepcarrollbeautiful.org.

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