As a part of the Earth Day celebration in Columbia, PalmettoPride announced its Great American Cleanup of South Carolina — Carolina Cleanup initiative. During this event, efforts will be focused from April 18 through April 25 to promote cleaning up litter in South Carolina.
Entering its 17th year, PalmettoPride, Keep South Carolina Beautiful and Keep the Midlands Beautiful have coordinated the Great American Cleanup which, surrounding Earth Day — April 22 — gives the community a chance to tackle the problem of litter in their own backyards and counties.
The cleanup serves as a “localized cleanup, beautification and community involvement program,” according to the website and for the next week will take advantage of the weather and clean up the state.
Jacqueline Buck, the executive director of Keep the Midlands Beautiful, coordinated the events in Columbia via her West Columbia office.
In total, the Great American Cleanup engages over 4 million volunteers to help beautify cities across the country.
PalmettoPride encourages participants to think of it like a game, only the trophies to be won are a clean yard or neighborhood and eventually a cleaner South Carolina.
“In 2014, the work of volunteers during Great American Cleanup events returned $179 million in measurable benefits across the participating communities,” Jennifer Jehn, president and CEO of Keep America Beautiful, said in a press release. “The Great American Cleanup makes a meaningful difference to the places in which we all live, work and play.”
The South Carolina initiative does not have a set meeting time for most of its events, instead working through several levels of initiatives to help get as many people involved as possible.
The first level of participation, "Instagrab," gives participants a chance to take a picture of litter they see and posting it to Instagram, offering prizes for the first person to take a picture, the most unusual item and the most posts.
The traditional neighborhood and community clean ups are organized by members of communities based on their county.
For a more permanent and lasting participation, the Great Clean Up also offers participants a chance to leave their mark by adopting a highway or adopting a monofilament recycling bin.
This initiative occurs as a part of Gov. Nikki Haley’s “Zero Tolerance for Litter Month” that she declared earlier in April.
“What you are seeing here is that we are going to make this month one that we are all very focused on litter, but it can’t be just one month out of the year,” she said. “This has to be something that all South Carolinians are focused on throughout the year.”