More than 132,000 Great PA Cleanup! volunteers removed 6.7 million pounds of trash from roads, parks, schools, waterways, wildlife areas and communities statewide to Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful.

The Great Pennsylvania Cleanup is a statewide effort to remove litter and trash and to beautify the commonwealth through efforts such as planting trees and building playgrounds that coincides with Earth Day to encourage Pennsylvanians to appreciate the environment with their hands as well as their hearts.

This year’s cleanup included a focus on Audubon Pennsylvania and its Important Bird Area program. Audubon Pennsylvania has identified 82 Important Bird Area sites encompassing more than 2 million acres of the state’s public and private lands. The voluntary IBA program combats threats to the most essential and vulnerable bird habitats through proactive habitat conservation measures.

Statistics of the 2006 Great Pennsylvania Cleanup include the following:

· 5,689 cleanup events;

· 132,245 volunteers;

· 312,396 bags of collected trash, weighing 6,247,917 pounds;

· 460,000 pounds of illegally dumped trash and 11,000 tires collected by volunteers in DEP’s Clean up Our Anthracite Lands and Streams (COALS) program.

· 13,811 miles of road, railroad track, trails, waterways and shorelines cleaned, and 2,470 acres of park and or wetlands.

· 1,068 communities involved, and all 67 counties in Pennsylvania.

· Additionally, volunteers planted 22,270 trees, bulbs and plants in an effort to keep Pennsylvania beautiful.

The Great Pennsylvania Cleanup is supported and sponsored by the Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful alliance, a wide range of businesses, trade organizations, civic and environmental groups, and local and state governments.

The Department of Transportation and its Adopt-A-Highway volunteers again played a key role in making the Great Pennsylvania Cleanup a success. Other key partners include the Pennsylvania Waste Industries Association, whose members donated free landfill space for the trash collected, and the Pennsylvania Food Merchants Association and the Pennsylvania Soft Drink Association, whose members provided refreshments at many of the events.

The list of sponsors for the Great Pennsylvania Cleanup includes: AAA Mid-Atlantic, Audubon Pennsylvania, Best Buy, Departments of Conservation and Natural Resources, Environmental Protection and Transportation;

The County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, Cities: Allentown, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, GreenTreks Network, Home Depot, Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, Keep Lancaster Beautiful, Keep Philadelphia Beautiful, Keystone Sanitary Landfill, PA CleanWays;

The Pennsylvania Association of Convention & Visitors Bureaus, Pennsylvania Builders Association, Pennsylvania Downtown Center, Pennsylvania Farm Bureau

Pennsylvania Food Merchants Association, Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, Pennsylvania Host Municipal Inspectors, Pennsylvania Organization for Watersheds and Rivers, Pennsylvania Parks and Forests Foundation, Pennsylvania Resources Council; and

The Pennsylvania Soft Drink Association, Pennsylvania State Association of Borough Managers, Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors, Pennsylvania Waste Industries Association, Pocono Mountains Vacation Bureau, Professional Recyclers of Pennsylvania, Schuylkill Keep It Pretty, Sierra Club of Pennsylvania, The Steel Recycling Institute, United States Steel, Waste Management.

The 2007 Great Pennsylvania Cleanup feature day tentatively is scheduled for April 21 on Earth Day next year.

For more information, visit the Great Pennsylvania Cleanup webpage or Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful.

8/4/2006