Nearly 140,000 volunteers from every county in Pennsylvania worked together to pick up a record 7.4 million pounds of trash from an unprecedented 4,100 communities between March and May during this year’s Great PA Cleanup.

Volunteers removed trash from roads, parks, schools, waterways, wildlife areas and communities across the state.

“The continued growth of the Great Pennsylvania Cleanup, and this year’s incredible turnout, shows that Pennsylvanians are more concerned than ever about protecting our environment,” said DEP Secretary Kathleen McGinty. “When people come together in such large numbers, as was the case here, we can achieve a great deal of good for our state. Because of this effort, our environment is cleaner, there are fewer eyesores in our communities, and our children have more areas where they can play safely.”

The Great PA Cleanup, which included events and organized activities from March 1 through May 31, is a statewide effort to remove litter and trash from the state’s neighborhoods and beautify the Commonwealth by planting trees and building playgrounds. The effort’s primary participation time coincides with Earth Day, April 22.

The 2007 Great PA Cleanup involved: 4,987 cleanup events; 139,480 volunteers; 372,096 bags of collected trash, weighing 7,441,919 pounds; 41,560 pounds of illegally dumped trash and 870 tires collected by volunteers in DEP’s Clean up Our American Lands and Streams (COALS) program from April through May; 13,565 miles of road, railroad track, trails, waterways and shorelines cleaned, and 3,238 acres of park and or wetlands; and 4,124 communities involved, and all 67 counties in Pennsylvania.

In addition, volunteers planted 12,934 trees, bulbs and plants in an effort to keep Pennsylvania beautiful.

This year’s initiative included a focus on Litter-Free School Zone.

A total of 77 schools joined the new program in which they agreed to remove litter from campus grounds weekly. Schools also agreed to promote each campus event as a litter-free activity.

Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful, which administers the program, provides participating schools with a “Litter-Free School Zone” sign as a way to encourage students, families and neighbors to help keep their community clean and litter free.

Home Depot donated five $1,000 gift cards as prizes in a random drawing for schools that registered for the Litter-Free School Zones program during the Great PA Cleanup.

The gift cards were awarded to Cheltenham Elementary School, Montgomery County; Dunbar Township Elementary School, Fayette County; Fairview Elementary School, Luzerne County; Ridgeview Academy Charter School, Westmoreland County; and St. Marys Area Middle School, Elk County.

The Great PA 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. It is the state affiliate of Keep America Beautiful, which was founded in 1953 to promote litter prevention, community revitalization and waste reduction.

The state departments of Community and Economic Development, Conservation and Natural Resources, Education, Environmental Protection and Transportation are members of the Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful alliance.

PennDOT supports the cleanup by distributing free gloves, safety vests and trash bags to participants. Its Adopt-A-Highway program volunteers once again were key to the success of the Great PA Cleanup. Another important partner was the Pennsylvania Waste Industries Association, whose members donated free landfill space for the trash collected.

The following is a list of organizations sponsoring Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful and the Great PA Cleanup:

AAA Mid-Atlantic, Audubon Pennsylvania, Best Buy, Cities: Allentown, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Departments of Conservation and Natural Resources, Education, Environmental Protection and Transportation, County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, GreenTreks Network, Home Depot, Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, Keep Lancaster Beautiful, Keep Philadelphia Beautiful, Keystone Sanitary Landfill, PA CleanWays, Pennsylvania Association of Convention & Visitors Bureaus, Pennsylvania Builders Association, Pennsylvania Downtown Center, Pennsylvania Environmental Council, Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, Pennsylvania Food Merchants Association, Pennsylvania Horticulture Society, Pennsylvania Host Municipal Inspectors, Pennsylvania Landscape & Nursery Association, Pennsylvania Organization of Watersheds and Rivers, Pennsylvania Parks and Forests Foundation, Pennsylvania Resources Council, 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 and Waste Management Inc.

The 2008 Great Pennsylvania Cleanup feature day is scheduled tentatively for the Saturday before Earth Day, April 19.

For more information, visit the Great PA Cleanuup website.

8/17/2007