Fact Sheet: Keep America Beautiful

America has a long-standing tradition of private-public sector collaborative efforts such as “Keep America Beautiful,” which was founded in 1953 by a group of civic and corporate leaders. This group recognized that there might be a litter problem associated with the expanding national highway system in the U.S and therefore joined together to form a private-public sector organization to tackle this concern.

“Keep America Beautiful” is now America's largest volunteer-based community action and education organization with nearly 1,000 city, county, statewide and international affiliates and participating organizations. Throughout the past fifty years, “Keep American Beautiful” has done studies on litter prevention, implemented public awareness campaigns, and developed educational material to educate people about litter prevention, waste reduction and beautification. It provides its affiliates with support to tackle these issues on a local level thus involving volunteers where it means the most- in their local communities.

Nine years ago, “Keep America Beautiful” organized an event called the Great American Cleanup." Volunteers picked up litter, cleaned up illegal dumpsites, removed graffiti, and planted trees and flowers all on a single day. This is now an annual program called the "Great American Cleanup" and in 2007, the event drew 2.8 million volunteers nationwide. And while “Keep America Beautiful” may be over 50 years old, the organization still impliments new programs. As indoor smoking has been banned in many parts of the U.S., “Keep America Beautiful” recently conducted a study that showed that people, who would never litter otherwise, don't consider dropping a cigarette butt to be littering. Based on this study, “Keep America Beautiful” has developed a publically accessible guide to cigarette litter prevention which can be used in local communities.

For more information on Keep America Beautiful, please see their website: http://www.kab.org