Keep America Beautiful
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Working Within Communities
Keep America Beautiful works with individuals, communities, states, businesses, and our national leaders to address the challenges of ending litter and littering behavior.
Volunteer In Your Community
You might say, “I’m just one person, what can I do?”
Your help matters. When you volunteer to help clean up your community, you make a difference. When others see that you care for your community, they care too, and over time, behavior changes.
Our ongoing research shows that an end-to-end process for changing littering behavior through key activities like cleaning up public spaces is working.
Whether you work by yourself, or join a larger movement in your neighborhood, the cleanup is keeping America beautiful.
3rd Graders Know How to Keep Euclid Beautiful
On May 12, 2022, third graders at Pinnacle Academy in Euclid, Ohio, worked together to clean up litter from the area around their school. These hard-working youngsters pulled together and worked to collect 73 bags of trash! In just a few hours time, these elementary...
10 Ways to Ring In the New Year with an Eco-friendly Party!
New Year’s Eve is a big night for family and friends to come together and celebrate — but unfortunately, it also tends to be a big night for waste. Throughout the holiday season, from Thanksgiving to the New Year, Americans produce 25% more waste than usual. We’re...
6 Ways to Keep Your Halloween Sustainable (and Save Money While You’re At It!)
What's the scariest thing about Halloween? The waste. The October holiday has become a bit of an environmental nightmare, thanks to the mass production of disposable decorations and costumes, not to mention candy wrappers, that aren’t recyclable or biodegradable. But...
Great American Cleanup® (GAC)
Our keystone program, the Great American Cleanup®,(link to GAC engagement page) is a nationwide effort spanning 3 months each year. Hundreds of thousands of people come together to take part in local volunteer opportunities to clean up their communities, educate students and neighbors, and beautify their special piece of the country.
Together, our work cleans, greens and beautifies thousands of communities – and counting. Find a cleanup near you (link to affiliate search).
Cigarette Litter Prevention Program
Since 2002, our Cigarette Litter Prevention Program, the nation’s largest program aimed at eliminating cigarette litter, has been implemented in over 1,800 communities, reducing cigarette litter by HALF within six months, on average. Learn more. (link to CLPP engagement page)
RETREET
Working together, Keep America Beautiful and RETREET focus on a new KAB strategic priority: community restoration and resiliency.
We bring community volunteers together to form small teams, train them on how to effective plant native trees, and work to plant these trees in areas that have been impacted by natural disasters. Replanting and restoring our communities help keep them healthier and more resilient, literally growing deep roots to anchor and stabilize flood-prone areas, lessen erosion, and improve natural resiliency.
Find out how your community can benefit from the RETREET program. (Link to restoration pillar)
America Recycles Day®
Our national event is celebrated every November 15, bringing awareness, appreciation and renewed commitment to recycling in the United States! Learn how you can be part of this national day of service and action. (link to America Recycles Day Page)
Community Grants
The COMMUNITY GRANT PROGRAM is designed to support the Keep America Beautiful (KAB) Affiliate network, other nonprofit organizations, and community groups to implement programs or projects designed to build clean, green, and beautiful places for all to thrive and enjoy.
Keep America Beautiful is committed to fostering community diversity, unity, and environmental sustainability. Funding is available independently or collectively to promote public space recycling collection, building strong neighborhoods within and along Martin Luther King Jr. boulevards, beautification through tree planting, and prevent littering by addressing cigarette litter and collect litter from the nation’s waterways. Learn more about our grant program and how to apply. (link to grant page)
KAB Volunteers By The Numbers
Last year alone, over 400,000 hard-working volunteers logged more than 2.9 Million volunteer hours over the course of over 64,000 events.
What did our combined service to our communities accomplish?
of litter, debris, and recycling collected
cleaned of litter
of streets, roads, and highways cleaned and beautified
of rivers, lakes, wetlands and shores cleaned
planted, helping restore communities