THE GREAT AMERICAN CLEANUP
Enhance your community’s beauty.
Transforming Public Places into Beautiful Spaces
Each spring, our affiliates and volunteers join hands to engage in the nation’s largest community improvement program. During this time, we coordinate hundreds of litter pickups, recycling drives, educational workshops, and beautification activities.
Activities include removing litter and debris from roadsides, highways, shorelines, and waterways; cleaning and restoring nature trails, recreation areas, and playgrounds; recycling everything from electronics to household hazardous waste; and planting trees, flowers, and gardens. Whether you live in a big city, a suburb or a small rural town, the Great American Cleanup is a shining example of how lasting, positive change happens when people work together.
Are you interested in participating?
Next year’s events will take place from March 20 through June 21. We will post a list of statewide volunteer opportunities in February. If you’d like to host a site, registration will open in November.
Impact by the numbers
In 2024, 18,144 volunteers from 44 communities engaged in 863 events. Altogether, we cleaned 2,534 miles of streets, roadsides, and waterways and 20,529 acres of parks and other green spaces, collecting 662,464 pounds of litter. We recycled over 1 million pounds of materials, including over 258,379 pounds of hard-to-recycle materials, over 113,120 pounds of household hazardous waste, and over 78 tons of tires. We also planted 5,687 trees, flowers and shrubs.
Many thanks go out to the companies and organizations that make the Great American Cleanup possible.
Interested in additional volunteer opportunities in your neighborhood? Visit our affiliate page to find more ways you can participate locally.