Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Litter Cleanup topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Keep Oklahoma Beautiful presents ODOT with award after statewide cleanup effort
Summary
Keep Oklahoma Beautiful presented an award to ODOT recognizing the department’s role in the Great American Cleanup; presenters cited volunteer totals and volumes of trash collected and announced a new Route 66 cleanup initiative.
Evelyn Schaefer, executive director of Keep Oklahoma Beautiful, presented the department with an award and summarized the partnership’s results from the Great American Cleanup. Schaefer told the commission that all 77 counties participated for the fifteenth consecutive year, volunteers collected 3,400,000 pounds of trash, 11,000 volunteers participated, 64 illegal dump sites were cleared, 1,300 miles of roads and highways were cleaned and volunteers planted 12,000 trees, seedlings, shrubs, flowers and food-producing plants.
Schaefer said Keep Oklahoma Beautiful will partner with communities on "Keep Route 66 Beautiful," an initiative to clean and beautify the 400-plus miles of the historic highway that runs through Oklahoma. She closed by thanking ODOT for its commitment to litter education, beautification and environmental sustainability and presented the award on behalf of Keep Oklahoma Beautiful and Keep America Beautiful.
Director Gatz and commissioners accepted the award and the commission recognized the scale of the volunteer effort. Director Gatz emphasized the value of the partnership and noted that few volunteer organizations bring consistent resources at the statewide level.
Why this matters: The statistics presented indicate a sustained, statewide volunteer cleanup effort that interacts with ODOT’s maintenance and beautification programs and creates a new coordinated initiative targeting Route 66.
Attribution: Direct quotes and statistics are drawn from Evelyn Schaefer’s presentation as recorded in the meeting transcript.
