Clean up program poised for coming spring

With spring right around the corner, the Texas Waterway Cleanup Program stands ready to help Texas rivers and lakes get well-deserved face-lifts.

This statewide effort provides free cleanup supplies, educational materials, and promotional support to help Texans beautify and improve the quality of their local waterways.

The program, a partnership between Keep Texas Beautiful and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, focuses on helping groups of any size host environmental education activities and cleanups of freshwater areas.

This includes lakes, rivers, creeks, and wetlands across the state.

Participants include schools, government agencies, youth and scout groups, neighborhoods, businesses, or any group of concerned Texans.

Registrants in the program receive free cleanup supplies such as trash bags, disposable gloves, litter pickup tools, hand sanitizer, sunblock, scout patches and volunteer giveaway items, as well as promotional support.

Last fall, volunteers supported 142 cleanup and water quality events across the state, with more than 11,500 volunteers collecting more than 264,000 pounds of debris from and around Texas waterways.

To get more information on the Texas Waterway Cleanup Program, register an event, or find out if there is a cleanup scheduled near you, visit ktb.org or call 1-800-CLEAN-TX.