HARRISBURG – The Department of Transportation is inviting Pennsylvanians to build on Adopt-A-Highway cleanup efforts by participating in “Pick It Up PA Days” from April 25 through May 9.
“I am grateful for the efforts of the thousands of volunteers who turn out every year to beautify their communities and roadways,” said PennDOT Secretary Allen D. Biehler, P.E. “These cleanup events and the Adopt-A-Highway program are essential to keeping Pennsylvania beautiful, and I welcome new volunteers to join in this mission.”
A listing of cleanup events, resources for organizing a cleanup, and other information about the initiative is available online. Groups interested in adopting a section of highway are encouraged to contact their local PennDOT county maintenance office and ask for the Adopt-A-Highway coordinator, or visit here.
The Pick It Up PA Days, timed to coincide with Earth Day on April 22, are a featured event of the Great American Cleanup of Pennsylvania, a statewide effort to remove litter and trash from the state’s roadways, parks, riverbanks and open spaces. The entire effort runs through May 31.
PennDOT encourages its Adopt-A-Highway volunteers to do one of their four required cleanups on a Pick It Up PA Day. The nearly 7,200 groups in the Adopt-A-Highway program have two-year agreements and have adopted more than 16,500 roadway miles.
Over the past five years, the Great American Cleanup of Pennsylvania has yielded more than 35 million pounds of collected trash, involved 768,925 volunteers and resulted in 69,180 miles of highways cleaned. As part of those efforts, 467,462 Adopt-A-Highway volunteers collected more than 19 million pounds of litter on 56,304 miles of highway in that same period.
Last year alone, more than 140,000 volunteers in more than 4,100 communities joined in the cleanup and gathered more than 7.4 million pounds of trash and other debris from 13,565 miles of roadways, trails, waterways and shorelines. PennDOT’s Adopt-A-Highway program participants alone accounted for 10,229 pounds of trash from 15,978 miles of state-maintained roads as 92,421 people from 4,150 groups conducted spring cleaning on their adopted sections.
PennDOT provides gloves and vests for Adopt-A-Highway and Great American Cleanup of Pennsylvania groups. The department typically spends approximately $11.5 million annually for litter pickup with department forces.
To ensure that volunteers remain safe, PennDOT developed an interactive CD called Beautify PA Safely, which offers tips and instructions on how to stay safe while volunteering in beautification efforts. For a copy of the CD, contact Dick Ebeling, state highway beautification manager, at 717-705-1552.