Keep Berkeley Beautiful urges public action

With spring in swing and Earth Day on the way, it’s a great time to think about sprucing up our green spaces and Keep Berkeley Beautiful could use your help!  

 

Keep Berkeley Beautiful is our local affiliate of Keep America Beautiful, the largest community improvement organization in the United States. KBB has three simple goals – beautifying Berkeley County communities, reducing litter, and improving recycling. 

 

Keep Berkeley Beautiful, along with its support organization Friends of Keep Berkeley Beautiful, depends almost entirely on volunteer labor. If you like to work outside and care about the environment, the group has a place for you.

 

Maintaining clean, attractive green spaces is more than just good for the Earth – those spaces help us stay healthy by promoting exercise and providing clean air. Studies show such spaces are good for our mental health as well, giving our stressed brains a break from over-stimulation.   

 

Among KBB’s initiatives aimed at creating and maintaining green spaces is the 100 Live Oaks Project, which seeks to plant live oak trees on private or business-owned property where the owner has agreed to maintain the tree. With so many trees lost to development, every long-lived live oak in a protected environment can make a difference.  

 

KBB has also piloted a green space gateway project near the intersection of Highway 17A and Old Whitesville Road in Moncks Corner. Property in the intersection has been reclaimed and landscaped with native plants. Beehives have recently been installed and the area has been seeded with wildflowers that should be blooming soon. Such projects require many hours of maintenance and Keep Berkeley Beautiful could really use your help if you like gardening.     

 

If you travel Berkeley County roads, particularly in rural areas, you know that litter on our roadsides is an eyesore. KBB encourages communities to organize drives and can support those efforts by providing trash bags, safety vests, litter pickers, and more. KBB organizes some drives of its own as well, including a monthly boat ramp cleanup that rotates among various ramps in the county.  

 

Picking up litter is a great way to volunteer, whether you organize your own cleanup day or visit KBB’s Facebook page to find a cleanup near you. If you belong to a church, club, fraternity, or other organization, perhaps your group would like to adopt a highway. Typically, groups adopt a stretch of roadway two miles or so in length and clean it several times each year. KBB can help your group find a roadway that needs your love and provide the supplies to get you started. Last year, volunteers pulled more than 90,000 pounds of litter from our roadways and could have done much more with more volunteers.

 

 If you are involved in Berkeley County schools, perhaps you have an idea for promoting recycling among our youth or beautifying our school grounds. KBB offers grants to teachers for recycling education, gardening projects, and other efforts that promote an appreciation of the outdoors among students. Many of our students, as well as their parents, do not realize what a great job Berkeley County does with recycling. Almost all of our trash is processed through RePower South, a facility that mechanically recovers recyclables before the trash goes to the landfill.  

 

For information about any of Keep Berkeley Beautiful’s programs or to volunteer, visit the KBB or Friends of KBB website or Facebook pages or contact Executive Director Sarah McCarthy-Smith, 843-719-2383 or sarah.smith@berkeleycountysc.gov. Can’t volunteer but you’d like to donate? You can do that too at the Friends of KBB website.