The Litter Free School Zone program is designed to encourage students to keep their school grounds litter-free and to raise public awareness regarding litter via a Litter Free School Zone sign to be displayed outside the school.
Students, clubs, classes, and even entire school districts can participate in the Litter Free School Zone program. Keeping their school litter-free is an easy and fun way for students to work together, learning valuable community leadership and responsibility skills while gaining a respect for the environment and the world around them. It is also an opportunity to develop a school-wide stewardship ethic and set a community example.
The Litter Free School Zone program strives to resolve the issue of littering in two ways:
- Cleanup: Remove existing and deposited litter as soon as possible after it appears, so that further littering will be less likely to occur.
- Prevention: Create a sense of understanding, caring, and responsibility, often described as environmental stewardship, in our children so that they will not think of littering as an acceptable behavior in their world.
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| Cambria Heights Elementary School |
The ultimate goal is a cleaner, more beautiful community, with a strong sense of civic pride. As more students participate in the Litter Free School Zone program, we hope that there will soon be less litter to clean up. As residents drive past the signage and see the clean schoolyard, they also will be less inclined to deposit litter. Let's think about it: if a single classroom of 25 students participates once a week and each only pick up 1 piece of litter, in one year they will have picked up 1300 pieces of litter. That is a huge impact on litter for such a small percentage of the population.
Minimum Requirements from the School:
- Check the school grounds weekly and remove litter.
- To report the date of each cleanup completed, number of participants and hours, and amount and type of litter collected to the Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful office twice a year. (December 15th and June 15th or end of school year)
- Promote, organize, and implement any school events as litter free events.
- Report activities in school publications, bulletin boards, websites, etc.
- Participate in the annual Great American Cleanup of Pennsylvania and register and report online at www.gacofpa.org.
- Make safety a top priority.
- Provide written notice to Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful and remove signage in the event that the school wishes to terminate from the program or if it becomes inactive.
Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful Provides:
- Adoption coordination with the designated school contact.
- Attractive signage for your school designating it as a litter free zone.
- Media coverage publicizing your school's involvement through our newsletter, news releases, and the websites: www.gacofpa.org and www.keeppabeautiful.org
- A variety of educational materials.
- Helpful and responsive assistance from staff.
For more information, please contact:
Sue Urchek toll free at 1-877-772-3673 ext.106 or e-mail.