Mission
The mission of Keep Monroe Beautiful is ‘to engage individuals, households and businesses to take greater responsibility for improving their community environments.
KEEP MONROE BEAUTIFUL
Keep Monroe Beautiful serves as a link between the City and the community by assisting with community projects, helping educate our citizens about litter abatement, and beautifying the City.
Keep Monroe Beautiful works closely with Ouachita Green , to plan, execute, and program events around the City.
We encourage each citizen to be proud of their City, by not littering, reducing waste and responsibly disposing of household garbage and trash. If you’re interested in volunteering for a cleanup, please contact us at 318-329-2209.
EDUCATION
The first step in the approach to community change is education. Keep Monroe Beautiful seeks to provide knowledge to its residents in a number of ways. That includes providing speakers to schools, civic groups, and neighborhood associations; school field trips to city hall and public service announcements to encourage beautification and discourage activities such as litter, graffiti and roadside dumping.
To book a speaker or schedule a field trip: Call (318) 329-4983
“Keep Monroe Beautiful can help you develop programs that prevent litter, reduce waste, and beautify your community.”
Focus on Results
Litter issues are a starting point for improving your community’s environment. Learn more about litter prevention, the “Keep Monroe Beautiful way.”
Components necessary for a successful litter prevention program include:
- Effective public education and communication; (Get the facts)
- Strong, broad-based organizational structure, including representation and input from all segments of the community; (Involve the People)
- Enforcement programs; (Develop a Plan)
- Valid measurement and assessment tools; (Focus on Results)
- Reward/recognition programs to provide incentives. (Provide Positive Reinforcement)
Keep Monroe Beautiful also focuses on beautification as a threshold element to addressing larger quality of life issues. Beautification programs can build community pride, neighborhood revitalization and positively affect healthy economic development.
Keep Monroe Beautiful educates communities about the solid waste management options, and helps local communities develop programs about recycling, conversion (combustion) and landfills.
Join the Great American Cleanup™
Coordinated through the Kaeep America Beautiful National Office, Great American Cleanup events are executed by a network of participating organizations across the country. The Great American Cleanup is a platform for community improvement programs every year from March 1 through May 31.
All the activities underscore our philosophy of citizens taking individual responsibility for their community environments. Everyone is welcome to lend a hand in any one or more of the diverse activities offered to make their communities cleaner, healthier and safer.
Businesses
Tips to Assist Businesses in Eliminating Litter
Place an adequate number of trash containers in parking lots as well as inside and outside of all building entrances.
Establish a regular schedule for emptying trash containers. Avoid having trash emptied on an ‘as needed’ basis.
This will prevent trash overflows.
Replace broken, dirty or damaged containers.
Use only covered trash containers to eliminate trash from spilling or blowing out.
Establish the expectation that employees will pick up trash anywhere in or around your place of business. Let them know that it is not acceptable to walk past litter.
Removed trapped litter from fence lines on a regularly scheduled basis.
Establish smoking areas with appropriate ash receptacles for employees and customers.
Place only tied bags of trash in outdoor dumpsters. This greatly decreases loose trash from blowing out of the dumpster during garbage collection.
Call the city’s Solid Waste Department when your dumpster is near to overflowing, or if your current level of service is not sufficient. Change or increase scheduled trash pickups, if necessary.
Enclose dumpsters with fences or walls to minimize the amount of trash that will blow to other areas of your business or onto city streets and rights-of-way. Remove trash from the enclosure area regularly.
Commit to reducing loose trash from company vehicles by:
Requiring tarps on any vehicles transporting materials.
Requiring tightly sealed containers to transport materials that are not covered by tarps.
Instructing drivers to pick up any materials that have fallen off of their load.
Instructing drivers to discard cigarette butts in vehicle ashtrays.
Adding trash bags to company vehicles.
Teachers
Education is the starting point for changing attitudes and behaviors
Keep America Beautiful’s curricula teach the fundamentals of litter prevention, preserving our resources, responsible solid waste management, and how to reduce, reuse and recycle. Many KAB educational programs are sponsored by leading corporations, and are developed with the help of other national organizations and federal agencies. All programs are designed to be locally adaptable to meet the needs of individual communities.
In 2006, more than 1.75 million students of all ages were touched by either a KAB formal classroom or informal educational presentation. More than 6,600 teachers attended Waste in Place curriculum training sessions, learning how to use this invaluable classroom program and other KAB educational tools.
In addition to the curriculum guides, Keep America Beautiful reaches schools with stewardship messages through Web-based programs like Clean Sweep U.S.A., the Toolbox for Community Change and full-color classroom posters, such as the “236 Million Tons of Trash” poster.
Developed in 2005, Clean Sweep U.S.A. is a fun and engaging educational site designed to supplement middle school environmental education curriculum. Including teachers resources, Web content, links, and offline activities, the program is an integral part of lesson plans around the country. Contents include important lessons about litter prevention, waste reduction, recycling, composting, landfills, and more. Through the generosity of Office Depot, the site will be getting a fresh, new look and new content later in 2007.
These tools build environmental knowledge, and foster stewardship, pride and individual responsibility among young people.
Frequently Called Numbers
KEEP MONROE BEAUTIFUL: Organizing a clean-up and Adopting a Spot
CODE ENFORCEMENT: To report illegal dumping, improper vacant building maintenance, and overgrown lots
PUBLIC WORKS: Garbage / trash issues, vacant lot mowing, and drainage issues
Code Enforcement
Keep Monroe Beautiful
Public Works
