Keep Austin Beautiful logo (Credit: Keep Austin Beautiful)
Have you ever wondered what those green “KAB” signs along Austin roadsides stand for? The ones that say so-and-so has adopted this road?
I know I have, eventually so much that I looked into it. Those signs are put in place by Keep Austin Beautiful, an organization that has been keeping the Austin community looking good for nearly thirty years.
Community Cleanup
Keep Austin Beautiful is a local nonprofit that was established back in 1985 in order to preserve Austin’s quality of life. Their roadside signs are a result of one of their many programs, “Adopt-A-Street.”
If roadside cleanup isn’t your thing, you can adopt an Austin creek through a similar Keep Austin Beautiful program, “Adopt-A-Creek.” When you or your company adopts a local street or creek, you make a two-year commitment to clean up a certain stretch of land or water four times each year.
You may think that’s a big commitment, but many of Austin’s wonderful residents have been ready and willing to take on responsibilities like these with ease. Keep Austin Beautiful makes it simple by supplying you or your group with everything you need. The city even comes to pick up the trash on-site once you’re done with a cleanup.
Local kids clean up a community creek (Credit: Keep Austin Beautiful)
Beautification Projects
In addition to road and creek cleanup, Keep Austin Beautiful does things like build butterfly gardens at local schools, clean our beloved Lady Bird Lake, paint over graffiti (the talentless kind), and provide gardening tools and seeds for beautification projects across the city.
Their vision is to make Austin the cleanest, most beautiful community around. I have to say, when strolling through my beautiful city on a sunny day, it’s hard to say they aren’t achieving their goal.
Beautiful, it is (Credit: @ashleynearandfar on Instagram)
Impact You Can’t Ignore
To get an idea of the impact Keep Austin Beautiful has on your community: last year alone, nearly 14,000 volunteers contributed close to 30,000 hours (equivalent to 3+ years) of service and removed 65 tons of trash and debris. That’s 65 heaps as big as an elephant that aren’t hanging around to pollute our city. While doing all that, they also managed to collect nearly 12,000 pounds of recycling at 70 local events.
Keep Austin Beautiful also educates the local community through presentations, projects, and campaigns that nurture environmental consciousness. A large part of their educational focus is on kids and our schools, where it should be if we want this city to stay beautiful for years to come.
Putting in a garden at a local high school (Credit: Keep Austin Beautiful)
If you want to help beautify your city and serve as an integral part of making it thrive, join forces with Keep Austin Beautiful.
@mattchampionatx asks:
Have you ever volunteered with KAB or a similar Austin organization? Tell me about your experience in a comment.
