Keep Carbondale Beautiful 25th Anniversary

Historic Totals for Spring Clean-ups

Year      Volunteers                Recycling Totals (lbs)      Total litter collected (lbs:)

1989                500                                    2685                                      14000
1990                500                                        -                                            7025
1991                425                                        -                                            8240
1992                400                                        -                                          10298
1993                527                                        -                                          21699
1994                475                                        -                                          10004
1995                434                                        -                                          11698   
1996                400                                        -                                          11827   
1997                N/A                                         -                                          11369
1998                255                                        -                                             9495
1999                N/A                                        -                                              7973       2000                N/A                                        -                                              8562
2001                N/A                                        -                                              8562
2002                N/A                                        -                                              8562
2003                N/A                                        -                                              5224
2004                N/A                                        -                                              3149
2005                N/A                                    1501                                          4787       2006                N/A                                        -                                              1752
2007                N/A                                     861                                            2480
2008                164                                    693                                            3066
2009                223                                   1522                                           6887
Since 1989 volunteers at the Spring Cleanup and Recycling Day have removed over 175,000 pounds of litter from Carbondale neighborhoods, roads, and parks. That's equivalent to the weight of 65 Toyota Camry sedans!
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Educational Outreach

Keep Carbondale Beautiful is dedicated to environmental education outreach programs. Since 2003, the Read for the Environment program has educated around 3,500 elementary aged children about litter control and environmental protection. The program lasts around 45 minutes with the story, a discussion, as well as a brief activity.  Following the discussion children receive a coloring book with recycling and beautification messages, soy crayons, as well as a recycled pencil. Read for the Environment takes places in March, during the school day. Anyone interested in volunteering, please contact Keep Carbondale Beautiful.

Keep Carbondale Beautiful also participates in other environmental education programs. The Du Quoin Conservation Fair brings elementary aged children together for a hands on environmental workshop. Since 2007, the conservation fair has education almost 1,400 children. Since 2007, the Crab Orchard Earth Celebration event has educated over 500 children on the importance of litter prevention and environmental protection.

Phone Book Recycling Drive

Keep Carbondale Beautiful's phone book recycling drive has been around since 1992. The purpose of this program is to prevent old phone directories from being thrown out into landfills. The goal is to have these phone books recycled so that they reduce the amount of trees that need to be cut down for paper consumption. Since 1992, nearly 155,000 phone books were prevented from ending up in a landfill. That's 433,000 pounds, or almost 217 tons of paper! That's over the weight of 160 Toyota Camry Sedans! 

  • Recycling approximately 1 ton of newspaper saves 17 trees*. The phone book recycling drive has saved almost 3,700 trees!
  • The EPA has found that making paper from recycled materials results in 74% less air pollution and 35% less water pollution. This means that every ton of recycled paper keeps almost 60 pounds of pollutants out of the atmosphere that would have been produced if the paper had been manufactured from virgin resources*.
  • Every ton of recycled paper saves approximately 4 barrels of oil, 4,200 kilowatt hours of energy and enough energy to heat and air-condition the average North American home for almost 6 months*.
  • Recycled paper is made to the same standards as paper made from virgin pulp. Moreover, recycled paper has features which make it more desirable than virgin paper, such as being more opaque, dense, and flexible*.
  • Making a ton of virgin paper requires 3,688 lbs. of wood, 24,000 gallons of water, 216 lbs. of lime, 360 lbs. of salt cake and 76 lbs. of soda ash. We then have to treat and dispose of 84 lbs. of air pollutants, 36 lbs. of water pollutants and 176 lbs. of solid waste*.
  • The phone book recycling drive has saved over 800,000 pounds of wood, 5.2 million gallons of water, and over 38,192 pounds of solid waste!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                          *Recycling Data courtesy of Northern Illinois University

Historic Photos and Newspaper Articles