OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) — Earth Day is right around the corner, but some celebrated a little early in North Omaha Saturday.
Every year Keep Omaha Beautiful does an open invitation event around Earth Day where they encourage members of the community to volunteer with a huge cleanup project. Last year they were in South Omaha this year they headed North. “We actually are working with about 75 volunteers to pick up litter and help just really just kinda clean up our community and our environment in celebration of earth day,” said Keep Omaha Beautiful Executive Director, Chris Stratman.
Volunteers covered a lot of ground today. “This year we focused on the historic Adams Park being such a very large park, a very important park to the area,” said Stratman. Picking up trash and recyclables.
Ten of the 75 volunteers were a group of sorority sisters. “It's one of our principals, we have five principals in our sorority and one of them is volunteering,” said Rose McCaffrey, member of Sigma Lambda Gamma Sorority a UNO.
She says every year the sisters volunteer at a Keep Omaha Beautiful event. “I like volunteering because you always get to meet new people and you know you're doing something good,” said McCaffrey.
Stratman is grateful for all the help. “The reality is if we're probably not picking this stuff up, it's gonna sit there for quite some time,” he said.
Even after doing clean up events throughout the year Stratman is still surprised by how much trash gets collected. “When people dedicate their time, their effort to come out on weekend when it's a beautiful day they could be doing all kinds of things but they're giving back to their community, they're giving back to the environment,” he said.
There's multiple ways you can volunteer with Keep Omaha Beautiful whether it's through cleanup projects or adopting a road or park.
