2017 NHtB Litter Free NH Blue Bags: Another Successful Year & Counting!

2017 NHtB Litter Free NH Blue Bags:  Another Successful Year & Counting!

Each year, in very early Spring, NHtB kicks off its annual Litter Free New Hampshire Blue Bag campaign.  This campaign targets New Hampshire Municipalities, Schools, Community Organizations and groups of individuals within NH municipalities and encourages them to organize a roadside clean up within their community by offering FREE Blue (trash collection) Bags- up to 10 cases (that’s 1500 bags!) –  to each NH Municipality.  The bags are purchased by NH the Beautiful and distributed to registrants by Northeast Resource Recovery Association from their office in Epsom.

An important part of the “participation packet” that is sent to each community is the Tally Sheet.  This helps us get a good picture of how much this campaign helps keep NH Beautiful.  This year has been a record year with over 543 cases (81,450 bags) of Litter Free Blue Bags being distributed among 53 NH Towns and Cities (including 6 DOT’s) Below is a glimpse of this year’s results so far:

Bags of Trash Removed from NH Roadsides:  8061

Number of Volunteers involved in the clean-up efforts:  1,975

Number of Miles in NH that are now free of trash/debris thanks to these volunteers and NHtB’s generosity:   648 miles

Types of items/debris collected:  household waste, bottles, cans, food wrappers, tires, shoes, appliances, a car seat, hubcaps, mattresses and broken trash containers.  Sadly, a lot of hypodermic needles were also reported but carefully & properly disposed of accordingly.

Often communities will share with us an article written for their local paper about their clean up efforts, below is one such submission sent in (and written) by Stasia Millet of Wilton, NH

Wilton Community Center Sponsors ‘Clean Up Main Street’ Event

 The Wilton Community Center was proud to sponsor what they hope will become an annual “Clean Up Main Street” event (which extended to a significant section of Route 101 out of the center of town).  It was quite a celebratory event (see photos) as we all knew we were making a big difference in the town.  Our most “exciting” find occurred when one of the youngsters pointed out a hypodermic needle which I put into an empty soda bottle. ( Yes! Everyone had on gloves.)

The event, starting at 8 am on Saturday, May 27th, attracted 19 volunteers of all ages & genders (plus “Seer” the dog).  We promoted it heavily in the paper, via poster & e-mail blast and on our large Highway Sign.  Several people asked to have a couple of the blue bags which they planned to use on another day in another part of town.

Wilton’s Highway & Sanitation people picked up the mini-mountain of blue bags centrally deposited at the Main Street Park, and hauled them off to the recycling center/dump.

As a Thank You to the volunteers, the Community Center and Jorge of Sky Bridge Cafe had a huge and delicious paella dish that served everyone.  At the end, there was only one string bean left on the gigantic dish.

We look forward to having this event again and garnering even more awareness of our efforts to keep Wilton (even more) beautiful.

Thank you to Stasia for sharing the details of your wonderful event and to you and your community center for helping to keep NH Beautiful!

There are still Litter Free Blue Bags available, if your community hasn’t already done so, please register TODAY to receive your free cases and go ahead and organize your own community clean up event! We’d love to hear about it!