We only have one Earth.
Let's respect her and take care of her.

What You Can Do?

Every individual and every business on the Gulf Coast can make a difference. We can each be a big part in cleaning up the Mississippi Gulf Coast and making her a place to be proud of again. You might wonder, "What can I do to help when everyone else is littering?" Every little effort is important.
We can create civic pride, and we can help it spread. We can set good examples. We can teach our children and family members not to litter. We can clean up, pick up, spruce up and plant trees, shrubs and trees.
People are less likely to litter if an environment is kept clean. Civic pride can be taught, and it can be contagious. The Mississippi Renaissance Garden Foundation, Inc. encourages high standards of appearance which, in turn, will improve the quality of life for all. We suggest that you encourage your employees to help maintain these standards and pass them on to others.

What Business Owners Can Do

What Individuals Can Do

Specific suggestions for creating and maintaining an attractive business sites:

1. Provide cigarette receptacles outside your entryways.
2. Provide trash cans around the perimeter of your site. Keep them emptied regularly.
3. Have trash patrols (employees) scour your property daily and keep trash picked up.
4. Provide copies of MRG's "Bring Back the Beauty" suggestions to your employees.
5. Provide automobile litter bags for your employees and encourage their use. These are available from Keep Mississippi Beautiful and the Harrison County Beautification Commission.
6. Educate employees on the unsightliness of tossing cigarette butts onto the streets.
7. Ask employees to pick up any litter and cigarette butts they see on the site.
8. Sweep your sidewalks and curbs often.
9. Implement an awareness of litter and how unsightly it is.
10. Once or twice a year, steam clean or power washes your sidewalks and parking lots to remove unsightly spots from various origins (i.e., spitting on sidewalks, auto oil leaks).
11. Hose off accidental spills from sidewalks and entryways.
12. Require lawn services to bag trash rather than blow it onto vacant lots, onto other property, or down storm drains.
13. Eradicate grass that grows in sidewalk cracks all the way to and into the street curb.
14. Keep city street curbs in front of your site clean and picked up. Trash is noticeable.
15. If you are a small business that cannot afford a lawn service, make an effort to do it yourself, or provide incentives to employees who might do it, such as on-the-clock lawn care.
16. Keep drains and holding ponds clean, mowed and edged.
17. Go the extra mile and help keep vacant lots near you clean and litter-free.
18. Unsightly surroundings do have an impact on you; conversely, clean surroundings are noticed, also.
19. Plant trees, shrubs and flowers on your premises. Fertilize your grass and eradicate weeds.
20. If you don't have a green space to landscape, utilize planters, large pots and window boxes to add greenery and flowers to your storefront. It makes a world of difference to the appearance to the appearance of your business and attractiveness to customers.

Specific suggestions for individuals to help create a clean and enjoyable environment:

1. The best thing that you can do is to care what the town you live in looks like. Community pride is extremely important.
2. People are less likely to trash a clean environment than a dirty one. Ours has been dirty since Katrina before, and even worse since Katrina, and people keep trashing it. Let's clean it up and reverse that cycle.
3. Pack your trash. Keep a litter bag in your car, or in a plastic grocery bag, and place all litter in the bag. Dispose of it at home.
4. Use trash cans at malls and stores; don't leave trash in parking lots that will sit there and look ugly, or blow around into vacant lots and drainage ditches.
5. Don't throw cigarette butts out of car windows. Cigaratte Butts ARE litter.
6. Use your ashtray, a tin can, a film can, a tuna can or an empty Coke can, but respect our communities and don't dump on them on our streets.
7. Don't spit on sidewalks. It leaves unsightly, yucky spots on sidewalks and streets because the moisture attracts dirt like glue. In addition, it is unsanitary. Again, keep a tin can in your car, or a spittoon, or use a tissue to spit into.
8. If you haul things in an open truck bed, use a cover, and keep drink cups, plastic, or other things that might fly out inside the cab.
9. Make an extra effort to remove grass that is growing between cracks on your sidewalk and on the curb beside your house, even if a fence separates your house and the street.
10. While you are at it, sweep up any trash and cigarette butts on the street curb by your house or place of business. If we all do a little bit, it will all get cleaned.
11. Form a neighborhood "We Care" group and organize a clean-up day to clean vacant lots, or the yard of an elderly person who is unable to do it by herself, or clean all of the street curbs in your area.
12. Contact your local government and encourage them to enact stricter littering laws and enforce them with strict fines. Encourage them to post anti-littering signs.
13. Report the license numbers of people you see littering. Call 1-800-545-3764.
14. If you use a lawn service, insist that they bag the grass rather than blow it into the streets. Too often they use blowers and blow grass, leaves and trash into the curbs, into street drains, or into a nearby vacant lot. This is especially true when they do commercial areas. This shows lack of respect for our community and for other property owners.
15. Gently remind people you see littering that a trash can is a better option.
    Ask businesses to place trash cans in convenient places.
16. Gently remind business managers that a trashy appearance shows lack of respect for customers and a lack of civic pride.
17. Compliment any business that is clean and free of trash and has nice landscaping.
18. Compliment them on extra amenities such as fountains, tables and umbrellas, outdoor sculptures, benches, bird feeders and bird baths, and other pleasing decorations on their premises.
19. Together we can all Bring Back the Beauty!

Download this page as a printable document.

Did you know that Mississippi has a litter reporting program?
No?
Very few people know about this.
Keep Mississippi Beautiful has a toll-free number that you can call to report a person whom you see littering our streets and highways. They will send a litter bag and a letter reminding them not to litter.

Use this service and make our state litter free.