Litter Collection / Prevention

If you call Keep Akron Beautiful you will get action in your neighborhood regarding illegal dumping or a much-needed litter sweep of the area in question. You may have seen our crews on the expressways picking up debris and litter in orange safety vests. We help to keep city parks and ball fields clean and attractive. We are interested in taking your complaints and, if we can't help you directly, we will try to refer you to the city department which will best serve your needs. You can also call 311 to file a complaint.

Litter Prevention Services:

Illegal Dumping is A Criminal Offense    

DUMPING IN PROGRESS?
CALL AKRON POLICE
330-375-2181

            

DUMPING ON PRIVATE PROPERTY
CALL ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES/HEALTH DEPT
311 (WITHIN THE CITY) REPORTING A DUMPSITE: CALL KEEP AKRON BEAUTIFUL 330-375-2116 OR 311 (WITHIN THE CITY)

To investigate an illegal dumper KAB needs:

License number of vehicle

Description of vehicle (make & color)

Description of driver and/or suspects

Location, date and time

One form of illegal dumping we find on public land in Akron is the dumping of tires. During 2003, KAB collected and recycled 316 illegally dumped scrap tires. It cost the agency $1 for each tire it responsibly disposed of at a reputable recycler. In March 1996, the Ohio Senate passed Bill #165 to keep all tires out of Ohio's landfills. This bill also monitors the hauling and recycling of scrap tires.

Cigarette Butts Are Litter Too!

2007 Cigarette Litter Prevention Program(CLPP)

Keep Akron Beautiful (KAB) and the Downtown Akron Partnership (DAP) have received from Keep America Beautiful, Inc., a grant for $2,500 to continue to combat the increased amount of cigarette litter in the Special Improvement District (SID) during the summer of 2007. Over one year ago, Keep Akron Beautiful worked with the University Park Association (UPA) and the University of Akron to pilot this CLPP program along East Exchange Street and on the campus. With mixed results, as far as impacting the amount of litter being created by smokers, Keep Akron Beautiful was interested in attacking another area in the city with the following four proven strategies:
• Review of the Litter Laws and enforcement
•     Statistically place of the “This is litter, too” public service announcements
• Placement of ash receptacles at transition points and high traffic areas
• Distribution of pocket ashtrays to adult smokers within the SID

Kimmerlee McKee, Paula Davis and Linda Fry have been working with the Keep Ohio Beautiful Acting Director, Kerrry Crossen, to implement the following strategies downtown during the very busy calendar of events on Main Street and at Lock III Park:
 
Keep Akron Beautiful has ordered 800 more black re-useable pocket ashtrays to add to the 1,000 sent to our affiliate, and DAP as part of our grant award.

Call 330-375-2116 to hear more about the pocket ashtray distribution plan for downtown which includes a DAP table during special events; distribution  of ashtrays to downtown office employees who smoke will be handed out by Operation Neat Street Ambassadors.  Additional information can be obtained through advertising on posters placed in elevators and to smokers using Metro RTA. 

Five queen-size transit ads have been placed on Metro RTA buses for 2 months with a photo showing viewers that cigarette butts are litter too.

Posters and fliers have been placed in the downtown SID area to echo the message to ‘stick your butts where the sun don’t shine [cigarette butts, that is]’  -in a receptacle or pocket ashtray.

The two Green Machine Operators have completed the first required cigarette butt scan of the SID May 29-30, 2007,  and will be doing a follow-up scan of the same areas in August, 2007.

Contact us at KAB if you have an idea on how to stop cigarette litter downtown! 

TO Collect And Serve

Important Information about smart carts and your new trash/recycle Collection in Akron, Ohio

To learn more about the city of Akron's new advanced automated system of handling waste with the green 96-gallon trash cart and the blue 64-gallon recycling cart, please call 311 from a land line or go to www.akroncurbservice.org

Household Hazardous Waste Recycling Center

Any resident of Summit County may take their household hazardous waste to this seasonal facility managed by the Summit Akron Solid Waste Management Authority. Be sure to call 330-374-0383 or check online at www.saswma.org for hours and days of operation. 1201 Graham Road (at the Route 8 Exit) Stow, Ohio

                                       Akron Rates a “slightly  Littered” Index Score

PRESS RELEASE

June 2008

                                     Akron Closer to a Slightly Littered Index Score

Akron, Ohio – Keep America Beautiful, Inc.  requires its 565 affiliate communities across the country to take a serious look at their particular litter situation using its Litter Index.According to a 2000 Yankelovich study almost half of all Americans (48%) admit to having littered in the past 10 years and it shows on many of our streets, parks, neighborhoods and work sites. Where there is litter, people do not feel safe. Given this unsightly and sometimes hazardous situation, Keep America Beautiful set out to create the Litter Index as a way for communities to measure litter from year to year, address their problems and measure their progress against a baseline year.

The tool uses a simple four-point Likert-type ordinal scale (ranging from 1-no litter to 4-extremely littered), and was tested for statistical validity and refined in six field test sites throughout the USA.TheLitter Index was designed to be applicable in rural or urban areas of any population size.Each year, participants are asked to grade their communities during a drive-by windshield examination of the same areas at the same time of year, to assess if the area is more or less littered, which will give an indication of the success of anti-littering education, or work yet to be done.

Keep Akron Beautiful conducted its seventh annual Litter Index on June 29, 2007 and Akron rated a 1.6 overall, four tenths above the 2006 rating, moving closer to the 2.0 rating of “slightly littered”.The most littered land use was the residential neighborhoods of the city, with the least littered sites used for educational (school grounds) or farming uses (a Ward 4 farm). City Wards 7, 8 and 9 were in the “no litter” category overall.

Five participants conducted this year’s Litter Index with Paula Davis, Keep Akron Beautiful’s Executive Director, accompanying the scoring team on their tour of the ten-city wards.The route was set up to look at all types of land use in each ward: commercial, educational, recreational, residential, industrial, and in Ward 4, agricultural. Mrs. Davis commented, “It was a hot summer day when we canvassed the City finding most of the wards approaching a slightly littered score, higher than previous years, but still manageable”. Over the next year, Keep Akron Beautiful would like to focus their litter prevention efforts on residential streets by working with neighborhood block watch groups, their council representatives and the community policing force.

In 1998, Keep America Beautiful retained Dr. J. Winston Porter, president of the Waste Policy Center in Leesburg, VA, and former U.S. EPA assistant administrator, to serve as manager of this litter measurement tool development project.Dr. Porter, along with a team of experts in the field of litter, reviewed and researched existing state, national, and international litter measurement tools.The result of this process was the creation of the nationally implemented Litter Index.

Keep America Beautiful, Inc. is a nonprofit organization, whose network of over 560 local, statewide, and international programs, educate individuals about litter prevention and ways to reduce, reuse, recycle, and properly manage waste materials.Through partnerships and strategic alliances with citizens, businesses and government, their programs motivate millions of volunteers annually to clean up, beautify, and improve their neighborhoods, creating safer and more livable community environments.

Keep Akron Beautiful develops and implements public education and community improvement programs on litter prevention, recycling, waste management and beautification to encourage citizens to take pride in Akron by participating in these activities.

Keep Akron Beautiful's mission statement: improving Akron's quality of life through beautification and responsible environmental management.

Want to Recycle in Akron?

To Recycle Curbside

To learn how to recycle curbside every week, call (330) 375-2129, M-F 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

To Recycle Hazardous Materials

To find out where to recycle items not collected curbside, such as household hazardous waste, contact the Summit Akron Solid Waste Management Authority at (330) 374-0383 or www.saswma.org for answers!

To Dispose of Recyclables and Hazardous Materials

Contact the Summit Akron Solid Waste Management Authority at (330) 374-0383 or www.saswma.org or the City of Akron Sanitation Services Department at www.ci.akron.oh.us (select “Sanitation Services” from the drop-down box and hit “GO”)