Keep Charlotte Beautiful Inc

What We Do

People often view Keep Charlotte Beautiful (KCB) as the cleanup group or they just key in on beautiful and think we are out planting flower gardens. KCB, one of 700+ Keep America Beautiful Affiliates (KAB) and 40+ Keep Florida Beautiful Affiliates (KFB), goes much deeper than that. We focus on our mission to inspire and educate people to take action every day to improve and beautify Charlotte County. KCB actually has four program goals: Reducing Waste, Ending Littering, Improving the Quality of Recycling, and Greening our community.

Do we do cleanups? Of course! The Great American Cleanup and the International Coastal Cleanup are two of our biggest events during the year, gathering over 1600 amazing volunteers to clean land and waterways. But KCB also organizes the Keep Charlotte Beautiful Recycling Event every December, FREE to residents and businesses, where they can drop off electronics, shred documents, drop off old medicines, and donate food. This draws approximately 500 people every year. And we work with groups and schools who want to build community, pollinator, or native gardens.

But education is what makes our mission and goals sustainable.

Waste in Place® in S.T.E.M. Classes

KCB believes that with environmental education, we will see the long term change we need to keep our environment clean and healthy for future generations. In this weeklong S.T.E.M. Lab takeover, we provide real-world, hands-on lessons, that teach students about their environment. The students receive a presentation on community, littering, reduction of waste, reuse, recycling, composting or how a landfill operates.  the ultimate goal of coming in every year to reach the students six times before they move into middle school. The lessons build on each other and help the student have the critical thinking skills needed to make sound environmental decisions and to be a leader, who can gently teach others how to care for their environment. 

Recycle Bowl

The Recycle Bowl is a friendly competition between schools to see who can recycle the most in the month leading up to America Recycles Day on November 15th. This program gives Green Team students the opportunity to learn more about recycling and how to do it properly. They educate their peers, weigh the recycling every week, and report their numbers. This program is a great way to refine their recycling and leadership skills!

The Environmental Art Student Calendar Contest

Every year, KCB organizes this art contest with our local Art teachers! The goal is to have student reflect on some aspect of a healthy environment and create 2D art to convey that message to the public. We have 26 winners, one for background art, and two pieces to be displayed on t-shirts that we produce during the year. This year we had 561 entries. We produce the calendar and the Art teachers receive copies to sell to support supplies or a project for the next year.

The thread through all of our programs is that we are looking to educate our community members and bring them together so they may take the actions that they want to see in their communities-to make their neighborhoods a better place to live. In doing this, we will have a cleaner, greener, more beautiful community.