Thanks to the support from our sponsors:

PA Workwear/ Department of Public Welfare

Philadelphia Workforce Development Corporation

SAP America

The Philadelphia Foundation

Thomas Skelton Harrison Foundation

BJs Charitable Trust

Barra Foundation, Inc.

McLean Contributionship

PECO

Residences at Dockside

US Airways

W.W. Smith Charitable Trust

Wachovia Bank, NA

Women's Way

Keep Philadelphia Beautiful Partners with Career Wardrobe

Help Us Crack Down on Waste

Philadelphia Daily News Letter to the Editor
By Phoebe Coles, Executive Director
Keep Philadelphia Beautiful

As we get into the swing of the cleaning season, it amazes many people how much trash accumulates on the streets. According to Keep America Beautiful, on average each person creates about five pounds of trash daily. In a city of 1.4 million, that's a lot of waste.

A large contributor is the use of so many disposable products. It often starts with packaging: the coffee cup, the sandwich bag we package our children's lunch in, the plastic bag at a store, the water bottle. These items didn't exist in such abundance 30 years ago. Keep Philadelphia Beautiful is starting a campaign aimed at creating greater awareness of waste-reduction strategies through reducing, reusing and recycling waste.

The focus for our commercial corridors will be plastic-bag reduction. As legislation advances to ban plastic bags, Philadelphia is pursuing a ban on or tax of plastic bags and a ban on polystyrene. The state has also weighed in with a proposed ban of all disposable bags. Regardless of what happens to these measures, we will focus on educating businesses and patrons to reduce the use of disposable plastic bags.

We will begin partnerships with Career Wardrobe and the Comprehensive Center for Fathers to highlight the reuse of clothing. These organizations are critical links to success for the populations they serve. With clothing donations, people are able to confidently enter the workforce. These organizations make reuse as easy as pulling things out of your closet to fill someone else's need.

Finally, throughout the summer, we will offer event recycling to communities engaged in the waste reduction campaign through their commercial corridor. Last year, the Manny Flick Regattas, Welcome America and the Manayunk Arts Festival ran successful event recycling pilots with our help. We will partner with planners for a recycle-on-the-go program at community events.

Keep Philadelphia Beautiful is a sponsoring organization of The Career Wardrobe's A Perfect Fit event on June 3, 2009. The organization will be donating a reusable canvas shopping bag to each attendee!