In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, national nonprofit Keep America Beautiful is launching                                             DoBeautifulThings.org, a website designed to showcase acts of kindness during the COVID-19 pandemic.

With the postponement of live public volunteer events for both programs, Earth Day Network and Keep America Beautiful are taking their movements to digital platforms. 

Through a series of video vignettes and a set of informative resources, DoBeautifulThings.org was created to remind people to do their part to keep their communities beautiful. 

DoBeautifulThings.org is not only a website but a challenge to properly dispose of litter, recycle whenever possible and help each other keep Earth clean, KAB officials said. 

“At Keep America Beautiful we have been defining beautiful as ‘clean and green’ for over six decades,” said Keep America Beautiful President and CEO Helen Lowman. “But beautiful is much more than that.  Beautiful is people practicing acts of kindness. Beautiful is people coming together as a community. Even in challenging times, people do so many beautiful things — and we know that acts of beauty inspire more acts of beauty. DoBeautifulThings.org will demonstrate how many small, but beautiful actions can inspire positive change.”

Keep America Beautiful postponed its spring Great American Cleanup, the nation’s largest community improvement program, because of COVID-19. 

The Great American Cleanup engages more than half a million volunteers on an annual basis to get involved. 

In 2019 alone, Great American Cleanup volunteers devoted 3.8 million hours, improving 13,489 public spaces; collected 42 million pounds of litter, debris and recyclables; cleaned and improved more than 30,000 miles of roadways and shorelines; and completed 168,000 plantings over 132,000 acres. 

Lowman said because of restrictions placed on volunteers, Keep America Beautiful is pursuing other avenues for engagement.

The #DoBeautifulThings Great American Cleanup Virtual Experience, a feature of DoBeautifulThings.org, is a “virtual park” in which people can interact and beautify through virtual experiences. As users earn points for taking action, a virtual park will be cleaned and beautified and eventually become eligible for a Keep America Beautiful community beautification project when volunteers are able to safely re-engage with one another.

“The Great American Cleanup Virtual Experience will serve as a fun way for us to showcase that we intend to keep our commitment to the beautification of our communities  – straight through these challenging times,” Lowman said. 

In lieu of the postponed live events, Keep America Beautiful invites you to join Earth Day Network today for Earth Day Live, a global digital mobilization in a collective call for climate action, and share beautiful video, images and stories on DoBeautifulThings.org on Earth Day and beyond, officials said.