Meridian and Lauderdale County residents are banding together to beautify their community with a Good Citizen Clean-up Day set for March 23. From 9 a.m. to noon, citizens are encouraged to join in the effort to pick up litter and debris and help make their community a brighter place to live.

Betty Lou Jones, who helps run Keep Meridian/Lauderdale County Beautiful, which is part of the Keep America Beautiful organization, said Meridian has a litter problem, and it will take everyone in the community to solve it.

“This is a serious situation,” she said. “We’ve got to have our town looking clean and pretty, and we can’t beautify until we can clean it up.”

Efforts to address the litter problem began several years ago, but progress was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. Now, with the pandemic under control, Jones said now is again the time to clean up the town.

The March 23 cleanup will be the second Good Citizen Clean-up Day, Jones said, after a successful trial run last November. More than 100 volunteers from school clubs, civic organizations and church groups participated in the event with more than 1.5 tons of trash and debris removed from city streets.

Jones said the goal is to build on that success with the second cleanup, as well as lay the foundation for more regular cleanup events throughout the year. Picking up trash one or two days a year will not solve the problem, she said, and efforts to beautify Meridian and Lauderdale County must be continuously moving forward.

“We cannot continue to live like this,” Jones said. “And so this is the first big step, and we invite everybody to participate because it’s everybody’s responsibility, not yours, not mine, but ours.”

Both the Meridian City Council and Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors have pledged their support for the clean-up day, Jones said, and all of the materials volunteers will need, such as trash bags, will be provided. All residents need to do, she said, is join in the effort.

Groups interested in volunteering can contact Craig Wilkes at 601-485-1998 or 917-664-7255 to register and arrange to pick up the clean-up materials ahead of time, Jones said. Similar to last year’s event, she said groups will be assigned to different locations throughout the city and county that have previously been identified as needing attention.

Any local businesses interested in supporting the initiative can also get involved by donating either funds or materials that can be used in the clean-up effort, Jones said.

Keep Meridian/Lauderdale County Beautiful is also inviting residents to suggest locations for future clean-up days, she said.

“If they have an area they would like to see cleaned up, and they can’t do it, they need to call us and say this street, from here to here, is pitiful, and we’ll assign that to a group,” she said. “So we’re not going to leave any stone unturned.”

Spring is almost here, Jones said, and with it comes flowers blooming and all sorts of beautiful things. Meridian is also beautiful, she said, and it deserves the chance to show that to the rest of the world.

“Meridian is a beautiful, beautiful town, and a little bit of effort on the part of everybody will make it beautiful again,” she said. “But we can’t do it without everybody doing their part.”

Following the clean-up, Jones said, the Good Citizen Clean-up Day will conclude with an afterparty at Highland Park for all the volunteers who took part. The group will have lunch, she said, and celebrate their work making the town a cleaner place to live.

A list of clean-up locations for the March 23 event is being finalized and will be published when it becomes available.