Adopt a Highway is a worldwide program that partners with different organizations to help the environment, and the program annually has saved up to $19 million for taxpayers.
Locally, Adopt a Highway takes three groups of students, all from the St. Louis High School National Honors Society, and sends them on different roads to pick up garbage.
According to the Michigan Department of Transportation, who carry out the program, “Every year, civic-minded AAH volunteers collect more than 60,000 bags of trash from Michigan’s roadsides.”
The program’s goal is to motivate young people to be more engaged in helping the environment. While encouraging people to pick up trash, the program also helps bring a community together with a common goal.
Member of NHS, junior Tiger Russell shared, “I think it is important to teach more people about saving the environment because little by little, more people will become interested and, slowly, but surely, we can all help save the environment.”
Not only does the program benefit the environment, but businesses can also benefit from it. Adopting a highway can open up a new world of advertising. When a business adopts a highway, its name is plastered throughout the road. Aside from their names being advertised, the business can represent social responsibility, therefore giving it a good name, and encouraging people who might like that particular business to contribute to cleaning up.
Russell later added, “Well, if you clean up the trash, then it won’t be around for animals to eat.” He also mentioned, “It also keeps our streets cleaner for when people come to visit our city.”
As Russell mentioned, having a well-maintained city with less litter will bring in more tourists, in turn, powering economic growth for St. Louis.
