Our Focus

Keep Northern Illinois Beautiful works to provide sustainable solutions to improve the physical and visual aspects of our community environments that individuals can directly impact through personal and corporate involvement in these focus areas:

Litter Prevention- A clean community discourages littering and illegal dumping. Proper handling of litter and waste in a community raises the standards and expectations of everyone. Litter is both an individual problem and a community problem. One approach to litter prevention is through education of our school children. Keep Northern Illinois Beautiful makes presentations to thousands of elementary grade children every year with the anti-littering message, encouraging them to begin litter-free practices and to take the message home.

Beautification and Community Involvement- In addition to teaching the anti-litter message to children we annually sponsor the Great American Clean-Up which couples the negative "don't litter"message with a positive "beautification" message. We encourage schools, businesses, neighborhood associations and other community groups to take personal responsibility for cleaning up and beautifying their own area.

While litter is an individual and community problem, the solution is also found in the individual and the communities who take action and make positive moves toward improving their local area into something they can take community pride in.

Waste Reduction- According to the "Nonhazardous Solid Waste Management and Landfill Capacity in Illinois Annual Report" released December 14, 2006, developed by the Illinois EPA, there are just 19 years of landfill space left in Illinois. Locally, Winnebago Reclamation Service of Rockford collects an average of 1,289 tons of waste every day. This is the state's 12th highest volume of refuse. Unless more attention is paid to the concept of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle the Rock River Valley will soon find itself with nowhere left to dispose of its daily production of waste.

The key to success in each of these areas is the development of sustainable solutions. Keep Northern Illinois Beautiful encourages individuals and community groups to work together and become mutually accountable to each other for doing their part in making and keep their community a cleaner, happier and healthier place to live.