Good Sam Club Launches Fourth Annual U.S.- Canada Cleanup
17 May 1999
Good Sam Club Launches Fourth Annual U.S.- Canada Cleanup
SANTA BARBARA, Calif.--May 17, 1999--RVers from across the United States will be making the world a little cleaner when the 2 million-member Good Sam RV Owners' Club stages a nationwide roadside cleanup the weekend of May 22-23.The campaign, whose slogan is "Getting Ready for Summer," also seeks to enlist the aid of every member of the general public to pick up at least one piece of trash that day.
Good Sam members will be out in force in at least 21 states and provinces, cleaning up areas as diverse as the main street of Anderson, Alaska, just south of Fairbanks; and a bleak, two-mile stretch of Highway 277 on the Mexican border outside Del Rio, Texas.
Canadian Good Samers will be sweeping Bow Valley Provincial Park, near Calgary, Alberta; and Idaho Good Samers will be tidying the RV dump outside Twin Falls. In Crawley, La., 10 to 15 Good Sam folks will sweep Highway 13 as it leads to Caplan; and near Omaha, Neb., some 25 Good Sam people will be cleaning the shores of Fremont Lake.
It will be the fourth time Good Sam members have undertaken a national cleanup. In previous years, some 500 chapters from the club cleaned up state and national parks, highways and local roads from Maine to California.
"This has become so popular, we have decided to make it an annual event," said Sue Bray, executive director of Good Sam, the world's largest RV owners' club, with more than 945,000 family memberships representing 2 million people, primarily in the United States and Canada.
"Good Sam was founded in 1966 by RVers to help other RVers with problems on the road, and it has always tried to live up to its name," Bray said. "Cleaning up roadside trash helps everyone."
About 265 of the Good Sam Club's chapters -- some 11,000 volunteers -- regularly clean up highways in their bright-orange safety vests as part of the Adopt-A-Highway program(a). Some of these chapters, along with many of the 1,800 other Good Sam chapters throughout Canada and the United States, are expected to participate in the litter cleanup.
"We are also asking everyone in the country to lend a hand and reach down and pick up a piece of paper that day," Bray added. "Who doesn't have time to do that?" she asked rhetorically. "That would mean millions fewer bits of trash in our environment. Think if we could all do that every day!"
Bray said that once again, Good Sam leaders are enlisting the support of state governors, plus many local mayors, asking them to declare May 22 "Good Sam Cleanup Day" in hopes of bringing attention to the massive project. Thirty-nine mayors and 13 governors publicly supported the Good Sam effort last year by recognizing its cleanup effort.
"We also hope the media will get involved," she said. "This is a win-win project that everyone can get behind. We urge everyone participating to recycle the material they collect if at all possible," she added.
For more information about the Good Sam Club on the Internet, see www.goodsamclub.com.
(a) Good Sam is believed to be the biggest single participant in
the Adopt-A-Highway program, cleaning up more than 600 miles
annually.