Grant provides free cleaning supplies to pick up litter in Roswell

ROSWELL, N.M. — “Keep Roswell Beautiful” aims to keep the city looking in good shape and free of any litter. 

Kathy Lay, the volunteer and outreach coordinator for Keep Roswell Beautiful, says last year they were able to clean up 35,000 pounds of trash. 

“That kind of impact is huge on our environment,” said Lay.

The City of Roswell wants to help keep it that way by supplying people with free cleaning kits. They will get however many trash grabbers, safety vests, gloves, bags, they need.

The program is funded by the City of Roswell and from the Clean and Beautiful Grant through the state’s Department of Tourism.

Lay says that funding also paid for their Clean and Beautiful to-go cart. 

“That funding paid for the trailer and the supplies that are in this trailer,” said Lay. “Then the matching funds from the city will supplement to continue to replenish and restock those supplies.”

The trailer is filled with the right tools for group cleanups.

“We drop it off at the area where the group is going to do the cleanup. They use the supplies, put them back in the trailer, and then we pick the trailer back up,” said Lay.

Keep Roswell Beautiful was awarded more than $50,000 this year. Soon, it won’t only be books that you can check out at the library. 

“It’s the library cleanup kits, where people can go into the Roswell library and check out a cleanup kit with a trash grabber like this. It can be bucket bags, gloves, they can go on to clean up, and then they fill out an impact card that they bring back of where they did the cleanup and how much later they picked up,” Lay said.

Lay says she’s hoping to get 20 cleaning kits to the library for people to check out.  The only criteria will be to clean public areas. 

“By encouraging people to do that they take pride in their community, they are able to increase the value of their property and make the tourism attraction better for our community as well,” said Lay.