Framingham Litter Group Joins Keep Massachusetts Beautiful

FRAMINGHAM, MA — A litter pickup group that formed in Framingham during the pandemic is taking another step forward. The Clean Up Framingham group this week became a chapter of the nonprofit Keep Massachusetts Beautiful, and changed its name to Keep Framingham Beautiful.

Here's more from a Keep Framingham Beautiful press release:

Last March, when faced with cancelling the 10th annual Framingham Earth Day Festival in April, the planning committee brainstormed ways they could continue the mission of the festival during times of social distancing. One idea became the “Clean Up Framingham” Facebook group, where members of our community have been posting pictures of litter they have cleaned up since April 22nd, 2020 (Earth Day).

Over the past 10 months, well over 600 individual clean-ups have been posted to the group and a community of nearly 1000 members has enjoyed the camaraderie associated with making Framingham a cleaner place to live. The Facebook group provides an easy way for people to share their progress in a supportive community allowing the group to easily track their collective efforts around the city. They occasionally plan coordinated clean up events, but their main focus is to encourage folks to pick up litter any time they can.

Related: How Garbage Is Freeing People During Coronavirus Quarantine

Recently, members of the group officially changed the name to Keep Framingham Beautiful, becoming a chapter of Keep Massachusetts Beautiful. Keep Massachusetts Beautiful launched in 2014 as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the simple idea that “beauty matters.” A landscape littered with trash is anything but beautiful. Keep Massachusetts Beautiful focuses on four core impact areas in order to improve local communities: Litter Prevention and Cleanup, Waste Reduction and Recycling, Beautification and Community Greening and Environmental Education.

Keep Framingham Beautiful's mission now aligns with their parent organization: "taking action to make Framingham a cleaner, greener, litter-free place to live, work, and play." If you would like to help us with this mission, please join their renamed Facebook group here.

If you are not on Facebook, no worries! You can help by simply picking up litter whenever you can following the guidance listed here which is accessible even if you don’t have Facebook.