ODESSA, Texas — Keep Odessa beautiful kicked off the spring cleaning season with the "Don't mess with Texas Trash-Off."
Trash and illegal dumping has been a problem in Odessa and even though the city is no where near perfect, there have been some improvements.
Saturday's event was to help reduce waste and improve the overall quality of life for the citizens of Odessa even further.
The city wide cleanup in Odessa has people from all over the city putting in work to 'Keep Odessa Beautiful."
"We have over 5,000 volunteers, that are amazing," said Claudia Ortega, the Executive Director of Keep Odessa Beautiful. "Hard working committed, to making this place a better place and they all come together to do this thing so it's important for us, for the city to know that people really care. That's what they're doing, they're doing that today. As we speak, there are different groups out there cleaning different areas of the city."
The initiative also kicked off with information on what just one person can to help reduce waste.
"It takes everybody in our community to make a difference you know if we can all come and pick up litter or reduce waste, recycle, shredding, keep all of that stuff out of the landfill it is very important to keep our city safe clean and beautiful," Ortega said.
Education and events like these have been effective, illegal dumping at the recycling center which used to be a major problem has stopped.
"We do see changes, it's just that people don't talk about it enough, and I think people need to focus on those good things as well," Ortega said. "As we tell people why it's important and get everyone involved, we also need to tell people that people are changing, and given the resources people will do the right thing and that's been proven."
Even the little things make a difference.
"Come and pick up a re-usable bag...we provide them for free, and pick up some litter too, that's another way to help the community," Ortega said.
Next year the hope is, Odessa will be even cleaner and doing that takes a village.