The 2008 Don’t Mess with Texas Trash-Off:
Tons of fun for everyone

What do you get when more than 55,580 exuberant people descend on Texas highways? If you answered, “chili cook-off,” try again. If you said “The Annual Don’t Mess with Texas Trash-Off,” you’d be right on the money.

The 2008 Don’t Mess with Texas Trash-Off will take place on April 5, 2008. Want to be part of it? Contact your local Keep Texas Beautiful affiliate.

Organized through a partnership between Keep Texas Beautiful and the Texas Department of Transportation, the Trash-Off is the state’s single largest one-day cleanup event. And you and everyone you know are invited to join in.

Fun by the ton. In 2007, Texans were out in record number showing their Texas pride, with more than 55,580 volunteers picking up over 3 million pounds of litter (more than 1,500 tons!).

Years of Trashing-Off. From our local Adopt-a-Highway roots to events nationwide, Trash-Off gets bigger and better every year. Just look how far we’ve come.

1986-2005  
The whole thing started in 1986 when Adopt-a-Highway launched the Great Texas Trash-Off, encouraging motorists to refrain from littering for one day. The following year, it was expanded to include litter pickup. By 1991, 42 states, the District of Columbia, and Costa Rica and Honduras joined in on what became the Great American Trash-Off.

As the years progressed, the Texas program was renamed the Don’t Mess with Texas Trash-Off, gaining popularity and volunteer support. By 2004, over 126,000 volunteers took part, including more than 1,700 Adopt-a-Highway groups and over 150 communities across the state. And talk about pulling your weight — these folks outdid themselves in 2005, picking up an estimated 575 tons of litter.

You call that trash?
We’ve heard about people throwing their money away, but we thought it was just a figure of speech. We stand in our orange vests, corrected. With Trash-Off volunteers picking up more than 14 million tons of trash over the years (that’s 1,417 pounds for every man, woman and child in Texas), we’re bound to come up with some rather unusual finds. Among them: winning lottery tickets, purses, CD’s, photographs, a microwave and, you guessed it, an envelope full of cash.