By Staff
Be prepared to get dirty Saturday.
Brewton is planning a community-wide cleanup to celebrate Earth Day and get our city in tip-top shape.
Sponsored by the chamber of commerce and the city's quality of life committee, the cleanup day will focus attention on the community's main arteries - Highways 31, 41 and 29 - which are naturally the first places visitors see.
Volunteers can meet at 8 a.m. at the City Park downtown to collect garbage bags and other supplies for the mass cleanup.
Then, at noon, everyone will gather for a free lunch in the park.
But even if you can't join the community cleanup, Saturday is still the perfect opportunity to spruce up your own little corner of the world.
Dumpsters will be placed around town to give residents an opportunity to throw away trash from their homes and yards, so you have no excuse for not taking advantage for the chance for spring cleaning.
A cleanup may seem like a trivial idea to some - but how our community looks to outsiders really does affect how we are perceived by potential employers and industries. Coastal Gateway Economic Development Authority Director Wiley Blankenship has often told the story of driving an industrial official through town only to have the prospect be turned off by the litter in the community.
Not only can the cleanup help us attract jobs, it can also simply help our community's morale. The theory that dirty places attract dirty people - and vice versa - really does hold weight.
So let's take the opportunity Saturday to take a step forward and clean up our community - we deserve to live amid beauty, not amid litter.