| Holiday Name: | National CleanUp Day |
| Duration: | 1 day |
| Frequency: | Annual |
| Observedby: | National CleanUp Day is observed globally. |
| Date: | 3rd Saturday in September |
| Celebrations: | Volunteer to cleanup the country. |
| Type: | National |
| Weekday: | Saturday |
| Month: | September |
| Startedby: | Bill Willoughby and Steve Jewett |
National Clean Up Day is annually held in the United States and globally on the third Saturday of September. In the United States, there are cleanups held in every State and territory. It encourages country-scale organized, individual cleanup events, volunteering to keep the outdoors clean, and prevent plastic from entering the ocean. National CleanUp Day is organized by Clean Trails, a non-profit organization founded by Bill Willoughby and Steve Jewett. The organization fosters environmental stewardship by encouraging local and national cleanup events, emphasizing the importance of preserving natural spaces for future generations.[1]
The inaugural National CleanUp Day was held in 2017 and had more than 225,000 volunteers.[2] In 2018, the event had over 1,500,000 volunteers. 14 million pounds of waste was collected and held in conjunction with the inaugural World Cleanup Day.[3] [4] [5]
The 2019 cleanup received nearly 2,000,000 volunteers and resulted in the collection of 18,000,000 pounds of waste.[6] The U.S. event was coordinated with World Cleanup Day and saw a combined amount of 20,000,000 volunteers in 170 countries, which is the largest, single day global volunteer event.[7] Beginning in 2018, the U.S. Department of Transportation participated in cleanups on their local and interstate highway systems.[8] [9] [10]
In April 2019, Earth Day partnered with National CleanUp Day and Keep America Beautiful for the inaugural Earth Day CleanUp, which had over 500,000 volunteers working to clean up trash and litter nationally.[11] [12] Earth Day and presenting partners, World CleanUp Day, National CleanUp Day and Keep America Beautiful organized individual activities like Plogging and the TrashTag Challenge.[13]