(upbeat music) - Hi friends, my name is Michael Barger and I am with Keep Arkansas Beautiful.

Now what we do is we work with 18,000 volunteers all across the state of Arkansas and they help us pick up litter and they help us make spaces beautiful by planting flowers or even painting big murals for us.

Now, today we're going to be talking about litter and I happen to be standing right next to this storm drain.

Now most of us have storm drains in our communities but I want to tell you a little bit more about what happens when litter goes into one of these places.

But first, we've got to cover a little bit more about litter.

Right now with this bottle in my hand, it's trash.

There's nothing in it.

I'm done with it, it's trash.

But when I drop it on the ground, it's litter.

So just so we have our words right, now I've got trash, now it's litter.

And litter doesn't stay where it sits in Arkansas.

Right now it's rainy just a little bit.

And that means this water's going to rush down the street and it's going to pick up all of the litter on the ground, send it straight into the storm drain.

And next I'm going to show you where this bottle might end up.

(upbeat music) Well friends, welcome back.

And as you can see, we've still got our bottle.

And what we want to stop it from doing is that litter ending up in a creek that you see right here.

This is Rose Creek in Little Rock, Arkansas, right next to our state capital.

When that storm drain collects all that litter and it pushes it down, it ends up straight in our waterways.

And what we've made right here is called a trash boom.

Now I know we think of the word boom in a lot of ways but a trash boom is something totally different.

It is tied to two trees, it's floating across the top of the creek.

Now this little bitty trash boom captures that trash so our volunteers can come and clean it out for us.

Now while this trash boom isn't very big it is doing a huge, huge job for the whole world because if these bottles keep floating down the creek, not long they end up in the mighty Arkansas River and the bottle keeps going all the way to the Atlantic Ocean in a place called the Gulf of Mexico.

Now we don't want that bottle ending up in the ocean.

This helps us keep it right here.

(upbeat music) Now one thing you can do is to keep it with you and put it away where it needs to be at the start, right?

Now, friends, guess what?

I have a very, very special friend of mine that some of you may have seen all over the state and I know he's here in the park, so let's go find him right now.

(upbeat music) Hi friends.

Guess who I found?

Just to above where we were in Rose Creek I found Otto the Otter, and you may have seen Otto 'cause he's all over the state of Arkansas, keeping it beautiful.

Now, Otto, we are just above a trash boom we are at and I'm wondering what can our friends do at home or really anybody in the whole state of Arkansas to help keep it beautiful?

Yes, that's a great idea.

We can pick up litter where we find it and put it away in the trash.

Otto, I have something to tell you and I want to tell you too.

Last year we had over 18,000 volunteers across the whole state, keeping it beautiful.

That's right.

You know what they picked up?

457 tons of litter.

That's like 61 elephants or even 31 school buses of trash.

That's a lot of litter.

Now you can do your part by not only picking up litter but you can do your own research at home about recycling, about litter, about pollution and what we can do to help keep Arkansas beautiful.

So if you go to keeparkansasbeautiful.com you'll see Otto the Otter, you'll see his school book, you'll see all sorts of programs and some fun things to learn.

So come visit us at keeparkansasbeautiful.com so we can all work together to keep Arkansas clean.

Thank you friends.

(upbeat music)