Keep McAllen Beautiful also invested in BigBelly trash units to help increase trash capacity and keep it off the streets.

This mural depicts two of the endangered fauna as cute cartoon characters and encourages visitors, “For the love of the river, pick up your litter!” These characters will also be featured in a youth education and activity book currently in production. Other San Marcos projects include a gabion wall constructed behind a busy truck stop that was polluting one of their major feeder creeks and conducting various hot spot cleanups and litter audits throughout their community. They also partnered with the local university, Texas State University, to spread more awareness and increase litter and recycling programs on campus.

Litter collected from this and other methods throughout the region was audited and studied by Black Cat GIS to create a methodology that will be shared with peers and students throughout Texas.  KTB also partnered with the Galveston Bay Foundation to improve and promote the Galveston Bay Action Network (GBAN). GBAN (www.galvbay.org) allows citizens to report litter hot spots, abandoned vessels and traps, illegal dumping and other pollution in the four counties that surround Galveston Bay.  Through a questionnaire, reports are automatically sent to the appropriate agency for cleanup and action. Improvements will help make the site more user friendly and promotion will spread the word to increase citizen awareness and usage of the site.  This will, in turn, help increase citizen action taken to clean up the bay and keep it beautiful!