This year is the 50^th anniversary of Green Up Day, a grassroots effort started by longtime Good Hill Road resident and volunteer, the late Millie Best, in 1974. Through the decades Weston Kiwanis has supported Ms. Best’s efforts by sponsoring Green Up Day. Coincidentally, Weston Kiwanis is also in its 50th year of service to our community helping folks like Ms. Best and many others with their volunteer efforts.

Green Up Day is always on the last Saturday in April, which this year comes on April 27. On that Saturday Kiwanis members and many other organizations and individual volunteers get out on town roads, parks and neighborhoods to pick up trash … yes, everything including bottles, cans, cigarette butts, plastic bags, and other litter.

Many town organizations help with the effort. This year the Beautification and Sustainability committees and Lachat Town Farm along with the Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Key Club members and other high school students have volunteered to help. Kiwanis also provides support to any Westonite who organizes their neighbors to clear litter along neighborhood streets.

Free litter bags can be picked up at the Norfield Church Hall at 9:00 am on April 27. Club volunteers arrange to get the filled bags to the Transfer Station.

Volunteers get a special reward from Eversource and our Weston Tree Warden. As long as supplies last, free tree seedlings for planting and care on residents’ properties will also be available on a first-come first-served basis at 9:00 am at Norfield Church Hall.

Through Millie Best’s efforts and the support of Weston Kiwanis, Green Up Day became a townwide event. In 1995, Millie and her volunteers succeeded in getting Public Act 95-67 passed through the General Assembly. The act requires the Governor of the State of Connecticut to proclaim the last Saturday in April “Green Up Day” to encourage people to clean up their communities, plant trees and flowers, and enhance the physical beauty of the state’s communities and countryside.

To celebrate environmental service leadership the Weston Kiwanis club established the Millie Best Environmental Service Award. The award was first conferred in 2005. This year the club will present the award at its April 20 breakfast meeting to Wildlife in Crisis Director Dara Reid.

Wildlife in Crisis is the only clinic of its kind in Connecticut. The facility accepts over 5,000 wounded, ill and orphaned wild animals each year, with the goal of healing them and returning them to their natural habitat.