Forsyth County cleanup rally set for Saturday at Cumming Fairgrounds

Keep Forsyth County Beautiful will bring volunteers to the Cumming Fairgrounds arena at 9 a.m. Saturday for the Great FoCo Cleanup, then send crews out in teams or as individuals to pick up litter along roadways across the county. After the cleanup, participants will return to the fairgrounds for food and fun at 235 Castleberry Road, turning the morning into both a service project and a community gathering.

The county asked volunteers to pre-register by Thursday, April 19, so organizers could send out detailed instructions. Registration was available by phone, email or online through Keep Forsyth County Beautiful. Group sign-ups were asked to include the group name, leader contact information and expected headcount, while individual volunteers were asked for basic contact information.

Before heading out, participants will pick up supplies and receive a road assignment, then go clean their assigned stretch. Lunch is provided afterward, and the event is open to citizens, families, organizations, businesses and clubs that want to help improve the look of the county’s roadsides and public spaces.

Keep Forsyth County Beautiful is a local affiliate of Keep America Beautiful and Keep Georgia Beautiful, administered through a memorandum of understanding between Forsyth County Government and the Keep Forsyth County Beautiful Inc. nonprofit board of directors. The cleanup is part of Keep America Beautiful’s 2026 Greatest American Cleanup, which aims to remove 25 billion pieces of litter from parks, waterways and public spaces by July 4, 2026, as the nation marks its 250th birthday.

Forsyth County has used the Great FoCo Cleanup as a recurring spring effort, with previous notices for March 16, March 26 and a countywide March 23-April 22 cleanup window that ran through Earth Day. The county’s 2026 Great American Cleanup calendar also spans March 1 through May 31, underscoring that the April 21 rally sits inside a longer season of litter pickup across Forsyth.

The scale of that work is easier to see in statewide numbers. Keep Georgia Beautiful Foundation reported that in 2025, 18,056 volunteers from 47 communities took part in 1,182 events, cleaning 2,463 miles of streets, roadsides and waterways and 1,925 acres of parks and green space while collecting 508,958 pounds of litter. Those totals show why a few hours at the Cumming Fairgrounds can still add up to a visible difference on the roads Forsyth County residents drive every day.