Volunteers are needed for the city of Wheeling’s neighborhood cleanups on Saturday, April 19, officials announced.

The cleanups will be held on Browns Run Road, Elm Grove, Woodsdale and Tunnel Green.

To volunteer, participants are asked to meet at 8:45 a.m. at Bridge Street School, Vance Church parking lot, or the Tunnel Green baseball field.

Another cleanup on Wheeling Island is scheduled for Saturday, April 26.

The cleanups are part of Keep America Beautiful’s national Great American Cleanup, the nation’s largest community improvement program that takes place annually from March 1 through May 31, explained Joelle Ennis, Wheeling’s marketing specialist.

Volunteers for local events this year include groups from Bridge Street Middle School, Wheeling Jesuit University, Vance Church, Oglebay Institute’s Schrader Environmental Center, and the city of Wheeling.

Wheeling’s Great American Cleanup activities are part of a larger national effort that is expected to involve close to 2.5 million people, volunteering more than 8 million hours to clean, beautify and improve 15,000 communities during 30,000 events in all 50 states.

Activities will include beautifying parks and recreation areas, cleaning seashores and waterways, handling recycling collections, picking up litter and removing scrap tires, planting trees and flowers, and conducting educational programs and litter-free events.

In 2007, cleanup efforts resulted in 200 million pounds of litter and debris removed from America’s landscape, including 3,500 illegal dump sites and over 10,000 abandoned vehicles.

Participants planted 4.6 million trees, flowers and bulbs, and collected over 2.2 million scrap tires, 22.4 million pounds of aluminum and steel, 592,000 pounds of wireless phones and related equipment, and over 70 million PET bottles for recycling.