About 5,100 volunteers, including parents and students, picked up papers, soda bottles and other trash around the city for the 26th-annual Keep Austin Beautiful Clean Sweep on Saturday.
Volunteers separated into groups to clean 140 different sites in the city for two hours. On the UT campus, members of the national service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega picked up trash from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to Dean Keeton Street and Red River Street to Guadalupe Street.
Students collected about 3,000 cigarette butts in the area alone. Biochemistry and Pre-med junior Devin Greene said the sweep was a great opportunity to help out the campus and hang out with friends at the same time.
Afterward, the organization held a volunteer party, which included live music, environmental-education activities for kids, rock climbing and food to give back to the those who helped keep the city clean.
