Join Your Neighbors In Keeping Minnesota’s Highways Clean

Are you in a civic club or organization? Are you part of a church group or have some closest friends you hang out with regularly? If your answer to any of those questions is yes, then you might be in a good place to adopt a highway. 

What Is Required To Adopt A Highway? 

The Minnesota Department of Transportation took to their “X” account yesterday reminding people that this time of year is a good time to keep Minnesota beautiful. The requirements aren’t probably as much as you think, see if you could handle this: 

• You meet with your group and at least twice per year, you pick up the trash that gets tossed out along the roadsides in Central Minnesota. 

• Four hours of labor to help keep the roadways clean and neat 

That’s pretty much it. There are some other rules, and safety is paramount in this program. 

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MnDOT says there are two options for you to choose from. The first is that you can pick a highway or designated rest areas off of the highways around the state and conduct a pick-up operation at least twice per year. 

The second option is a one-time litter collection effort on an assigned particular section of a highway around the state. The Minnesota Department of Transportation will provide the training, safety vests, bags and they will pick up the bags once your effort is done. 

Is There Really A Need To Adopt A Highway In Minnesota? 

According to the MnDOT data from 2024, over 80,600 volunteer hours were spent on litter collection efforts, and over 28,000 bags were used in the pick-ups. There were over 1,680 groups that participated last year in this program on the over 1,000 roadways in Minnesota that are available to be adopted.  

The state has outlined how safety is at the core of this program so volunteers would know what is expected of them and what is not.  

So back to my original question, which group of people that you know best fits to adopt a highway close to where you live or work?