Who We Are
Maine is ME. My pride. My ownership. My home.
Maine doesn’t have a litter problem. Maine has a pride opportunity.
Keep Maine Beautiful isn’t a cleanup drive. We start from something simpler and truer than any program: the love Mainers already carry for this place. Our whole purpose is to give that love something to do.
From the founder
For years I noticed the litter along Maine’s roads and shorelines and felt the same pull — someone ought to look after this place. I never finished the thought. It never crossed my mind that the someone could be me — that looking after a whole state, the one you love, is something a person can simply decide to do. Then this year the wish I’d carried so long finally changed one word: not someone — me. So I started. And the surprise was how fast I had company. One by one, other Mainers who’d felt that same pull began saying me too. If you’ve felt it, you were one of us before you knew it. Maine is ME — and maybe it’s you, too.
— Karen O. Andrei, Founder
Here’s how we see it. Maine is our home. And like any home, we get it ready to welcome the people who come to visit — not because it’s dirty, but because we’re proud of it and we want everyone who arrives to feel that.
That one shift changes everything. A can carried back to its nickel, a trailhead tidied, flowers set by the town sign — none of it is a chore. It’s hospitality. We’re not fixing a problem. We’re getting the house ready for company.
There’s litter in our ditches today, so that’s where we begin — we pick it up, we redeem the nickels, we sort what can still be saved. But clearing it was never the point. The point is the day there’s nothing to clear: when the nip bottle and the cigarette pack never go out the car window — when the day’s garbage rides home in the car instead of onto the roadside, because looking after Maine is simply who we are. Getting started means clearing what’s here. The whole idea is that it stops.
When we care, the nip bottle never leaves the car. Everything else is just catching up to that.
We’re building the Community Crew — people across Maine who love this place and choose to show up. There’s no job you have to do; loving Maine is enough. As the Crew grows, so does the map: town by town, county by county, Mainers standing up for the places they’re proud of.
Alongside it, we’re building things meant to last — a springtime welcome for Maine’s visitors, an effort to see more of Maine’s bottles redeemed rather than landfilled, and there is more to come. Each one is built to endure, not to make a splash.
And beneath all of it is the simplest part, the part that happens at home: redeem your bottles — and if not for you, set them aside for someone else to take. Break down the cardboard. Separate what can still be recycled. It’s that simple, and it’s just part of the day. No one is watching. No one is keeping score. That’s pride and ownership, quietly, in your own life — not a drive, not a once-a-year event. Just how we live here.
We’re not here to point fingers or change anyone. When something needs setting right, we don’t make a lesson of it — we lead by example, quietly redirect, and own the fix ourselves. We don’t sell your attention, either: no advertising, no tracking, ever. And we don’t treat Maine as a problem to be managed. Pride lifts; that’s the whole method.
Maine is ME. My pride. My ownership. My home. It is who I am.
For the love of Maine — come stand with us.
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