This year, local Austin company GoodPop truly stood out for all the great work they did in the community, and we’re proud to recognize them with the Ebay Community Involvement Award. Hardworking Keep Austin Beautiful volunteers have been falling in love with GoodPop since 2015, when we first partnered with them to supply cleanups with free frozen pops—an especially sweet reward for volunteers committed to picking up litter and caring for our open spaces even during the long, hot Austin summers. This partnership soon grew into the #oddtrash campaign, a friendly competition among Clean Lady Bird Lake volunteers to find the strangest piece of litter during their bimonthly cleanups for a chance to win a free month’s supply of popsicles. It provided a great excuse for volunteers to explore all the nooks and crannies of the lake and shoreline in their efforts to pick up as much trash as possible, while also calling broader public attention to problems associated with littering.
GoodPop has also created an eye-catching mobile popsicle sculpture that combines public art with useful information about properly disposing of waste and recycling. Whether set in the heart of downtown during a festival or along a peaceful greenbelt trail, the giant Orange ’n Cream popsicle is a perfectly Austin way to educate the public about reducing waste and establishing good recycling habits.
Wanting to have even more hands-on involvement with environmental stewardship, this year GoodPop employees adopted a section of Little Walnut Creek off 51st Street that was in desperate need of attention. The greenbelt park around the creek had long been used as an illegal dumping site, and during cleanups the Friends of Little Walnut Creek Greenbelt Adopt-a-Creek group has cleared out bedframes, tires, carpet, lumber, and other large items, in addition to hundreds of pounds of litter. The group has especially focused on cleaning up hard-to-access areas to ensure that trash doesn’t continue traveling downstream through the greenbelt. As part of their two-year commitment to the Adopt-a-Creek program, the good folks at GoodPop have also been vocal advocates for rezoning the current park to prevent it from being developed. Collecting more than 30 letters in support of their campaign, the group recently got the Planning Commission to permanently rezone the greenbelt for park use, and will soon be before City Council to argue their case. Clara McBrayer, organizer of the Adopt-a-Creek group, explains their commitment to preserving the park for the community, saying, “as an Austin-based business, it’s important to us to keep our beautiful city clean so that everyone (locals and visitors alike) can enjoy what Austin has to offer for generations to come.”
Beyond GoodPop’s impressive involvement with local issues, they immediately joined in statewide efforts to help Texans impacted by Hurricane Harvey. The small but mighty team quickly collected much-needed materials after the storm and delivered them directly to impacted areas. Through their profit-sharing, they also purchased cots for first responders on the coast, and contributed in every capacity they could.
It’s been sweet working with GoodPop, and we’re delighted to continue partnering with them to do good things in the community in the future.
Join us in honoring Good Pop alongside Keep Austin Beautiful’s other 2017 awardees at the Beautify Bash, taking place at Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum on Thursday, November 16, from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. For more info and tickets, please visit keepaustinbeautiful.org/beautifybash.
