Highway Spring Cleanup Beginning

Spring cleaning begins Saturday for highway roadsides in lower Michigan.

The Michigan Department of Transportation Adopt-A-Highway program will begin its 25th year when volunteers head out to pick up litter from April 11 to 19, the first of three scheduled pickups this year.

Due to snow still on the ground, the first Adopt-A-Highway pickup for northern lower Michigan and the Upper Peninsula will be later this month, from April 25 to May 3.

Statewide, there will be a summer pickup from July 11 to 19, and a fall pickup from September 26 to October 4.

M-DOT says in 2014, Adopt-A-Highway volunteer groups collect about 70,000 bags of litter annually with an estimated $5 million dollar benefit to state taxpayers in 2014 alone.