When you are driving down the road, highway, or interstate, do you ever notice anything on the side of the road or in the ditches? Perhaps you may see some beautiful plants or an animal, but like most of us, garbage and litter that is being tossed every day is overlooked.

Most people think one little wrapper or soda that they throw out is not going to be that big of a deal for the environment, but when multiple people are doing it daily it starts to pile up. When someone litters it can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 500 years for it to decompose. This is why it is important to us to give back and adopt a highway to clean up a small portion of the litter on this planet.

Here at ATS, we like to give back and try to keep our planet clean to the best of our ability. For the last two years, ATS has been part of an Iowa program called Adopt-A-Highway.

The Adopt-A-Highway program was created by the Iowa Department of Transportation (which could be different in the state you live in) to help increase public awareness of the environmental needs along Iowa highways. Anyone and everyone, from individuals to groups and companies can Adopt-A-Highway to improve the roadsides. Opportunities are endless on how you can help. Litter clean-up, plant new trees and shrubs, maintenance on existing plants and much more with approval from the DOT.

Adopt-A-Highway is a great way to give back, keep everything looking more attractive and make improvements to the planet, not to mention keeping habitats and food sources clean for the wildlife.

On Friday a few weeks ago, the ATS employees geared up in their yellow vests and hit the roadsides for the second year in a row. For a few short hours, employees were able to walk both sides of Highway 151 from their corporate office to Highway 30. The roadside clean-up consisted of walking two miles each way through ditches.

It was a fun-filled day for the employees with beautiful weather. The Kansas City office came in town to help the corporate office in Fairfax.  Throughout the day everyone was laughing and having fun. Competition against each other was on full display, trying to find the weirdest or most surprising thing along the way.

After a few hours of roadside clean up the ATS employees were treated to lunch.  Enjoying some free time to talk, laugh, and enjoy the rest of the sunny day. It was a great way to end a hard-working week.