‘Don’t be a litterhead.’ Fresno mayor launches new campaign to clean up the city
Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer launched a new campaign Wednesday with the slogan “Don’t be a litterhead” to encourage Fresnans not to litter.
It’s the latest phase of the mayor’s Beautify Fresno efforts, which have included volunteer cleanup events and work done by city crews.
In the coming months, residents can expect to see billboards, bus wraps and radio and television commercials for the campaign. The visuals will feature human-like figures with the city’s most common littered items as heads, such as a cigarette butt, to-go coffee cup, soda can or food wrapper.
“The reason that we have trash in our city is because we tolerate it,” Dyer said. “What we have to do is send a message that we as a community will no longer tolerate trash in our city.”
In the city’s last budget cycle, the Fresno City Council approved a $100,000 funding allocation for the campaign.
City officials also plan to hire additional staff and upgrade big equipment so city crews can double down on their cleanup work, said Su Fang, a solid waste manager with the city.
“We’re going to make a lot of effort to make the city a whole lot cleaner,” Fang said.
Mark Standriff, Beautify Fresno’s director, said special attention is being paid to Chinatown and areas of City Council District 7 in east-central Fresno, and he hopes those efforts will expand to other areas of the city in the upcoming fiscal year.
“We know we have to be relentless in our approach in order to start changing those behaviors and letting the people know that this is a city worth caring about,” Standriff said.
The new campaign was developed by JP Marketing, and OutFront Media donated $50,000 for billboards for the campaign.
The next phase of the “Litterhead” campaign will be enforcement, Dyer said. He wanted to first focus on awareness before working with the city attorney’s office and code enforcement to crack down on littering and illegal dumping. Come summer, enforcement efforts will ramp up, he said.