MLB helps beautify Central Park for Earth Day

NEW YORK -- Earth Day is Friday, but Major League Baseball went green and clean at Central Park a few days earlier. It’s part of an ongoing effort to help protect the environment.

On Monday, about 20 MLB employees gave three hours of their time for an Earth Day volunteer event with the Central Park Conservancy. They worked hard to clean the park's landscape; some raked up leaves, while others put garbage where it rightfully belonged -- in the garbage can.

The cleanup is dedicated to anyone who loves walking through the famous park in Manhattan. The cleanup makes Central Park more beautiful when the weather gets warmer in the spring and summer.

“It was a wonderful little event that we were able to have with MLB,” said Joanna Lees, manager of corporate and institutional giving at Central Park Conservancy. “[The volunteers] were wonderful. They also green mulched the area to beautify the landscape.

“Central Park has nearly 42 million visits a year, and the volunteer project really makes the park more inviting, more beautiful and more open to everyone that comes in.”

To show how much it wants to improve the landscape, MLB made a donation of $7,500 to the Central Park Conservancy to keep the park as pristine as possible in the long term.

The Central Park Conservancy is a private, not-for-profit organization that manages Central Park and is responsible for raising the park's annual operating budget. The Conservancy’s staff of more than 300 people is responsible for all aspects of the park’s stewardship, from day-to-day maintenance and operations to continued restoration and rebuilding projects.

Additionally, the Conservancy operates the park’s visitor centers, provides public programs and serves as a resource for other NYC parks and for public-private partnerships around the world.