North Carolina Zoo Educator Wins Community Service Award

By Tom Gillespie

Asheboro, NC - North Carolina Zoo Interpretive Specialist Bob Langston, who is also the Randolph County Big Sweep coordinator, received a statewide Big Sweep award for outstanding community involvement recently at the annual Big Sweep coordinators meeting in Raleigh.

Langston coordinated the 132 individuals who participated in the cleanup this past spring, bringing the annual total of Randolph County Big Sweep participants, including a fall event, to 1,622.

“A 25 percent increase in volunteers from the previous year is commendable,” said Judy Bolin, Big Sweep president. “But (Bob) also broke the all-time volunteer record for Randolph County. He did an awesome job.”

“We really appreciate the outstanding effort Bob did,” said Ken Crutchfield, state Big Sweep chairman. “The more volunteers we have, the more litter we can retrieve from our environment, and the more people we can teach about becoming good stewards of our environment.”

N.C. Big Sweep was founded in 1987 as Beach Sweep, a coastal cleanup with 1,000 volunteers. That cleanup expanded inland and was renamed in 1989 to become North Carolina Big Sweep, the nation’s first statewide waterway cleanup. 

The zoo is an agency of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, William G. Ross Jr., Secretary; Michael F. Easley, Governor.