More than 55 Perdue associates, their family members and friends will help beautify their community on today by participating in Project Clean Stream, a company-wide effort to help protect the environment in the communities where associates live and work.

Volunteers will spend three hours harvesting trash and debris from the Hitchcock Creek area.

“Our associates’ participation says a lot about the culture at Perdue,” said Rockingham Complex Environmental Manager Lee Butler. “They put a great deal of time and energy into their work and are still willing to come out on a Saturday morning and participate in a project that benefits their community and helps protect the environment.”

Rockingham City Manager Monty Crump has been involved in the Hitchcock Creek Greenway Project, and several aspects of making Hitchcock Creek accessible to the public.

“We appreciate the efforts in Perdue, wanting to get involved in the community,” said Crump. “They are a great corporate citizen, and it’s a good project to be involved in, keeping Hitchcock Creek and waterways clean.”

The Perdue Eagle Springs facility in Candor, North Carolina also took part in Project Clean Stream that included 50 associates cleaning up trash and debris in the Morrow Mountain State Park area at Lake Tillery last Saturday.

Project Clean Stream was launched in 2004 by the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland as a grass-roots effort to clean up waterways and shorelines in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Perdue joined the volunteer project in 2008 with 30 volunteers. Last year, 450 associates, family members and community members joined forces to remove more than 18,000 pounds of debris from sites across the Delmarva Peninsula, which encompasses parts of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia

In 2011, Perdue expanded the Project Clean Stream concept across the company to encourage associates to organize similar clean-up efforts in their communities.

“Rolling out Project Clean Stream across the company provides an exciting opportunity to engage associates in helping protect the environment in the communities where they live and work, while reinforcing our company’s commitment to being a good corporate citizen,” said Steve Schwalb, Vice President of Environmental Sustainability at Perdue. “The combined strength of our associates’ efforts has the potential to make a tremendous impact.”

The third largest poultry company in the U.S., Perdue is a leading international food and agriculture family of businesses providing quality products and services to customers in more than 100 countries.

Privately held and family-run for three generations, the company employs more than 21,000 associates and partners with more than 2,200 independent farm families — all of whom share in the commitment to quality that has guided the company since its founding in 1920.

For more information, visit www.perdue.com.