What is a The Way to Happiness Cleanup?

In towns and cities around the world, people are inspired to care for their communities by The Way to Happiness, the nonreligious moral code written by L. Ron Hubbard.

What does a neighborhood cleanup have to do with morality?

In the glossary of The Way to Happiness, L. Ron Hubbard defined moral as “able to know right from wrong in conduct; deciding and acting from that understanding.” He also described the book as “a nonreligious moral code based on common sense.”

He explains how this relates to caring for the environment in the precept “Help Take Care of the Planet”:

The idea that one has a share in the planet and that one can and should help care for it may seem very large and, to some, quite beyond reality. But today what happens on the other side of the world, even so far away, can effect what happens in your own home.

Recent discoveries by space probes to Venus have shown that our own world could be deteriorated to a point where it would no longer support life. And it possibly could happen in one’s own lifetime.

Cut down too many forests, foul too many rivers and seas, mess up the atmosphere and we have had it. The surface temperature can go roasting hot, the rain can turn to sulfuric acid. All living things could die.

One can ask, “Even if that were true, what could I do about it?” Well, even if one were simply to frown when people do things to mess up the planet, one would be doing something about it. Even if one only had the opinion that it was just not a good thing to wreck the planet and mentioned that opinion, one would be doing something.

Care of the planet begins in one’s own front yard. It extends through the area one travels to get to school or work. It covers such places as where one picnics or goes on vacation. The litter which messes up the terrain and water supply, the dead brush which invites fire, these are things one need not contribute to and which, in otherwise idle moments, one can do something about. Planting a tree may seem little enough but it is something.

This translates into action in towns and cities across the globe with The Way to Happiness chapters organizing and participating in activities to care for their communities and encouraging others to join in the endeavor. This can take the form of picking up and disposing of rubbish, adopting a highway or park, painting out graffiti and cleaning up beaches—whatever their towns or cities need.

The reason is clear, and is summed up by Mr. Hubbard at the end of this precept:

Man has gotten up to the potential of destroying the planet. He must be pushed on up to the capability and actions of saving it.

It is, after all, what we’re standing on.

The Way to Happiness was written in 1981. Immensely popular since its first publication, the campaign has been embraced by more than 250,000 groups and individuals, with some 115 million copies distributed in 115 languages in 186 nations. It holds the Guinness World Record as the single most-translated nonreligious book and fills the moral vacuum in an increasingly materialistic society.

The Church of Scientology and its members are proud to share the tools for happier living contained in The Way to Happiness.