GULF SHORES — At Hangout Music Festival, in Gulf Shores, crews spanning ages and backgrounds donned green vests to show they are for the environment.

Hangout Ambassadors deployed all over the half-mile festival grounds to pick up trash, answer questions and generally help people out where needed.

This year's group included over 30 University of South Alabama students and their friends from Phi Kappa Sigma. Josh and Hayden volunteer for Alabama Coastal Foundation and started working with the Ambassador program last year with only four of them. Josh is a marine biology major, so picking up trash from the sandy shores is especially important. Presley, Lucy and Anthony are all from Mobile and jumped at the opportunity to help out while jamming to good music.

Kerensa moved to Bon Secour last summer and is a member of Share the Beach's Turtle Team. She wanted to make sure trash didn't end up in our Gulf waters and said she had a lot of people come up and thank her for what the program does to protect the natural resource that brings so many people to live and visit the area.
Ruth Mayo has lived in Gulf Shores since she was 10 and was looking for odd jobs after graduating from Ole Miss, learning about the program also through ACF.

"I really like doing the beach cleanup stuff. It just makes me feel better for the environment," she said.

Hangout Ambassadors is headed up by Bailey Colbertson, a Gulf Shores local who runs Future Astronaut Co., a record label and event and stage production company. Ambassadors also run a hotline open to the community, and they went to residents in the area to talk about the festival and answer questions leading up to the three-day event.