Sunday, March 26, 2006

The Knoxville Marathon was held today.  KKB provided some trash bags and gloves for volunteers at the water stations.  Former KKB staffer Mike Schoenberger is coordinating some volunteers for the event and picked up the bags and gloves.

- posted by KKB Staff at 12:00 NOON

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Today, KKB went on its first of several visits to area waste haulers to find out what equipment and training they are using to prevent loads from escaping to become litter.  Board members Terry Faulkner and Doug McGill and KKB director Tom Salter visited the Waste Connections facility off Mitchell Street in East Knoxville.  We met with Benson Henry, manager of operations here.  Board member Doug McGill works for Waste Connections and has worked in the waste disposal business for a good while. 

Waste Connections has the contract for home pickup in the City of Knoxville.  They also service the Knox County Convenience Centers and have lots of other business in the area.  Benson showed us all around the facility and pointed out how the prevent items from escaping from their vehicles.  All their open top containers (the red truck just below) are equipped with automatic tarping devices.  Open tops are used for construction and demolition type waste and other times when you create lots of bulky waste.  The blue arrow shows where the tarp automatically rolls up and is stored when the truck is empty.  The green arrow shows the hydraulic device that opens and closes the tarp.  Companies that do not use these must manually tarp their trucks and Waste Connections learned a long time ago that the additional cost of buying trucks with tarping systems more than offsets the time it takes to manually tarp a load.  Manual tarping is also dangerous to the operator because they literally have to walk on top of the load to put the tarp in place.  Injuries are prevented by using automatic tarps.

Another type of business they have is big compactors for garbage, paper, etc.  This is exactly the type of machine you will find at the County Convenience Centers.  You throw in your garbage bags and the machine compacts it into a big bin.  The whole bin is hauled to the landfill when it is full.  The orange arrow below shows the opening where the compactor device crams the garbage into the bin.  When the bin is transported, the tarp, indicated by the red arrow is lowered and secured preventing escape of the contents.
 


The coolest of the trucks was the relatively new small compactor truck.  These trucks will gradually replace the open, pick-up type trucks that service the neighborhoods with back door pickup and in some narrow alleys.  These trucks can carry 12 times more garbage than the little open trucks and do not require tarping.  The white arrow shows the device to lift the individual garbage cans.  The can is dumped into the space shown by the purple arrow.  It is compacted in the a bin and the compactor device actually closes the opening (see yellow arrow) when the truck is just driving around - preventing trash from escaping.  The older little trucks have an automatic tarping system to cover the load.



Waste Connections is a local sponsor of the 2006 Great American Cleanup™.

- posted by KKB Staff at 8:26 AM

Monday, March 20, 2006

Spring has sprung!

- posted by KKB Staff at 1:26 PM

Friday, March 17, 2006

We've added several more groups to our list for the 2006 Great American Cleanup™ since we last gave you an update.  The newest additions are:

Lonsdale United For Change
Whittle Springs/Fairmont Family Cleanup
West High School
Ten Mile Road Residents
West Hills Neighborhood
Gresham Green Team
Old North Knoxville
Laurel Church of Christ
Boy Scout Troop 36
Seven Islands Community
Lamda Chi Alpha
Hackleberry Springs Road Neighbors

We've had inquiries from a number of other groups.

- posted by KKB Staff at 8:26 AM

Thursday, March 16, 2006

I went to the City drop-off center at the Lowe's parking lot on Peters Road on my way to work this morning.  (There is a sign up saying this center is moving over by P&S School Supply off Executive Park Drive in April).  For goodness sakes people - you go to the trouble of separating your trash, driving it to the drop-off center and then contaminate the bin.  What's the deal with that?  Are you trying to help?  Try harder.  The signs are there for a reason.  The plastic resins from styrofoam and the thin plastic food containers, drink lids, etc. are different from the resins from soda and milk bottles.  Oh, I know what happened.  You put it where it didn't belong because you didn't want to take it to a trash can.  We call that littering.

- posted by KKB Staff at 8:30 AM

Monday, March 13, 2006

Tom did a standard speech to about 12 members of the South Knox Rotary Club.  Kay Stout of Home Federal set up the speech.

- posted by KKB Staff at 2:15 PM

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Today was the last day for the Women Today Expo and Food City Food Show.  We had a steady stream of people by our booth.  Mary Lou Horner and Billie Solomon worked most of the afternoon.  I ran into John Jones of Food City and Diana Morgan of the Knoxville News Sentinel.  Diana said 25,000 people came through the show on Saturday alone.  In fact, the Fire Marshall had to close the doors a few times until people cleared out.  It was HUUUUUUGE!!!  Here is a shot of people streaming by the KKB booth.  In the left picture the woman is picking up a Don't Throw Down sticker.  In the right photo the woman on the far right is telling her friends how cool her bumper is going to look with her new Don't Throw Down sticker.

- posted by KKB Staff at 7:30 PM

Friday, March 10, 2006

This was a busy day for KKB.  Tom started the day by speaking to the world-famous Cleveland Bradley Keep America Beautiful Solid Waste Breakfast in Cleveland, Tennessee.  The reason it is world famous is because news clippings on the event have been featured on Jay Leno and David Letterman.  There were about 50 people there including the County Mayor, several commissioners, city council members, BCKAB board members and Tom's parents, Jean and Bill Salter who just happen to live in Cleveland.  How convenient!!!  BCKAD Executive Director Joanne Maskew did a great job on the event and will send some pictures soon.  We will update this entry when the pictures arrive.

Back in Knoxville, KKB staff and board members covered the Women's Expo Booth.  Board volunteers today included Ray Clift, Susan Long, Edythe Nelle McNabb, Mary Lou Horner (with Billie Solomon) and Sam Maynard.  Tom, Jack and Seth covered some of the times, too.

- posted by KKB Staff at 7:30 AM

Thursday, March 8, 2006

Tom gave a KKB overview speech to the Knoxville Utilities Board Employee Association at their Middlebrook Pike facility.  It was a 25 minute speech cut to about 15 minutes. 

KKB staffers Jack Dennis and Seth Hopper set up the KKB booth at the News Sentinel Women's Expo and Food City Food Show. 

Also, the new Knoxville Journal hit the newsstands today.  Nice headline and cover story for KKB:

- posted by KKB Staff at 5:15 PM

Wednesday, March 8, 2006

Today we had a nice article in the West edition of the News Sentinel on the Youth Advisory Board.  It's a great article - reporter Cathy Rogers got in the names of the YAB members, mentioned the Great American Cleanup™, mentioned EarthFest and got in the web address.  Thanks Cathy!

- posted by KKB Staff at 7:30 AM

Tuesday, March 7, 2006

Tom gave a speech to the Downtown Rotary Club today.  It was similar to the speech to Downtown Sertoma last week and was well-received. 

This afternoon we kicked off the 2006 Great American Cleanup™ with a celebrity cleanup and press conference at Mabry-Hazen House.  We had board members from KKB and Mabry-Hazen, Youth Advisory Board members, UTK student volunteers, AmeriCorps reps, several VIP's and more.  WBIR, TV10 covered the event live and talked about the Troy-Bilt Chipper Vac® we will be giving away at the end of the campaign.  Here are some pics from the kickoff:

- posted by KKB Staff at 7:30 PM

Sunday, March 5, 2006

Today Tom had a letter to the editor responding to the Op-Ed piece from Marge Davis a couple of weeks ago.  In her piece Marge conceded that the bottle bill may not prevent as much litter as she had said in the past.  She shifted the entire reason for the bill to recycling and argued that the bill is needed to force bottling companies to practice waste reduction.  Tom's letter responds to that argument.  The News Sentinel gave the letter a headline that has nothing to do with the content of the letter.  It's as if they just skimmed over the letter or didn't understand the point.  Here it is:

- posted by KKB Staff at 8:15 AM

Friday, March 3, 2006

Today, Tom and Jack picked up the Troy-Bilt® Chipper Vac that had been stored in Corey John's garage and a bunch of donated bottle water from KUB in preparation for next week's kick of the Great American Cleanup™ in Knoxville.  We also began phone interviews with prospects for the AmeriCorps Litter Prevention Team that will be working with Keep Knoxville Beautiful.

On the way home Tom dropped off supplies for a cleanup in the West Hills neighborhood.  They will be tackling sections of Broome Road on Saturday.

- posted by KKB Staff at 3:30 PM

Thursday, March 2, 2006

KKB's board held it's regular monthly meeting in a new location today.  Baxter Caldwell (former KKB board member) of Knoxville Coca Cola had offered their training room for at least one year.  Baxter threw in lunch too from Buddy's Bar-b-Q and of course Cokes.  The space has parking, tables and chairs and even an LCD projector in case we want to do a PowerPoint presentation.  We didn't make quorum today so we reviewed everything.  The meeting space last month at Mabry-Hazen House was fine but a little cramped.  Jack Dennis our program coordinator and Seth Hopper of AmeriCorps ended up sitting at another table during the meeting and it reminded us of the kid's table at Thanksgiving.  There is plenty of room for all of us to sit together at Coke.  Thanks Baxter.

- posted by KKB Staff at 1:55 PM

- posted by KKB Staff at 2:30 PM