Special prize note...While we want to recycle the trees and prevent their disposal in area landfills, we also want to get everyone used to the idea of greenwaste recycling. Natural Resources Recovery LLC is the operator of the County greenwaste facility. They donated the grand prize - a Homelite, gas-powered string trimmer and 2 cubic yards of landscape mulch for each of the three locations. Special thanks to Sid Bryan and Natural Resources Recovery LLC for these great prizes.



- posted by KKB Staff @ 1:31 PM

Friday, December 19, 2003

The Talking Tree visited Gibbs Elementary School today. Teacher Natalie Pratt's students got a nice lesson on the relationship between people and trees. KKB staffer Annie Morton (aka The Talking Tree) explained what trees give to us and why we need to plant more trees and protect the trees we have.



- posted by KKB Staff @ 4:21 PM

Thursday, December 18, 2003

Just a quick update... KKB staff is taking care of some administrative tasks this week. End-of-year nonprofit filings, an issue of our newsletter CLEANNOTES, a membership renewal mailing, and plans for the Christmas Tree-Cycling event. The annual event will be held 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday, January 3rd, 2004 at these three sites: the Knox County Greenwaste Facility at Solway, the Knox County Convenience Center at Forks-of-the-River Industrial Park off John Sevier Highway and a new location at the Knox County Convenience Center on Neal Drive in Halls. The Neal Drive location replaces Sofas and More. DO NOT bring your tree to Sofas and More. Edwards Tree Service is donating a chipper and crew for the Halls site. Sponsors this year include Papa John's Pizza, Knox County Sheriff's Office, Knoxville Coca Cola, West 105.3 and Mayo's Garden Centers. Gamma Sigma Sigma and AmeriCorps have committed volunteers. More volunteers are needed. One nice benefit of these drop-off locations is that you can actually bring your tree there any time during regular operating hours. If you bring on January 3, you can take home freshly chipped pine mulch and register for a prizes from our sponsors.

- posted by KKB Staff @ 7:50 PM

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Margaret Gaiter, Tina Rosling, Joe Fuhr, Matt Edens, Connie Loy, Doug Allen and I met with Bill Lyons and Bill Haslam to discuss two issues related to City services to neighborhoods - communication between citizens and the City and the nature and quality of services delivered. Please keep in mind these are my observations of the meeting and do not represent any consensus of the participants or the position by the incoming administration.

Bill Lyons asked everyone to first comment on communication between citizens and The City. Suggestions included: 1) development of a one call system, 2) the need to assume that many citizens will not know what department to call for a particular problem (or even whether the problem is the responsibility of the City, County or State) and 3) the need for citizens and City administration to be able to track the outcome of a request for service.

Then we shifted to services and the discussion focused almost entirely on waste disposal, litter, uneven codes enforcement - all classic Keep America Beautiful issues. We discussed code enforcement, bulky waste pickup, dealing with trash on properties that are currently vacant, roadside mowing and more. I was able to make some KAB style suggestions including:

1) The need to do objective measurements of the degree of the litter problem and blight on a street-by-street and lot-by-lot basis. Citizens and elected officials can be involved in this process and the resulting information can be used to plan corrective action, allocate resources more fairly and to measure success.

2) The need to continue helping citizens take control of the problem by encouraging voluntary neighborhood cleanup projects. The City should continue to help neighborhoods dispose of trash after a cleanup and should consider implementing a formal adopt-a-block program modeled on the successful adopt-a-road program operated by Knox County.

3) Better enforcement of litter ordinances including the possibility of cross-training all City codes officers in all departments to write litter and dirty lot citations.

4) Making the presence of visible litter an economic development issue of the highest importance. Property values, commerce, tourism and attitudes about overall quality of life by citizens are negatively impacted by litter.

The group is scheduled to meet again on January 14, 2004. If you have any comments about this blog entry send us an email.

- posted by KKB Staff @ 9:30 PM

Monday, December 08, 2003

Today was catch up day around the office. My first day back with our new employee. Annie and Cortney briefed me on plans for the Christmas tree-cycling event set for January 3. Then we met with Brad Foster, a UT sociology major who will be doing an internship with us next semester. We talked about the timeline for the marketing campaign. Brad will help recruit focus group participants and help facilitate the groups. If we can stick to our schedule we should have the message developed by the third week in January and do some audio recording for radio before a March kickoff.

- posted by KKB Staff @ 7:48 PM

Sunday, December 07, 2003

Cortney Piper, our new program coordinator and I met with the Vestal litter group for a tour Sunday afternoon. Evelyn Gill, John Hondulas and Joe Richards took us on a little tour to look at heavily littered areas. There was some evidence of dumping and plenty of roadside trash. However there was a lot of litter on private property which is the next big challenge for our community. How do we strike a balance between self-determination and property rights with the need to make the community as livable as possible? After the tour I told them KKB will make an effort to recruit other groups in the Vestal community to join them in their struggle to clean up.



- posted by KKB Staff @ 5:57 PM

Friday, December 05, 2003

The last day of the conference featured the Keep America Beautiful national awards luncheon. It was a great show and it looked like there were 500 people in the room. Keep Knoxville Beautiful officially received its Distinguished Service Citation for a KAB affiliate and a national award for recycling by a non-profit. Keep Blount Beautiful received a second place national award for recycling and Keep Tennessee Beautiful received a national award for statewide radio advertising. Combined with the awards Judy Hagan and Allison Teeters received earlier in the week, Tennessee had a great showing. It was a lot of fun and a great honor to receive this level of recognition from our peers.

The interesting part began when we got to the airport. The storm that hit the Northeast over the weekend was just beginning, but flights were being disrupted by 3:00 p.m. When I checked in I had to get a new Atlanta-Knoxville flight. Allison checked in right after me and ended up going through Cincinnati. Page didn't get back to Knoxville until 2:30 a.m. Saturday.

- posted by KKB Staff @ 8:40 AM

Thursday, December 04, 2003

Ray Anderson, founder and CEO of Interface Corporation was our first speaker today. He talked about his environmental epiphany after reading the Paul Hawkins book, The Ecology of Commerce. He wrote his own book called Mid-Course Correction in which he describes his company's evolving philosophy that doing well by doing good is a better way to make a profit. His company makes floor coverings and he said that today many designers pre-disposed to green building. 91% of interior designers prefer recycled content building material. His company is developing ways to make polymers (to make carpeting) from carbohydrates (renewable) instead of petroleum (non-renewable). He talked about a new type of corporate common sense called eco-sense. He talked about characteristics of CEO's and who might be more predisposed to have good "eco-sense". CEO's who founded their companies were best, those who inherited were next and hired CEO's were the worst. He cautioned that some of the best short-term solutions have the worst long-term consequences. To learn more about Anderson's approach visit his website at www.interfacesustainability.com.

At lunch we celebrated KKB's 50th Anniversary and had some great speakers and multi-media presentations. The best speaker was Robert Goodwin, CEO of the Points of Light Foundation. He challenged us to answer the question "Who is responsible?"

After that Allison, Page and I went to the Lincoln Memorial, Korean War Memorial and the Vietnam War Memorial. The images below are of the Women's Vietnam Memorial and the well-known Vietnam Memorial Wall. When we were at the women's statue Allison's husband Kevin called and gave us the sad news that Larry Fleming of KUB died suddenly today.

Later in the evening all the conference attendees went to a reception at the Canadian embassy.

- posted by KKB Staff @ 11:45 PM

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

Big news from Washington...Today, a number of KAB affiliates in the Knoxville area received the Keep America Beautiful President's Award for successfully implementing programs in key KAB focus areas - litter prevention, beautification and waste reduction. Receiving awards were Keep Knoxville Beautiful, Keep Blount Beautiful and Keep Sevier Beautiful. The director of Keep Kingsport Beautiful, Judy Hagan, received the top national award for leadership by a KAB director. But the greatest news is that Allison Teeters of Keep Sevier Beautiful picked up the Nash Award. This is the top national award for a new affiliate. KAB cited partnerships with TVA, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the school systems in Sevier County among other accomplishments. This is a big deal and we at Keep Knoxville Beautiful are very proud of Allison (our former office manager) and all the other Tennessee winners. Pictured below are Allison and Judy.

- posted by KKB Staff @ 3:33 PM

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

From our nation's Capital...Keep Knoxville Beautiful Executive Director Tom Salter and President Elect Page Pratt-Greene have arrived in Washington DC to attend the Keep America Beautiful 50th Anniversary Annual Meeting. In addition, Tom and Page will be picking up 3 national awards for KKB. Allison Teeters, KKB's former office manager and currently the Executive Director of Keep Sevier Beautiful traveled on the same flight. After arriving in DC, Tom, Page and Allison made a whirlwind tour of several of the Smithsonian Museums including: Natural History, American History, National Gallery and National Archives. Pictures below: Page and Allison at the Delta Terminal in Cincinnati (pretty exciting, huh?), some kind of dinosaur head at Natural History and the entrance to the National Archives. If you have not seen the Declaration, Constitution and Bill of Rights I personally recommend you make the trip. Although the documents have been restored and placed in a more protective enclosure, they do not look good and are difficult to read. Time's a wastin'.

I saw something that John Deuel from Norfolk Clean Commission called a Forest Gump Moment. Page, Allison and I were walking from Natural History to National Gallery and passed this skating rink in the sculpture garden between the two museums. We watched the skaters for a minute. One had a green tag, like a "My Name Is" tag on her jacket and as she skated it flew off in the wind and floated around and landed in a trash can about 30 feet away. Pretty cool, huh? More later.

- posted by KKB Staff @ 5:44 PM

Monday, December 01, 2003

Bulletin...Keep Knoxville Beautiful staff update. We are pleased to announce that Cortney Piper, UT graduate and former Lady Vol Varsity Swimmer, is our new program coodinator. She will helping Annie Morton (our intern) this week with a UT varsity football players cleanup and a Christmas tree-cycling planning meeting with Rodney Rockett of Knox County Solid Waste.

- posted by KKB Staff @ 2:35 PM