Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Last spring, several Knox County school participated in a national plastic bottle recycling promotion sponsored by Keep America Beautiful, Sam's Club and Aquafina called "Return the Warmth".  Several local schools signed up with KKB to compete.  They were: Mt. Olive Elementary, Pond Gap Elementary, Chilhowee Intermediate, Sterchi Elementary, Powell Elementary, Gresham Middle, Gibbs High, Central High, Bearden High, Inskip Elementary and Karns Middle.  Local partners were SP Recycling and Knox County Solid Waste.  The schools collected plastic bottles generated on campus and brought from home.  They accepted all #1 and #2 plastic.  This typically includes all types of soft drink, water, sport drink and milk bottles.  The collection was last spring for about 6 weeks.  SP Recycling collected all the containers and weighed them for us.  We turned the numbers into KAB national.  Much to our delight, Mount Olive Elementary school was a national winner, collecting 9801 pounds of plastic bottles from 293 students - this was 3.1 pounds per student.  Mount Olive won a $1,000 Sam's Club Gift Card as a Grand Prize.  We also won 2,000 fleece jackets made from recycled plastic from bottles.  The jackets arrived last week and we delivered about 1,000 of them to the top three performing local schools - Mt. Olive, Pond Gap and Chilhowee.  Here are some pics of Jill and Stephanie delivering the jackets:

We had a nice press event at the school and thanked the kids, the school staff and the local sponsors for their hard work.  We emphasized that the jackets are made from the recycled plastic and that their hard work won jackets for 2,000 children in the community.  Principal Darlene Miller spoke to all the kids as well as Tom Salter from KKB.  Penny Glass and Bob Barnett represented Sam's Club and presented the gift card to principal Miller.  Also present were Becky Ford of SP Recycling, Sara Hart of Knox County Solid Waste, Bob Santore of South Knoxville Beautification Committee and Jillian Gilbert and Stephanie Hood of KKB's AmeriCorps Litter Prevention Team.

- posted by KKB Staff at 10:00 AM

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Tom made a presentation to a state conference of parks and recreation at Paris Landing State Park today.  The topic was "Planning and Implementing Green Events".  He used EarthFest 2006 as a model for how to plan and carry out a waste-free event.  Here is a link to the PowerPoint shown at the conference.  The key to success was controlling what materials the food vendors and exhibitors sold or distributed.  Event organizers made sure there were plenty of locations at the event for the public to dispose of this material.  The containers exactly matched the type of waste being created at the event.  It was rainy in Paris but not cold.



- posted by Tom at 2:15 PM

Friday, November 3, 2006

The annual Veteran's Day Parade was held today on Gay Street.  It's become a tradition for everyone in The Emporium Building to watch the parade.  Here are some pictures:





- posted by KKB Staff at 10:15 PM

Thursday, November 2, 2006

The regular board meeting was held today.  It might be our last regular meeting at Knoxville Coca Cola.  The offer of the meeting space and free lunch was for one year.  We started meeting at Coke in April, but we don't have a regular meeting again until February.  We set up a committee for the Christmas Party and the planning retreat in January.  We also set the First Impressions Project back to work.  There was a discussion about what to do for Coke to thank them for the space and meals. 

- posted by KKB Staff at 2:45 PM