We had a terrific turnout for our Shiver in the River mission challenge! We completed or 2,021 mile path around the Commonwealth, where one bag of litter or one environmental act equaled one mile. Thank you to everyone who helped us reach this goal – to those who donated, who cleaned up litter, who started gardens and cleared out invasive plants. And a special shout-out to the groups that went above last weekend as part of the Great American Cleanup, it was the extra effort that put us across the finish line!
One of the other benefits of the challenge was that we met many new people from all corners of the state! We also learned about the needs of different communities, such as safe cleanup equipment and supplies, graffiti abatement, recycling programs – which is why we started our 30 in 30 Green Grants initiative in 2011.
We are now accepting grant applications for our annual 30 in 30 Green Grants program! Since 2011, Keep Virginia Beautiful has provided $254,500 for 320 different programs and projects throughout the state. Groups can apply in four different categories, for grants of $500, $750, or $1,000 to carry out their environmental projects or programs.
And because 2020 was a year that brought the national spotlight to diversity, equity, and inclusion, our organization met to determine how we could better support these groups. We decided to create a special focus of our Green Grants this year to add five additional grant awards specifically to diverse groups and underserved populations. This will raise our grant award commitment to 35 grants in 30 days!
You have until April 30th to submit your application. A panel of judges who are experts in their fields will evaluate and score the applications during the month of May. Then the awards will be announced each day during the month of June on our website and through social media.
Questions? We’ve got answers. Learn more about the Green Grants program! We are grateful to our sponsors for this year’s 30 in 30 Green Grant program: Altria, Coca-Cola, WestRock, and Keep America Beautiful!
Bears may be cute on wildlife posters, but they weren’t helpful with recycling efforts for one group. Plenty!, a Food Pantry in Floyd, Virginia, takes what is considered waste – from farms, grocery stores, restaurants, etc. – and turns it into food to feed hungry people. Last year Plenty! shared 117 tons of food with more than 1,937 individuals, working to lessen food insecurity and isolation through its Food Pantry, Portable Produce, Organic Farm and Gardens, and Community Lunch programs in their southwest corner of the Commonwealth.
However, one by-product of the grocery store recovery effort is the hundreds of pounds of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET 1) plastic deli containers from donated food that are disposed of every week. Although that type of plastic is recyclable, they could not collect and store the empty containers due to one rather large, threatening reason: BEAR! They could not keep the empty food containers outside because they didn’t have anything large enough and strong enough to hold the plastic that wouldn’t be vulnerable to bears destroying while attempting to get to the used plastic containers. It bothered them that the clamshell containers had to be put in the trash.
So they applied for a Green Grant from Keep Virginia Beautiful, and were awarded $750.00 to help solve their bear problem. They purchased a “Haul All Equipment Bear Proof Trash Can” and installed it outside of their Food Pantry in July, 2020.
Since that time, they have been able to collect three garbage bags full of #1 recyclable plastic each week for recycling! Kerry Ackerson, Executive Director of Plenty! said that they are now able to recycle the countless deli clamshells and other #1 prepared food containers that are donated to their food pantry each week by their local grocery store and university dining halls.
We thank you Plenty! for the work you do in your community, and for your recycling efforts! It’s a beautiful thing!
Communities In Schools of Hampton Roads is a non-profit organization with a mission to surround students with a community of support, empowering them to stay in school and achieve in life.
Communities In Schools of Hampton Roads is a non-profit organization with a mission to surround students with a community of support, empowering them to stay in school and achieve in life. Their Keep Our Streets Clean project is geared toward reducing the amount of cigarette litter in the community. Additionally, the project will aid in the beatification of the community, creating a landscape of attraction. The project would place various cigarette ash receptacles and trash cans around the community to ensure that there is a place to dispose of the cigarette butts and trash. They will bring awareness to the project and ask the community to support their initiative for change that will benefits students and everyone in the community.
A clean community is a healthy community — way to go Communities In Schools of Hampton Roads!
Williamsburg Classical Academy is Awarded a $500 grant for to implement a Recycling program!
Williamsburg Classical Academy is a collegiate model education program for the independent and home-school education community. Because they don’t have a recycling program in place, they will use their grant to equip each room with a recycling can, install a large recycling bin in the room where the students eat, and create a recycling contest to inspire students and parents to recycle. The program will also include recycling education strategies and tips for recycling, and games to teach younger students the benefits of recycling.
While the programs are primarily for the students, they hope to get their families involved in the habit of recycling at home too.
Chesapeake Environmental Improvement Council in Hampton Roads will receive a grant award of $1000 for its Cigarette Litter Prevention Program.
The CEIC promotes interest in improving the environment of Chesapeake to create a greener, cleaner, and healthier city in which to live, work and visit. Their Keep Chesapeake Beautiful Cigarette Litter Prevention “Park Your Butts” campaign will place cigarette receptacles at eight locations maintained by Chesapeake Parks, Recreation, and Tourism, in order to reduce the amount of cigarette litter in the city. Grounds Staff will empty receptacles regularly, collect materials in a TerraCycle Cigarette Waste Recycling Box and ship to TerraCycle for recycling. In doing so, for every pound of waste collected through this program TerraCycle will donate $1.00 to the Keep America Beautiful Cigarette Litter Prevention Program.
Congratulations! Best of luck to you and the people who park their butts in the right place!
Tech For Troops, in Central Virginia will receive a grant award of $1000 for its Recycling project.
Many veterans face two significant barriers when competing in the modern workforce: the lack of a computer and the lack of the skills needed to effectively use that computer. T4T supports these veterans by collecting used technology that would usually end up in landfills and refurbishing the laptops and other devices. They provide the reloaded technology, along with training, to veterans in need for free. T4T’s recycling program reduces electronic waste and the toxic substances found within them by collecting donated electronics, processing them with a team of skilled technicians, and determining if it will be refurbished or properly recycled.
The City of Salem-Beautification Division, in the Roanoke Valley will receive a grant award of $1000 for its Community Beautification project.
The Beautification Division of the City of Salem will take on the project of restoring their WWI Memorial green space, which has been in need of improvements for many years. They will use the grant funds to restore the area and plant poppies, roses, an oak tree, and tall grasses, indicative of World War memorial gardens. The Roanoke/Salem American Legion Post is excited about the refurbishment of this area and will provide volunteers for the project.
Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions, in Fairfax County, will receive a grant award of $1000 for its Recycling project.
FACS is a non-partisan organization that creates interfaith partnerships in Northern Virginia to develop local solutions to climate crisis. They established a powerful program that has collected more than 1,500 pounds of plastic bags and film, working with three faith communities in an initial 2019 to 2020 pilot program. Instead of ending up in landfills or poisoning our waterways and oceans, the plastic film is recycled into decking and outdoor furniture by Trex, Inc. FACS will use their funds to promote and support their network of faith communities to start recycling programs throughout Northern Virginia.
Less plastic in the landscape and more Trex benches — it’s a win-win for this award winner!
Russell County received one of the 30 in 30 grants from Keep Virginia Beautiful. The grant that we received was for Cigarette Litter Prevention. The grant was administered in one of our local towns that had a lot of foot traffic as well as cigarette litter. The majority of the grant funds was used to purchase cigarette litter receptacles and personalized flyers. The flyers bring awareness to those who look at it that cigarettes butts are litter too. The receptacles were given to the local businesses to place outside for their patrons to use. The program was a good ice breaker, because once I told them what my department was doing with the receptacles and the program, a many of long conversations began about litter. The local businesses all agreed that they had a lot of cigarette litter outside of their buildings. Many of the businesses and myself agreed that the majority of the problem may be that the reasons why patrons threw their cigarette butts down on the ground was because they did not have a proper place to dispose of them. My department and two volunteers walked along the sidewalks and approximately 10ft from the curb of the sidewalks and picked up and counted cigarette butts for approximately a 100ft length of street. Our initial count was 410 cigarette butts in that length of street. We placed the cigarette receptacles out in front of the businesses that wanted to participate with the program and left them for several weeks. We returned six weeks later to do a second count to see how effective the receptacles were. On the second count, we reduced our cigarette litter by nearly half at 206 cigarette butts on the sidewalk and street. To us, it definitely seemed liked the receptacles are working. My department has only one more task to complete with the Cigarette Litter Program for KVB and that is to purchase billboard space during the 2012 Great American Cleanup promoting awareness about cigarette litter. My hopes are that the billboards will promote awareness locally, county-wide, and regionally. We’ll see how well it does in March 2012.
Nassawadox plants crepe myrtles to beautify historic area of town.
While I was on sick leave from my “real job” I was looking for ways to be able to help our town with our efforts to try and beautify our town center area. Unfortunately our town is like so many other small towns, basically no funds to do anything to make the town look better, and it presents a real challenge. The property in the area around our town center is owned by the railroad, and like so many other businesses which own so much land, there are no funds available to keep the area beautiful. It is hard enough to keep the railroad operating much less to try to beautify the areas around the tracks.
The Eastern Shore Tourism Commission has been trying to find ways to help the towns to spruce up their areas and we were fortunate in that a local architect, John Snyder, donated his time to draw up an architectural plan for our town center and/or our actual downtown area. Robert Lentz, a citizen of the Eastern Shore has also been instrumental in helping us to try and realize our goal to beautify the town. Both of these men have spent countless hours in assisting us in helping to make this “vision” become a reality. When I saw the plan, I thought what a nice idea and lovely plan for our town. I then began to wonder how on earth to make it a reality. Consequently my search for grants to help us attain the goal began.
I felt very fortunate when I located the KVB grant and thought that if we could get this grant it would definitely be a start for our project and give us something to build upon. I applied for the grant with high hopes but never dreamed that we would be successful, as I am certainly not a grant writer, but someone with a willing heart and spirit only. You cannot imagine how thrilled I was to receive notice from KVB that our town was successful in obtaining the grant.
Obtaining the grant meant that now we needed to obtain permission from the railroad and secure a lease in order to proceed with our plans for our downtown. This would be the first of many hurdles. The railroad was willing to give us a lease but we also had to comply with their requirements for planting and make sure we were not too close to the tracks, so as to impede their daily treks up and down the Shore. After obtaining this permission, then we had to find a local nursery that would be willing to do the planting and within the budgeted amount. We contacted 3 different businesses and only one, Hortco Garden Center, expressed any immediate interest in working with us to provide a quote and talk with us regarding this project. During the time we were working on the planning aspects of who, what, where and when, our area developed a drought condition and I certainly did not want to risk planting and losing the trees and being frivolous with our grant funds.
We have finally been successful in jumping all the hurdles in our path and our crepe myrtle trees are now established. They are planted in a platform that is close to the railroad tracks. This platform has historical significance to our town, in that it is where the train used to “throw the mail off the train as it passed through Nassawadox”. The trains did not stop, just hooked the mail bag on a “mail hook” and proceeded down the track. In the past because this platform is a gravel type base, it has grown up in weeds and grass. This summer we will continue to work on further beautifying this platform by keeping the grass under control and exploring ways to further enhance this area in our town.
Our plans for the platform are to try and secure a mail hook, to continue with beautification efforts, and to have signage as to the historical significance of the platform. We are hoping that the platform will become an area where townspeople and travelers alike can come to take a break from their hectic schedules and enjoy the surrounding area, maybe even visit a few of our local shops.
I am so very excited about the efforts of those who have provided us with a “vision” and hope that we are able to continue with our efforts to beautify a most important area in our small town. This will only be possible through the efforts and generosity of many people and organizations.
We had a terrific turnout for our Shiver in the River mission challenge! We completed or 2,021 mile path around the Commonwealth, where one bag of litter or one environmental act equaled one mile. Thank you to everyone who helped us reach this goal – to those who donated, who cleaned up litter, who started gardens and cleared out invasive plants. And a special shout-out to the groups that went above last weekend as part of the Great American Cleanup, it was the extra effort that put us across the finish line!
