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Students posing with bags of litter they cleaned up

Virginians Make a Strong Showing for Fall Cleanups

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Students posing with bags of litter they cleaned upBefore Winter arrives, we want to share the results of a very successful Fall LOVE VA cleanup campaign!

We know that there are many people that care about the natural and scenic environment of Virginia, and 673 of them volunteered to clean up along our roads, and hiking trails, in  neighborhoods, shopping centers, and parks to pick up litter and recyclable items.  From the cleanup reports we received during the LOVE VA campaign, they picked up 657 bags of litter, 50 bags of recyclables, and volunteered a whopping 1,692 hours!  Thank you, thank you!

Among those cleaning up were seven of our Student Ambassadors for Virginia’s Environment, working to accomplish one of their two required cleanups towards their successful completion of the SAVE program.  We’re encouraged by the enthusiasm and dedication of the 50 high school Juniors and Seniors in the 2024-25 school year program.  In fact, the students have logged 130 volunteer hours themselves with the work that they’re doing for the program.

Other highlights include efforts by our Keep America Beautiful state affiliates and other allied partners:

  • Naturally Newport News hosted a roadside cleanup to pick up 55 bags of litter and 2 bags of recyclables, using a team of 68 volunteers who gave 136 total hours of work
  • Keep Hopewell Beautiful conducted 5 cleanups in neighborhoods, parks, and roadsides.  They also installed plants and improved the landscape at the Route 10 gateway as a beautification project, in addition to 2 cleanups by the Hopewell Lions Club
  • Lynnhaven NOW in Virginia Beach hosted 4 cleanups that mobilized 116 volunteers
  • Lake Anna Civic Association reported 8 cleanups that netted 189 bags of trash and 23 bags of recyclables, spending 208 volunteer hours!

Thank you to the many individuals who also contributed many hours of hard work!  And if you missed the article about the great work done to continue with the  landscaping beautification project at Canoe Run Park, you can read about it here.

Our organization runs on people power, and we’re grateful for all the effort made to clean up the roadways, waterways, parks, and neighborhoods in the Commonwealth!

Person picking up litter on beach

Great Virginia Greenup Continues

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Keep Virginia Beautiful continues with its work with groups and individuals through our Great Virginia Greenup campaign.  We’ll be working with Martins in the Winchester area to complete a special Green Up project in mid-June.  Stay tuned for the results.

We’re about half-way through our participation in Keep America Beautiful’s Great American Cleanup, and we’re proud of the work that you’ve been doing!

For example, Hampton Roads Great American Cleanup had an amazing turn out this year, with over 1,400 volunteers showing up to clean up!  They also topped the record for pounds of litter collected, with more than 63,600 pounds (nearly 32 tons) of litter from public spaces!

That’s a lot of litter, and a lot of work – thank you Hampton Roads!

The cleanup attracted a diverse group of volunteers including military service members, schools, civic leagues, sororities/fraternities, faith communities, business communities, and more! Small groups of friends and family cleaning up their own corner of Hampton Roads has become especially important since the ongoing pandemic limited large gatherings.

Another large-scale cleanup event coming up is Clean the Bay Day, on June 4th.    ThePerson picking up litter on beach Chesapeake Bay Foundation and its partners are hosting more than 200 cleanup sites across Virginia, including in Northern Virginia, the Richmond Area, the Shenandoah Valley, Hampton Roads, and the Eastern Shore. Thousands of volunteers will join in that Saturday morning to remove a massive amount of litter and debris from parks, streams, beaches, and trails.  You can find a cleanup location near you on this map.

The most common items removed include plastic bags, bottles, aluminum cans, and cigarette butts. Since 1989, Clean the Bay Day has engaged more than 158,200 volunteers, who have removed approximately 6.64 million pounds of debris from nearly 7,750 miles of shoreline in Virginia.

Thank you in advance for all the cleanup efforts!  Please report the results of your Greenup efforts here!

People reading a sign

Sustainability Matters Awarded $1,000 Green Grant

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People reading a signCongratulations to today’s award of our 2021 Green Grants, Sustainability Matters, in Shenandoah County, who will receive a grant award of $1000 for its Community Beautification project.

Sustainability Matters is a grassroots organization in rural Shenandoah Valley that provides knowledge, motivation, and a peer support to landowners, farmers, and small business owners, enabling them to implement positive environmental practices, support pollinators and wildlife, and grow their own food. They recently launched the project “Making Trash Bloom,” an initiative to plant landfill trash cells with native perennial meadows instead of turf grass. Landfills seal a 5-acre trash cell every 3-5 years, and the land can never be used to grow crops or be planted with trees. Turf grass, the current preference for planting trash cells, has little ecological value.

The plan for the Community Beautification project from Sustainability Matters is to plant native wildflowers on completed trash cells instead of turf grass, turning this under-used area into a crucial habitat for wildlife and pollinators. It will also be a beautiful area for the public to see as they go to or pass by the landfill. Grant funds will be used to purchase seeds and planting supplies for blossoming gardens at landfills.

Every year, government, non-profit, civic and service organizations in Virginia were invited to apply for grants for $500 to $1,000 describing how they plan to tackle an environmental concern in their community regarding Litter Prevention, Recycling, Cigarette Litter Prevention, or Community Beautification.  Since 2011, Keep Virginia Beautiful has provided $254,500 for 320 different environmental programs and projects all across the Commonwealth, due to the generosity of their partnership with Altria, as well as additional support from Coca-Cola, WestRock and Keep America Beautiful.

 

Altria Logo

Coca-Cola Logo        WestRock Logo         

 

Map of Virginia

The Race Is Still On

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Map of VirginiaThanks to all those who’ve made an incredible push this weekend to help us towards our Shiver in Virginia Mission challenge goal of 2,021 miles of cleaning up litter and other environmental deeds throughout the month of March!  We can see the finish line!

If you haven’t joined Shiver in Virginia you can get busy this week!  If you already registered, but haven’t clicked through to the Mission Challenge map page, go to this link to complete the process!  One bag of litter picked up wherever you live or work, hike or kayak, is equal to one mile along our path when you record your accomplishment.  Lots of people have contributed environmental good deeds, such as recycling, composting, and clearing invasive species out of the landscape – and they count for miles too!

And we saved some of the best prizes for last!  Every time you make a post, share the site on social media, refer a friend, or report your miles, you’ll have a better chance at winning!

We’ve had a nice tour around the Commonwealth, and if you’re registered, you’ve been sent digital postcards from the beautiful places a two-thousand-mile path would have taken us.  We “visited” First Landing State Park in Virginia Beach, the Eastern Shore, and Virginia’s River Realm.  We’ve “passed by” Caledon State Park in King George, and we’re on our way to the Shenandoah Valley.  What a truly beautiful state we live in!

We designed Shiver in Virginia as a way to work together while we have to be apart, and it’s been a great success.  When faced with the absence of our annual Shiver in the River fundraiser because of COVID, we created this event to further our mission to improve our natural and scenic environment, and gently solicit financial support!

Speaking of which, you can still make your donation of $20.21 here and receive a free one-day parking pass at any Virginia State Park!

Aaron Gilman trash pick up closeup

THANK YOU to all the unsung Litter Warriors!

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So this past weekend, as I was driving with my family, I noticed an older gentleman picking up litter along a very busy stretch of roadway…I wanted to pull over and tell him THANK YOU!  So here is my question, what posseses ordinary folks to pick up litter when they didn’t cause the problem in the first place?  Is it simply engrained in their make-up or did someone else teach them the importance of giving back?  One or the other or a combination of the two, it makes no difference…I simply want to say THANK YOU!

I recently learned of a gentleman, named Aaron (featured picture), in Northern Virginia who, without being asked, cleans up the roadways and waterways in the community that he lives in every week!  He doesn’t believe he deserves any recognition but I do!

Even my own children will walk an entire stretch of beach and pick up whatever trash they find, I don’t even have to ask or prompt anymore, they know its the right thing and they do it.  I know there are countless others who clean up litter either along the roads or waterways and I personally want to say THANK YOU.  You are the true litter warriors!

So here is my challenge to you, next time you go to a park, beach, river, campgorund, etc., bring a bag, spend 15 minutes and clean up the litter.  I promise that you will feel better by helping a green space stay green  and your act may be seen by others and maybe they will think twice about littering next time or better still take your cue and make the commitment themselves to become litter warriors!

THANK YOU to all the unsung LITTER WARRIORS, you are the environment’s heros!

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A little love in 2011?

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How will you give Mother Nature a little love in 2011?  The time is now.  How can you help?

1. Cut down on trash

Estimates suggest that up to 90% of the contents of our bins could actually be reused or recycled.  What could you reuse?  What could you recycle?  On average, American’s throw away about 3.5 pounds of trash each day!  Yikes.

2. Cut down on pollution

According to The Daily Green Americans generate 30 billion foam cups, 220 million tires, and 1.8 billion disposable diapers every year.  Did you really need to save 50 cents by buying the Styrofoam cups instead of the paper cups?

3. Cut down on water waste

Over the course of a year, we waste 4 gallons of water just by running the water while we brush our teeth!  Some experts estimate that more than 50 percent of landscape water use goes to waste because of  evaporation or runoff caused by over-watering.

4. Reduce electricity consumption

Refrigerators account for about 20 percent of household electricity use.  If you set it on 37 degrees and your freezer as close to 3 degrees and you’ll cut that figure drastically.  Another simple step…set your dishwasher to air dry rather than heat and you’ll save 20 percent of your dishwasher’s total electricity use.

5. Recycle

If every American household recycled just one out of every ten HDPE bottles they used, we’d keep 200 million pounds of the plastic out of landfills every year. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours. (EPA, 2008)

6. Buy eco friendly products

How many brown paper lunch bags do you and your kids use every year?  And what about all of those little plastic sandwich and snack bags?  How about replacing those with a one time purchase that will not end up in a landfill?  Check out these Eco-Friendly Insulated Lunch Bags from GreenSmart.  Or these super fun designs for your kids that have individual containers inside the lunch box from Obentec.

7. Give back to nature

Here’s an obvious way…plant a tree. But did you know that you can easily donate to a nature-related organization with your license plate purchase?  Check out these license plates and choose a wildlife or environmental organization with a designated license plate.  A donation is sent to that organization each year you renew the plates.

8. Buy local

It may seem like a no-brainer to many of you, but it’s easy to forget that shopping local, can benefit your impact on Mother Nature in numerous ways.  Shopping locally will stimulate your local economy, however it also eliminates the need for fuel-guzzling transportation.  An average fresh food item on our dinner table travels 1,500 miles to get there.  Buying locally produced food eliminates the need for all that travel.

Local farmers are often less dependent on pesticides and insecticides and less likely to use nitrogen-based fertilizers in the overwhelming quantities that mass producers use.  In other words, the environmental impacts of  shopping locally will most definitely effect Mother Nature in the near and long-term.

9. Cut down on air pollution

We make choices everyday that can help reduce air pollution.  Walk to work or drive?  Paint with water-based paints verses oil or varnishes.  Use a solid deodorant rather than an aerosol.  I bet you can think of a few too….

10. Educate Others

Share what you learn along the path of living a greener life.  Instill these values in your children, friends, family and colleagues.

Sources:

Chelsea Green

The Daily Green

PowerScorecard

Oberlin

Mother Nature Network