TEXAS vote for this bottle bill !

We need this. Have you cleaned a lake, a creek or a river lately? It's gross.

Trash-Off Volunteers Were Amazing

On Saturday, it was a beautiful day and Keep Carrollton Beautiful volunteers made sure our streets, parks, greenbelts, streams and lakes are even more beautiful now! Spending their own free time in community service, 270 volunteers collected 9,740 pounds of litter and debris from 34 sites in Carrollton. “We had individual volunteers and scouts and schools and churches and neighborhoods this year. They focused their amazing ‘can do’ attitudes to plan, set up, collect trash and break down our event. We could do nothing without their beautiful spirits.” said Sharon Goddard.

The Don’t Mess With Texas Trash-Off event was a grassroots partnership with Keep America Beautiful, Keep Texas Beautiful and the Texas Department of Transportation - with 340 affiliates cleaning all over Texas. All of America should be looking pretty good today!

Locally, the Trash-Off was Keep Carrollton Beautiful’s sixth annual participation. The event is just one of many activities they host or empower during the three month Great American Cleanup. Keep Carrollton Beautiful is working with many schools, neighborhoods and corporate teams to supply smaller events during this time.

Thanks to Albertsons at Josey and Keller Springs and at Old Denton and Hebron the volunteers didn’t go away hungry. Albertsons thinks that “it’s important to be good neighbors and give back to our communities…..to improve all of our lives”. As a great corporate citizen, they have supported Keep Carrollton Beautiful since its inception in 2004. “I hope that the citizens of Carrollton won’t let this valuable asset get pushed out of our community by stiff competition” said the director of Keep Carrollton Beautiful.

Dr. Pepper Snapple Group’s representative, Bill Kirkland, has also been supporting Keep Carrollton Beautiful since its beginning. “We (DPSG) have a proud, longstanding heritage of caring ... for our consumers, our customers, our employees and our neighbors in the communities where we live and do business across the United States… caring is at the heart of our business, shaping our values and the importance we place on corporate social responsibility…” Dr. Pepper really helped out at the Trash-Off making sure none of the hard working volunteers went thirsty.

Keep Carrollton Beautiful could never accommodate so many volunteers without the loyal and enthusiastic support of the Carrollton Evening Lions Club. These Lions are some of the community’s most steadfast local servants. Their website says “When it comes to meeting challenges, our response is simple: We serve…in regions battered by natural disaster, in schools and in eyeglass recycling centers, Lions are at work, helping, leading, planning and supporting…We want everyone to see a better tomorrow…we support vision screenings, eye banks and eyeglass recycling…We believe everyone deserves a healthy life…providing health programs for hearing loss, diabetes prevention and improving the health of children and adults around the world.” “Our Carrollton Evening Lions Club lovingly cooks the best hot dogs in Texas! And always with a smile.” said Sharon Goddard.

Thanks to the many volunteers, this year’s Trash-Off was a roaring success. The people involved know who they are and are very much appreciated. If you’d like to help Keep Carrollton Beautiful, go to their website www.KeepCaroolltonBeautiful.org and join.

Another fun way you can help is by bidding on their Don’t Mess With Texas Trash-Off On-Line Auction. The auction will raise funds for their programs and you can still bid through April 8.
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Carrollton, We Really Cleanup!

On April 19th, Keep Carrollton Beautiful, with the help of it’s dedicated Board of Directors, the Carrollton Evening Lions Club, City of Carrollton and 300 volunteers - cleaned the whole community. If you were out for that beautiful day, you probably saw teams of volunteers picking up trash out in fields, green belts and along creeks and train tracks. They filled half of a 30-yard dumpster!

This was Keep Carrollton Beautiful’s fifth annual Great American Cleanup / Don’t’ Mess With Texas Trash-Off and the event awareness has been building steadily. The kids and their committed leaders from Girl Scout Troop 1348 and Boy Scout Troop 114 are veteran volunteers for this event; helping with the planning each year. Keep Carrollton Beautiful’s Teen Advisory Board members pitched in to bring community service organizations from both Hebron and Creekview.

Making “mass feeding” possible is the Carrollton Evening Lions Club. Swarms of gold vests could be seen carrying grills, cooking and passing out hot dogs to the hungry volunteers.

“Our in-kind donors make an event this large possible. Without Cadbury-Schweppes, Albertsons, United Party Rental Center, Allied Waste Services, Frito-Lay, Tom Thumb and Trinity Medical Center, we would not be able to accommodate the trash and our volunteers,” said Sharon Goddard.

Environmental Educators provided games, specimens and demonstrations - informing everyone. Many were surprised to learn how long it takes to decompose everyday trash, like 75 years for disposable diapers, 10-12 years for cigarette butts, and NEVER for styrofoam.

The participants also learned about how they can create their own Backyard Wildlife Habitat to provide migration corridors for birds. Beneficial Aquatic bugs were on display. There were “found” natural specimens from the Elm Fork Nature Preserve. And a stormwater Enviro-Scape showed everyone how pesticide run-off from your yard can pollute creeks and lakes.

During the Great American Cleanup, Keep Carrollton Beautiful not only holds this event each year; but assists groups cleaning all 6 Adopt-A-Spots, schools with Earth Day Celebrations, and a Trinity River cleanup in Carrollton. This year many schools and neighborhood groups also cleaned.

“What we notice is that the railroads aren’t very good neighbors. They are responsible for trash along their own tracks, but that’s where we pick up the most,” said Ms. Goddard.

The City of Carrollton is deciding how to fund Keep Carrollton Beautiful right now. Please let your City Council person know how important you think our programs are. Keep Carrollton Beautiful wants to continue to provide you with a place to plug into the community.

Carrollton, We Really Cleanup Up!

On Saturday, Keep Carrollton Beautiful, with the help of it’s dedicated Board of Directors, the Carrollton Evening Lions Club, City of Carrollton and 300 volunteers - cleaned the whole community. If you were out for the beautiful day, you probably saw teams of volunteers picking up trash out in fields, green belts and along creeks and train tracks. The numbers aren’t in yet but they filled a half of a 30-yard dumpster!

This was Keep Carrollton Beautiful’s fifth annual Great American Cleanup / Don’t’ Mess With Texas Trash-Off and the event awareness has been building steadily. The kids and their committed leaders from Girl Scout Troop 1348 and Boy Scout Troop 114 are veteran volunteers for this event; helping with the planning each year. Keep Carrollton Beautiful’s Teen Advisory Board members pitched in to bring community service organizations from both Hebron and Creekview.
Making “mass feeding” possible is the Carrollton Evening Lions Club. Swarms of gold vests could be seen carrying grills, cooking and passing out hot dogs to the hungry volunteers.

“Our in-kind donors make an event this large possible. Without Cadbury-Schweppes, Albertson, United Party Rental Center, Allied Waste Services, Frito-Lay, Tom Thumb and Trinity Medical Center, we would not be able to accommodate the trash and our volunteers,” said Sharon Goddard.

Environmental Educators provided games, specimens and demonstrations - informing everyone. Many were surprised to learn how long it takes to decompose everyday trash, like 75 years for disposable diapers, 10-12 years for cigarette butts, and NEVER for styrofoam.

The participants also learned about how they can create their own Backyard Wildlife Habitat to provide migration corridors for birds. Beneficial Aquatic bugs were on display. There were “found” natural specimens from the Elm Fork Nature Preserve. And a stormwater Enviro-Scape showed everyone how pesticide run-off from your yard can pollute creeks and lakes.

During the Great American Cleanup, Keep Carrollton Beautiful not only holds this event each year; but assists groups cleaning all 6 Adopt-A-Spots, schools with Earth Day Celebrations, and a Trinity River cleanup in Carrollton. This year many schools and neighborhood groups also cleaned.

“What we notice is that the railroads aren’t very good neighbors. They are responsible for trash along their own tracks, but that’s where we pick up the most,” said the Director.

The City of Carrollton is deciding how to fund Keep Carrollton Beautiful right now. Please let your City Council person know how important you think their programs are. Keep Carrollton Beautiful wants to continue to provide you with a place to plug into the community.

If you’d like to see how you can help or have a project in mind, go to www.KeepCarrolltonBeautiful.org or call 972.466.2121. Thank you to everyone who came out to the make the Great American Cleanup a great success!
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Great Cooperation Nets Great Results

Last Saturday in the very cold wind, almost 400 volunteers came together for Carrollton Cares Volunteer Day to make Carrollton a better place to play. The Elm Fork Nature Preserve coordinator, Elizabeth Acosta, put together teams from Keep Carrollton Beautiful, businesses, scouts, and service organizations from Creekview, Hebron, Ranchview and Turner to complete major maintenance projects at five different locations in Carrollton. Most of the volunteers are accustomed to volunteering for Keep Carrollton Beautiful, so they took it all in stride. There isn’t much that can’t be accomplished with cooperation!

Besides Ms. Acosta, City of Carrollton employees Heather Grance, Gena Spradling, Theresa Ostrander, as well as Tammy from the Senior Center all pitched in with the volunteers to accomplish the work. Keep Carrollton Beautiful’s executive director, Sharon Goddard, and two Keep Carrollton Beautiful Board of Directors members, Diane Taheri and Cathy Henesey “manned” two of the locations.

Ms. Acosta split the volunteers up into groups. Some, supervised by Halliburton employees, worked at the Dimension Tract to spread mulch on the trail all the way down to the canoe put-in to cover the gushy mud and picked up trash around the whole area. Others were at the Elm Fork Nature Preserve spreading mulch on trails, picking up trash and sealing benches. Others, including many homeowners, worked at each of two greenbelts – Nob Hill Greenbelt Park - from McCoy Road to Frankford and Greenbelt Park - from Josey Lane to Woodlake Elementary School picking up trash. The largest group, including many Halliburton employees lead by Kathy Williams, volunteering for Keep Carrollton Beautiful, sealed all the benches at the Senior Center/Library Complex at Josey Ranch, sealed the fence around the “natural area” at the library and pick-up trash from Keller Springs, all through Josey Ranch Sports Complex including the lakes and creek and down to Thomas swimming pool. What a great accomplishment in only two hours!

“We could have never been so efficient if it wasn’t for Elizabeth’s planning and coordination. She had all the supplies ready for us and everyone knew what was expected of them at each of the sites,” said Sharon Goddard, Keep Carrollton Beautiful. “She did a great job!”

They had some wonderful in-kind donors – coffee from Starbucks, sealer from Keller Moore paint, composted mulch from Living Earth Technologies, drinks from Pepsi – but best of all was all the wonderful (and warm) pizza from Little Caesars. Since some of the volunteers didn’t stay for lunch, they took the still piping hot pizza to Juliet Fowler Home.

If you’d like to find out how you can help at the Elm Fork Nature Preserve, go to
www.cityofcarrollton.com/leisure/parksrec. If you’d like to volunteer for Keep Carrollton Beautiful, their next event is the Great American Cleanup on 4-19-08. Go to www.KeepCarrolltonBeautiful.org for information and registration.
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Team-Me USA Really Cleaned Up

Lots of groups are getting the bug – they want their community to be beautiful and where it isn’t – they just go to work. Over the weekend, Team-Me USA got an energetic group together to clean the greenbelt close to Frankford Road and Josey Lane.

Team-Me USA is a non-profit begun by Tony Owens to help teens prepare for responsible adulthood and build the skills they need to negotiate a rapidly changing society. Just begun in January, their mission is a good one: “to build character and to help teens develop the leadership skills that greatly affect their ability to make positive decisions and avoid the pitfalls that could place them at risk.”

A community cleanup is a perfect way to take responsibility for where you live while having a huge impact. Bobby Brady, Parks Dept. for the City of Carrollton, directed the group to this greenbelt because it’s very hard for the City staff to keep up with all the maintenance; especially with all the rain we had this spring.

Partnering with Keep Carrollton Beautiful was also a great decision because it netted them trash bags, surgical gloves and pickers. “Groups like this are perfect examples of what it means to take responsibility in your own community. What we found was that the City was doing a great job in the greenbelt but the streets could use some help. I hope we can find groups and companies to adopt all the streets with our Adopt-A-Spot program,” said Sharon Goddard, Keep Carrollton Beautiful.

They even separated the recycling from the trash they collected. “We couldn’t believe that people would use the trails in the beautiful greenbelt for walking or jogging or picnicking and then LEAVE their water bottle!” Many, many people did!

To contact Team-Me USA, go to www.Team-MeUSA.com and find out about their other great programs for teens. To find out about the up coming Trinity River Trash Bash and Texas Recycles Day hosted by Keep Carrollton Beautiful, go to www.KeepCarrolltonBeautiful.org. Maybe people will learn to PICK UP THEIR OWN TRASH.

Keep Carrollton Beautiful 2005

Keep Carrollton Beautiful – 2005
By FounderSharonGoddard

Keep Carrollton Beautiful started the year with a dedicated Board of Directors (Jeff Weaver our Board Chair, Mark Schallhorn Vice-Chair, Doug Tobe Treasurer/Secretary, Julie Poe and Mia Simmons) and a very frazzled Executive Director, Sharon Goddard. We had accomplished much in the last year, but it took a toll on all of us. We needed to learn how to be a board and function like one – amid all the personalities and we needed to figure out how to make it all happen without one person doing it all!

Our planet was also overwhelmed – by all the natural disasters and everyone pitching-in to help those in need a world away – making it more difficult to raise funds to sustain our local commitment. We met the challenge and exceeded everyone’s expectations while giving all our surplus supplies to Metrocrest Services for the tsunami victims.

A major accomplishment of the year was negotiating Adopt-A-Spot with the city manager’s office ‘ Leonard Martin and Beth Bormann. We would never have gotten on the same page without our silver tongued Jeff Weaver. Trinity Medical Center signed on as our first adoptee.

As we progressed through the year, we found that we had learned a great deal about promoting programs and giving successful events. In February, our Texas SmartScape classes (with Marina Giggleman, Marian Buchanan and Mia Simmons instructing) were very well received with standing room only because the City put it on their website. The Trashy Art Contest we held for the Girl Scouts included both Cross Timbers and Tejas Councils and was a big hit with the winners ‘ getting patches, ribbons and their names in the paper!

The relationships we’d begun last year really paid off as the older Girl Scouts came to earn leadership badges by helping to plan the Great American Cleanup 2005; and the Carrollton Evening Lions Club cooked almost 1000 hot dogs for it too. We had 655 volunteers cleaning 54 designated locations all over Carrollton, collecting 8690 pounds of litter and one live mouse! Albertsons generously gave us hot dogs, cookies and t-shirts to boot. Dr. Pepper, represented by Bill Kirkland of Carrollton, gave us all the drinks and t-shirts also. Trinity Waste Services was there with roll-offs and their mascot, Mobius. Amy Weaver (Jeff’s daughter) turned out to be a great mascot for us in her KCBee costume provided for us by Martha and Joe Grizzel (some great volunteers).

We hosted Intuit’s Earth Day River Cleanup for the second year and it went like clockwork on a beautiful spring day. Trinity River Expedition’s Charles Allen brought his boats and worked with us all day. We were pleased about only collecting 1800 pounds of litter from a much cleaner Elm Fork.

Two of our board members, Mia Simmons and Julie Poe resigned with too much on their plates and we were proud to have Matthew Marchant join us for a short while after he was defeated in the mayoral race.

To further our relationships with the City and our sponsors, we were a vendor with Fuji Film USA at the Elm Fork Nature Fest and made the City’s July 4th Celebration a litter-free event. The t-shirts that Wisdom Works donated for our great volunteers from Turner High School’s National Honor Society (lead by Michael Wu) were perfect to let the crowd know who we were.

For the first time, we participated in the regional Trinity River Trash Bash with Dallas Down River and with Carrollton Evening Lions Club cooking. We had promised volunteers lunch, canoes and life jackets and were surprised by 150 volunteers! With Dallas Down River’s expertise and boats and the enthusiasm of groups like our Board of Directors, Boy Scouts, Turner’s Honor Society, churches and individuals we cleaned 1500 pounds out of the Trinity on a very HOT day in August. With heat exhaustion and swearing never to do it again, Sharon’s brain went to work on how we could have younger volunteers with more stamina ‘ our Teen Advisory Board was born.

The Board overruled the ‘never again’ decision with Peggy Healey (our new board member who had just run for the school board and who home-schools her four children) stepping up to head next years Trash Bash. It was so hot no one wanted to eat, so we gave all the extra food and drinks to Metrocrest Services for Katrina evacuees.
August was a very pivotal time. We composed a letter trying to help the City and the City Council (Mayor Becky Miller has always been in our corner) see what value we bring to the community with our volunteers and programs. After some research, we discovered that environmental groups in other cities received — the number of households in their city, times $0.01, times 12 months, times the number of events they hosted. We plugged in Carrollton’s 43,253 households making $5,190.36 what other cities contribute for each environmental education event provided. The Council, the City Manager and City Lawyer were not swayed. At the City Council meeting, in one more attempt to get our Community Service Assistance Grant raised, Sharon stated that we had ‘amassed more than 8247 volunteer hours worth 93 thousand 2 hundred and 56 dollars for the economic development of Carrollton ‘ in just the last twelve months’. Everybody smiled and nodded, but they did not add to our Community Service Assistance Grant, leaving us to figure out how to host four specific public events on $5,000.00. If the City of Carrollton provided these events using their employees, it would cost them $102,811.95!

We celebrated our amazing women volunteers with a Ladies Luncheon at La Hacienda Ranch. We had a fun time and came up with some great ideas for fundraising and programs.

All year we worked with the Carrollton/Farmers Branch ISD (with Victor Melton) to establish a Green Team in each school that wanted to participate; encourage them to work on their school campuses for Clean Sweep for Schools; making a video for the Squirrel Brigade program with Turner’s Media Academy and filming Carrollton Elementary’s Green Team learning how to plant tree seeds and trees (Mark Schallhorn and Lela Kahn were our instructors). We established our Teen Advisory Board consisting of Michael Wu from Turner, Jessica Cravens at Smith, Minhaj Chowdhury from Ranchview and Angela Miguel at Hebron; with a representative from Creekview not far behind. Sharon also wrote several grants to revitalize the CFBISD Outdoor Learning Center planning for a fence around a ‘Wildflower Park’, a boardwalk out into the pond, a classroom pavillion and a director’s building with Ron Marrs of Wright Group Architects helping us with the design.

We acquired another wonderful board member, Andrew Harsch (he is in marketing). Andrew has already worked on a marketing plan for us (which we really could use!).
Texas Recycles Day was a big success with 7 recycling vendors and 87 volunteers (our Teen Advisory Board did a great job of inviting their schools) diverting 22,000 pounds of recyclables from the landfill. We unloaded more than 345 citizen vehicles!
In an attempt to give our sponsors a unique opportunity, we hosted Meeting with the Mayor. Mayor Becky Miller already writes a column for our newsletter and agreed to meet with and answer questions from business leaders who were our sponsors or were potential sponsors. It was a festive affair falling just before the Christmas rush with lots of good food from El Chico Caf’. Mayor Miller gave us a history of how the city had evolved and what the transit plans were for the future. Carrollton Evening Lions Club signed up as our official sponsor!

Sharon recruited or renewed 15 sponsorships (Ebby Halliday Realtors, Carrollton-Farmers Branch Rotary Club, Fuji Photo Film U.S.A., City of Carrollton, The Civic League, Babe’s Chicken Dinner House, Sam Pack’s Five Star Ford, Halliburton, Green Mountain Energy, Tom Thumb, Rhoton Funeral Home, Wright Group Architects, Trinity Medical Center, Sotherby Homes and Carrollton Evening Lions Club), with some thanks to Mayor Miller’s referrals and 28 business, family and individual members, raising $17,145.00 cash and $12,509.43 in-kind donations. Sharon wrote 4 grants and created newsletters for each season. We also continued our Yard of the Month award by giving it to the Khan family. Our Volunteer of the Season award for the fall went to Martha and Joe Grizzel.

We ended our year by following the advice of the State of Texas and setting a two-year term for our executive board members — meaning that we now have no officers until January. We have become part of the fabric of the community ‘ people are calling from out of nowhere asking all sorts of questions. They think we’re the City!!!