2013 GRANT SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW OPEN!

KVB is proud to bring back our very successful and highly anticipated “30 Grants in 30 Days” program.  We would like to thank our generous sponsor for 2013; Lowe’s Home Improvement.  Without them, these grants would not be possible!

The 2013 “30 Grants in 30 Days” program  is once again designed to help communities, schools, parks, neighborhoods, and civic groups battle Virginia’s environmental issues on the front lines.  These grants are categorized in 3 areas; (1) Litter Prevention, (2) Recycling, and (3) Beautification and Community Greening.  Thirty grants of $500 will be awarded to 30 geographically different areas around the Commonwealth within the 3 categories, to be dispersed amongst small to large communities, schools to universities, city parks to state parks, civic clubs to environmental groups.  These grants will be awarded in the 30 days of June.  Please fill out the grant application below.

Important Dates:

Application Deadline: May 15,2013

Applicants Notified: Starting May 31, 2013

Winners Announced Daily: June 1 through June 30, 2013

Grant Projected Completed By: October 31, 2013

Results Reported By: November 15, 2013

Categories:

• Litter Prevention – Grants will awarded to parks, communities, government or non-profit entities that implement programs within targeted geographic boundaries in Virginia to reduce litter. Funding would support educational outreach materials,  and clean-up events.  The purpose of these grants is to support sustainable prevention and a measurable reduction of  litter within Virginia’s communities.
• Recycling – Grants will be awarded to schools, parks, communities, government or non-profit entities that implement programs within targeted geographic boundaries in Virginia to reduce waste and increase recycling. Funding would support educational outreach materials, receptacles, and recycling launch events.  The purpose of these grants is to promote waste reduction and a measurable increase in reuse and recycling within Virginia’s communities.
• Beautification and Community Greening - Grants will be awarded to schools, parks, communities, government or non-profit entities within targeted geographic boundaries in Virginia which support programs that beautify and clean including community gardens, restoring vacant lots, highway and shoreline enhancement, plantings, and graffiti abatement. Funding would support community clean-ups, revitalization projects, and sustainable neighborhood gardens.  The purpose of these grants is to support beautification efforts within Virginia’s communities.

2013 Sponsor

To apply for a “30 in 30″ Grant, http://www.keepvirginiabeautiful.org/outreach/grants/

Are you ready for Earth Day?  Our home base is in Richmond, and there are two great events right across the river from each other.  There are other Earth Day festivities just outside of town, and we’ve heard of celebrations in Northern Virginia, Tidewater, the Shenandoah Valley, the Mountains…

It would seem that Virginia is excited about celebrating Earth Day and giving at least time and thought into how we can all do more to be better stewards of our planet and Keep Virginia Beautiful.

But can we suggest just a little bit more?

At Keep Virginia Beautiful, we don’t make anything or sell anything.  We’re kind of like Lloyd Dobler from Say Anything:

“I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.”

But that doesn’t really pay the bills.

Our mission is to be the statewide voice for advocacy and communication in our impact areas of litter prevention, recycling, waste reduction, beautification and education.  We’ve designed this website and embraced the world of social media to help connect all of you and spread the message of keeping our Commonwealth beautiful.  We try to engage you in this process, and try to cultivate and support sustainable programs that can help us to achieve our goals.

Most often, this involves asking you to do a little something.  Clean a neighborhood or recycle something.  Paint a peeling playground or plant some trees.  Sometimes, we are able to provide seed money to help you start your own programs.  Sometimes we are able to offer recycling bins or litter bags or pocket ashtrays.  But again, we don’t sell anything, buy anything or process anything.  The money for these programs comes from generous corporate partners like Altria and Waste Management who feel that it’s their responsibility and the right thing to do to help to Keep Virginia Beautiful.

But we still need help paying the bills.

In order to continue our mission we need your help.  And there are a variety of ways that you can do that.  You can continue to perform your good works and keep spreading the good word.

But wait, there’s more…

2013 marks sixty years of Keep Virginia Beautiful, so to us, 60 is a pretty magic number.  It takes sixty seconds to step from the curb and pick up a discarded can.  One could plant a pretty good number of flowers in sixty minutes.  And we could buy several recycling bins with sixty dollars.  So pitch in!

There is no better time than now to Give 60.  Let Earth Day be the real impetus for your action to truly take shape.  Commit those seconds or pledge to spend an hour.  Catch your friends in a Beautiful Act and send us the pictures.  Think of us on your birthday as we celebrate ours and give $60.  Or $600.  Or just $6.  Join us at our Gala in October at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.  The proceeds from that fun party will help us to continue.

We would very much like to do more.  We added recycling bins to the Virginia State Parks.  How about to the schools and other public places?  We hand out pocket ashtrays and shopping bags when we go to events.  But there’s so much to do.  There are so many places that could use a community garden, and so many children that need to experience an outdoor classroom.

This is where you could come in and help us to Keep Virginia Beautiful.  Thanks for thinking about us.

We’re like many of you and gearing up for Earth Day.  What started as an environmental movement has become an organized day of celebration and awareness of all that is great and good about our Earth.  Did you ever wonder how it all got started?

Water.

Our environmental movement isn’t really a new idea.  It’s been around for generations.  Our father’s father’s fathers and grandmother’s mothers saw the need to protect our lands and water.  For most of us in America, this was the source of our food.  And it still is.  But the modern movement really arose from a disaster in 1969.  An oil platform off of the coast of Santa Barbara in Southern California experienced a catastrophic blow out, releasing almost 100,000 barrels of oil into the Pacific Ocean.  This then polluted the beaches and channels of the Southern California coast, and still ranks as the third worst ocean spill behind the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska and the more recent Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson saw the ravages of the spill and called for an environmental teach-in, and on April 22, 1970 over 20 million people took in the lesson.

Activism spurred by the original Earth Day led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Water Act, and began a very real and timely discussion of what we were doing to our waterways and how we could fix it.  It had only been a year since the Cuyahoga River in Ohio had experienced its most recent fire.

You read that right.  What was once the most polluted river in America would routinely burst into flames, burning off the toxic chemicals that laced it.

While our stewardship has expanded to include our air, the ground we walk on, replacing greenery, disposing of trash, and creating sustainable solutions to our lives, water has remained a focus of what we do.  The first big campaign for our parent organization, Keep America Beautiful, was the famous “Crying Indian” commercial, featuring a Native American, weeping as his canoe navigated a litter-strewn river.  Here in Virginia, water is a tremendous part of our natural heritage.  We have majestic rivers in the James, Shenandoah, Potomac and others.  Natural and man-made lakes dot our Commonwealth, providing drinking water, food, and hours of recreation.  Virginia is practically split by the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in our country.  And we’re bordered on the East by miles upon miles of Atlantic Ocean coastline.

We recently met the folks at The Wyland Foundation.  Based in Irvine, California, they were created to “promote, protect, and preserve the world’s oceans, waterways, and marine life.”  Their founder, marine life artist Wyland, has painted over 100 life-sized marine wildlife murals, bringing awareness and education to people all over the world.  You may have seen one of his murals in Norfolk.  From their site:

• Approximately 400 billion gallons of water are used in the United States per day.
• American residents use about 100 gallons of water per day. At 50 gallons per day, residential Europeans use about half of the water that residential Americans use. And residents of sub-Saharan Africa use only 2-5 gallons of water per day.
• The average faucet flows at a rate of 2 gallons per minute. You can save up to four gallons of water every morning by turning off the faucet while you brush your teeth.
• A running toilet can waste up to 200 gallons of water per day.
• At 1 drip per second, a faucet can leak 3,000 gallons per year.
• Nearly one-half of the water used by Americans is used for thermoelectric power generation.

One of their current initiatives is the National Mayor’s Challenge for Water Conservation.  Running this entire month, it’s a contest between cities across the country to see who can be the most “water-wise.”  There’s a short list of steps that you can pledge to take, and at the end you’ll see how much water you’ll be saving and impacting.  Plugging in your home city will create a ranking of how your home town is doing.  As of this writing, Hampton and Virginia Beach were in the top-ten.  That includes every state and town where someone took the pledge.

So, nice work, Virginia!  Let’s see how many more Virginia towns we can put on the chart!  Click here to take the pledge.

KVB TURNS 60!  How did we get here…

It’s not every year that you get to celebrate something like 60 years, and we’re starting ours out in style! You may have heard about our Give 60 program, or Get Caught in a Beautiful Act. You may have even heard that we’re throwing a shindig in October to cut some cake and blow out some candles.

So what can you get us for our birthday? A few minutes of your time. Sixty of them, to be more specific. Sure, there are also opportunities to donate a few dollars. We have long been blessed with some great corporate and business partners to run individual events and programs, like our 30 in Thirty and putting recycling bins in all of our State Parks, but we often count on the generosity of folks like yourselves.

But here’s the easiest part: Getting Caught.

Many of our partners and members take a very active role in helping to Keep Virginia Beautiful. People plant flowers and keep their sidewalks clean. Youth groups renovate playgrounds and city parks. Schools install rain gardens and start recycling programs. Groups like Earth Korps and Bull Run Mountains Conservancy muck around in our rivers and mountains. Businesses like Altria spend a day sprucing up a James River Park.

It’s really easy if you just devote the time to do it. And this year we ask you to do just that. But we like to share, and so are asking you to post a photo, photos, or a video of your group engaged in your project. Let us see you being Caught in your Beautiful Act. As we get closer to our Birthday Party (October 5th at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts) we’ll sort the submissions by category, like School or City/Town, and recognize those who had the most Beautiful Acts.

The neat thing is that with this sort of “contest,” everyone is a winner. You’ll feel better for having contributed, your friends and neighbors will appreciate and enjoy your hard work, and our Commonwealth will be cleaner and more beautiful for your efforts.

Our friends at Rocket Pop Media thought that it was a great idea, and took ownership of the block around their office in The Fan District of Richmond, Virginia. They have sort of an advantage because video and media is kind of what they do, but we really appreciated the hour that they spent on city streets to help Keep Virginia Beautiful.

We’ve accomplished a great deal over the past Sixty years.  And yes, it has been six decades since the Virginia Anti-Litterbug Council became the Keep Virginia Beautiful that you know and love today.  We’ve awarded grants, recognized greatness in areas like recycling, litter prevention and beautification, and seen a whole bunch of Virginians grow up to raise the next generation of concerned and active citizens.

2012 was certainly no different.  Here are some highlights:

• We participated in the Great American Cleanup.  This state-wide event saw Keep America Beautiful choosing us to lead Virginia, and the Nation, in a National Day of Action.  Starting in Hampton Roads, groups like Ask HR Green joined us in uniting thousands of volunteers in hundreds of projects across the state.  And that was just a small portion of what got accomplished during the Great American Cleanup.

• Year Two of our Thirty in 30 Grant Program.  To celebrate Earth Day, each April we award thirty grants in 30 days to deserving civic groups, non-profits, schools and neighborhood associations across the Commonwealth.  Each of these groups are committed to the Keep Virginia Beautiful impact areas of beautification, litter prevention, recycling, education, and waste reduction.  From the ocean to the Western mountains, groups got a little seed money for trash cans, recycling bags, educational programs, community gardens and more.

• We gave a great gift to our State Parks for America Recycles Day.  Our State Parks do a great job of showcasing the most beautiful aspects of our Commonwealth, educate many about what our natural expanses have to offer, and try to do their best to keep Virginia beautiful.  They’re understandably eco-minded, and do a great job with litter programs and reducing their footprint, but recycling has been hard for them.  With a generous grant from Dominion Virginia Power, we were able to install the first of many recycling bins in some of the parks.  By the end of 2013 we hope to have bins in all 35 of our parks.

• We got our groove on at the Richmond Folk Festival. One of our favorite opportunities is participating in events and festivals where we can meet large groups of people and enlist them in our mission to Keep Virginia Beautiful.  The Folk Festival is the perfect opportunity.  It brought hundreds of thousands of people to Richmond to enjoy folk, world and ethnic foods and music on the banks of the James River over the course of three days.  Many of them signed our pledge to Keep Virginia Beautiful, and we were able to spearhead an effort to place recycling bins throughout the event, sending tons of trash out to be reused instead of sending them to the dump.

And 2013 promises to be as exciting a year as we’ve ever had.  We’ll once again hold our annual Golf Tournament, we’re gearing up for another fantastic Great American Cleanup, and we’ll be at the various fairs and festivals throughout the state.  We’ll be back and stronger with more grants with our third Thirty in 30 program, and so much more.  We’re especially excited about an event that we just started planning:  Our 60th Anniversary Gala.  This will be a blow-out event to meet many of you, raise some funds to move some of our programs forward, and recognize some groups and individuals who have done so much to keep Virginia Beautiful.  As part of that celebration, we’ll be catching people in a Beautiful Act, we’ll be holding an art auction, and partnering with some of the many like-minded groups and organizations across Virginia.

Thank you to all who have helped to make 2012 such a banner year for Keep Virginia Beautiful, and keep your ears open as our 2013 continues to unfold.

A couple of interesting news tidbits from the past few days:

• Forbes Magazine published a list of America’s Dirtiest Cities.
• Virginia is losing an Icon.
• The Clean Water Act is turning 40.

These news stories are all somewhat different, but all completely related.

First on the list is the Forbes ranking.  It was a list of 20 cities in the United States.  Thankfully, we’ve been working hard to Keep Virginia Beautiful, so no Virginia cities made the cut.  Interesting to us was the fact that almost half of the cities listed were in the golden, sunny state of California.  More telling was the fact that most of the cities on the list could trace their level of pollution back to water.

In some cases it was industry that created the problem.  Cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia have long histories of dumping toxins into the closest river or stream.  But more often than not, it was agriculture that was the culprit.  Farms using fertilizers and chemicals allowed runoff to go willy-nilly into culverts, which, as we all know, run right into streams and rivers.  In the case of Baltimore, adding insult to injury is the fact that all of that historic industry is now fighting with the many chicken farms on the Eastern Shore to see who can put more pollutants into the Chesapeake Bay.  16 of the 20 on the list had either polluted their groundwater or leached chemicals into the nearest body of water.

After a 30-year career, Richmond’s Ralph White is retiring as director of the James River Park System.  When White took the post, the river was a mass of flotsam, chemicals, dead fish, and graffiti that meandered through our Capitol city.  Through his work and tireless dedication, the James River has become an amazing natural resource, a source of endless hours of recreation, and allowed Richmond to be named Best River City by Outdoors Magazine.  Sturgeon have come back to the lower James, waterfowl prowl the banks, and fish vie with kayaks to see who can make the quicker portage through the falls.

White has never been without his critics, and has never really cared what they said.  When bureaucracy stymied his desire for positive change, he bypassed it.  When logjams threatened to derail his vision of the river, he navigated around them.  In a city with more politicians than you could swing a cat at, he forged forward endlessly.  To paraphrase an idol, he “beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Google it.

What White wanted, and to a large extent what he’s created, is a river that conveys what it was.  What it was before man got a hold of it.  When it was wild and natural and free.  And our enjoyment and access to this natural wonder was always first on his list of priorities.  Ralph White did a great deal to Keep Virginia Beautiful and he’ll be hard to replace.

In 1969, a group of very serious scientists commissioned by our Government were asked to take a look at the Cuyahoga River in Ohio.  It had recently caught on fire, and that wasn’t the first time that this body of water had burst into flames.  They said that the river was so full of deadly chemicals that “no visible life, not even low forms such as leeches and sludge worms” would survive.  Aren’t these critters on the list of things that would survive a nuclear holocaust?

Much like the James River, anyone coming into contact with the Cuyahoga would have to be treated with antibiotics and would be covered in painful sores.  At that time, the same could be said for many of our bodies of water.  So in 1972 we created the Clean Water Act.  It made it illegal to randomly dump sewage and toxic chemicals into a stream or river.  It set standards that we’re still striving to meet.

We became Keep Virginia Beautiful 60 years ago.  We helped to give birth to Keep America Beautiful, and one of their first message campaigns was a television commercial.  You may have seen it:  The Crying Indian.  In the spot, an Indian, played by Iron Eyes Cody, paddles his canoe down an unspoiled river until he comes into our neck of the woods.  There he finds garbage and pollution, which causes him to begin crying.  The message was, “People Start Pollution.  People Can Stop It.”  The underlying theme was his question, “What did you do to my river?”  It could have been the Cuyahoga.  Or the James, or Shenandoah, or York, or any other river in our state.

As Keep Virginia Beautiful celebrates its 60^th, ask yourself what Cody would say today.

So, the election is over and everyone can get back to their lives.

But we’ve been busy.  On Thursday, November 15^th, we will be joining thousands of folks across the country to celebrate America Recycles Day.  To do our part, we will be partnering with Dominion Virginia Power and Virginia Green to institute a program that we’ve been working on for quite some time.  In addition to some new educational signage and trail cleaning at First Landing State Park in Virginia Beach, Lake Anna State Park in Spotsylvania and Leesylvania State Park in Woodbridge, we will be rolling out several recycling containers in each of the parks.

Keeping Virginia Beautiful is no easy task, but a $25,000 grant from Dominion will allow us to make a dent by putting between 6 and 8 of these carts in all 35 of our state parks.  This is a total of more than 250 carts for the parks.  The Virginia State Parks are award winning, and possibly the best expression of our mission at Keep Virginia Beautiful.  Environmental education and natural resource stewardship are important parts of the mission of the Virginia State Parks, and their limited resources have made tackling recycling a difficult task.  While they all have some sort of program, having these large, highly visible containers for use by park visitors will lead them further down the road to improving their recycling efforts.

State Parks Director Joe Elton said,

“This partnership with Keep Virginia Beautiful and Dominion will pay huge dividends for all Virginians.  The recycling containers allow us to greatly increase our in-park recycling efforts, keeping valuable resources out of our landfills.  Perhaps more importantly, the signage and our commitment to bring a recycling message to our visitors will encourage more Virginians to recycle at home and at work.”

America Recycles Day is an initiative of our parent organization, Keep America Beautiful.  Brenda Pulley of KAB said,

“We are very proud supporters of Keep Virginia Beautiful’s America Recycles Day events and commend their efforts to promote recycling in Virginia.  Recycling is the easiest thing we can all do to save energy, conserve natural resources and create green jobs.  Collectively, through events like these, we aim to make recycling bigger and better 365 days a year.”

America Recycles Day is the only nationally recognized day and community-driven awareness event dedicated to promoting and celebrating recycling in the United States.

Our partner at Dominion, Chief Environmental Officer Pamela Faggert said,

“The protection of the environment is not only important to Dominion as a company, but also to our employees.  Many of them will volunteer to work at three State Parks on November 15^th, installing recycling carts and cleaning up the grounds.  We remain environmentally responsible and wholeheartedly support spreading the recycling message to all those who visit Virginia’s State Parks.”

Our State Parks are the starting point of all that we hold beautiful and natural in our state.  By helping all 35 of our parks, Keep Virginia Beautiful and our partnerships with Dominion Virginia Power, Virginia Green and Keep America Beautiful will be able to reach the hundreds of thousands of visitors to our parks with our recycling message.

Thank you to our partners, and we will now look to YOU to visit our State Parks and use those bins!