Seedling and Seed Giveaway!

Keep Dalton-Whitfield Beautiful and the Dalton-Whitfield Solid Waste Authority hosting a Tree Seedling and Vegetable Seed Giveaway on Monday, January 20th at the Mack Gaston Community Center in Dalton from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm. There are limited quantities of Willow Oak and a few Dogwood seedlings available. These types of tree are native to Georgia, helping to provide vital habitat for birds and other species of wildlife, and enhance the beauty of our community. There are multiple types of vegetables seeds to choose from to plant for this year.

There is a limit of 2 seedlings per family. Please allow for up to 40 feet of space per tree when planting. This event is made possible by a grant from the Georgia Forestry Association and Keep Georgia Beautiful.

For more information call 706-278-5001 or find us on Facebook.

2019 National Planting Day Grant Recipients

(Dalton, GA, October 18, 2019) – Keep Dalton-Whitfield Beautiful is pleased to announce the winners of the fifth annual School Beautification Grants for 2019. The committee for Beautification and Community Greening established the grant program in celebration of National Planting Day, which took place September 7 and is celebrated through the end of November.

Public and private schools in the Dalton, GA and Whitfield County were invited to apply for funding to implement a project related to planting native plants and beautifying the community. Each project aims to improve the visual aspects of the facility or provide an educational opportunity related to plants. Beautification grants range from a minimum of $200 to a maximum of $500.

This year the following three schools were awarded a grant for their National Planting Day project:

1.   Southeast Whitfield High School - Picnic for Pollinators

2. Brookwood Elementary - 100% Pollinator Native Garden

3. New Hope Middle School - Certified Wildlife Habitat Garden

Projects will be completed by December 2 and each recipient will submit a project summary by December 27 to showcase their work. Visit Keep Dalton-Whitfield Beautiful’s website www.KeepDaltonWhtifieldBeautiful.org or follow them on Facebook to get updates on the progress of these projects.  

National Planting Day is celebrated annually by Keep America Beautiful in the fall as an opportunity to encourage volunteers to plant native species restoring ecological balance to the environment while creating greener, more beautiful communities. Learn more about this event at www.kab.org.

National Nonprofit Presents 2019 Cigarette Litter Prevention Program Grant to Keep Dalton Whitfield Beautiful

Executive Director, Amy Hartline, poses with one of the specially ordered Ballot Bins to demonstrate how people can vote for one of two options using cigarette litter.

Keep America Beautiful®, the nation’s leading community improvement nonprofit organization, announced it has awarded a 2019 Cigarette Litter Prevention Program® grant to Keep Dalton-Whitfield Beautiful to help it combat the most commonly littered item in America. Keep Dalton-Whitfield Beautiful is one of 50 organizations receiving a Keep America Beautiful Cigarette Litter Prevention Program (CLPP) merit-based grant. Keep Dalton Whitfield Beautiful’s grant award of $2,000 will be used to install special “ballot bins” to encourage people to put their cigarettes in the right place. These bins allow people to “vote” using their cigarettes in a poll with two different options.  “We hope to make keeping our town clean more fun and interactive. That way everyone can feel more pride in the community they’ve created.”, said Executive Director, Amy Hartline.

Communities implementing the CLPP in 2018 reported an average 62 percent reduction of cigarette litter, even greater than the previous year’s average reduction of 52 percent. Cigarette Litter Prevention Program grant funding empowers communities to help mitigate the economic, environmental and quality of-life impact of cigarette butt littering. “Litter is both the smallest and largest problem at the same time,” said Jerred Jones, program director for the CLPP. “Keep America Beautiful is dedicated to educating consumers on the hazards of littering in public spaces and providing the tools to reduce litter. Access to ash receptacles and portable pocket ashtrays are crucial to changing littering behaviors.”

The CLPP, created by Keep America Beautiful in 2002, is the nation's largest program aimed at eliminating cigarette butt and cigar tip litter. Since its inception, the program has been successfully implemented in more than 1,800 urban, suburban and rural communities nationwide. Over the past decade, participating communities have consistently cut cigarette butt litter by 50 percent based on local measurements taken in the first four months to six months after program implementation. Research has shown that even self-reported “non-litterers” often don’t consider tossing cigarette butts on the ground to be "littering." Keep America Beautiful has found that cigarette butt litter occurs most often at transition points—areas where a person must stop smoking before proceeding into another area. These include bus stops, entrances to stores and public buildings, and the sidewalk areas outside of bars and restaurants, among others. The CLPP is supported by funding from Altria, Reynolds American, and the Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company.

Visit www.KeepDaltonWhitfieldBeautiful.org to register for the KDWB newsletter or call 706-278-5001 to find out how you can volunteer or participate in events

Whitfield County Schools Win National Recycling Award

School is out for the summer and this year Whitfield County Schools ended the year by winning the Keep America Beautiful Recycle-Bowl competition in the community division. The Keep America Beautiful Recycle-Bowl is a national recycling competition for K-12 students, teacher, and school communities. Recycling rates are weighed and calculated for four weeks in the fall to determine the winners of 5 divisions. The community division means that the schools accept recycling from students and others within the community. This year’s Recycle-Bowl had more than 260,000 students and teachers participate and a total of 1.3 million pounds collected for recycling.

Whitfield County Schools collected a total of 31,010 pounds of recyclables during the Recycle Bowl. That’s the weight equivalent of 1,550 car tires or 87 black bears. The Dalton-Whitfield Solid Waste program provides the cans for the recycling to be collected and collects the recycling each week completely for free. The DWSWA also provides educational opportunities as class visits or field trips to the recycling center with activities from a licensed educator for free. Many of the Whitfield County Schools take advantage of these opportunities to help educate their students on becoming good global citizens.

Karey Williams, Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning for Whitfield County Schools and Chair of Keep Dalton-Whitfield Beautiful supports the values taught by recycling and encourages the community to participate, "The Whitfield County School System is proud to support the recycling efforts of our community.  The students in our schools are excited to participate in efforts to keep our environment clean and healthy because they know the work is so important for the future of the planet."

While DWSWA maintains pickups, each school handles their in-school collection in a different way that is created to best suit their needs. Some have an afterschool team, or specific class in charge, and some have a particularly passionate teacher that helps encourage recycling such as Kali Tomlinson at Valley Point Middle School. She works with her students all year to help them learn what happens to recycling and increase parent engagement.

Schools that participate in past Recycle-Bowl competitions have been measured as recycling 10 percent more than schools that don’t participate. Recyclables recovered during the competition in 2018 prevented the release of 1,842.68 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. This reduction in greenhouse gases is equivalent to 4.5 million miles driven by an average passenger vehicle and 643 tons of material recycled instead of landfilled.

“It’s always exciting to see students from across the country, and from all age groups, get excited about recycling at school as well as at home or on the go,” said Keep America Beautiful Youth and Education Program Manager Kathryn Joblon in a statement. The Whitfield County students of 2018-2019 have shown the nation their commitment to making a difference through recycling.

Submitted by Keep Dalton-Whitfield Beautiful

Billboard Design Contest Winner for 2018 Announced

Ms. Martinez’s design includes the phrase “I want to be recycled!” one of the themes of the contest. The artwork is an illustration of recyclables lining up to jump into a recycling bin. They are happy and excited to be turned into new, useful objects instead of being wasted.

Valley Point Middle School 6th grader, Alicia Martinez, is the overall winner of the 2018 America Recycles Day Billboard Design Contest hosted by the Dalton-Whitfield Solid Waste Authority’s program Target Recycling at School. The winning design will be displayed on two billboards in Whitfield County (one on Cleveland Hwy., and the other on E. Walnut Ave.) during the month of November.

The billboard design contest, now in its ninth year, has a 1st place winner from each grade level including 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. The three winners, listed below, received a certificate of participation and a gift bag with items made from recycled materials. The first place overall, who is the winner of the billboard, was selected from the first-place design from each grade level.

Winners for 2018

The winners all from Valley Point Middle that placed in the America Recycles Day Billboard Design Contest for 2018. From left to right: Alicia Martinez, Rhonda Burdette filling in for Javier Ayabar, and Javiar Torres.

·         1st Place in 6th grade and Overall Winner –Alicia Martinez, Valley Point Middle School

·         1st Place in 7th grade – Javier J. Torres, Valley Point Middle School

·         1st  Place in 8th grade - Javier Ayabar–, Valley Point Middle School

Target Recycling at School provides recycling collection services and environmental education opportunities to schools in Whitfield County. For more information, call 706-278-5001 or visit www.DWSWA.org.

America Recycles Day is a community-driven event dedicated to promoting recycling awareness, commitment, and action in the U.S. thru its partnership with Keep America Beautiful. It’s celebrated annually on November 15. For more information on recycling, and to take the pledge to #BeRecycled visit www.AmericaRecyclesDay.org.