Tell Kennesaw What's Important To You

The City of Kennesaw wants to know what environmental issues are important to you. The Environmental Committee has put together a short survey to gather your opinions. The results of the survey will tell us where to focus our efforts -- recycling, litter, greenspace, or other issue that is important to you.

Please click here to take the survey. It will take less than 10 minutes, but the effects will last for years.

Learn more about the Kennesaw Environmental Committee.


Contact ebfritsch@yahoo.com if you have any questions.

Big Shanty Festival 2008

For the second year, Kennesaw's Environmental Committee placed recycling containers around the Big Shanty Festival.

Over 40,000 people attend the event and enjoy the craft vendors, children's activities, food and beverages. Hundreds of pounds of plastic and aluminum are discarded each year, which adds to the city's cost for trash dumping.

With the Committee's recycling efforts, that waste is redirected to recycling centers, saving the City money, as well as reducing the impact on the landfills. Those materials are recycled into other goods, having an almost endless life cycle.

Look for the recycling containers at every event, and put your plastic and aluminum beverage containers in the right place.

April Eco-Tips

“Spring Cleaning”

By Lisa C. Decker – Eco-writer

* One man’s trash is another man’s treasure – Freecycle

* Green cleaning alternatives

* Earth Day is really every day

Ah, spring is in the air. Time to open the windows, dust off the cobwebs and start your spring cleaning. While you are in the cleaning mode, here are a few tips to help make your clean “green.” And when you are done with your work, reward yourself by getting outside to enjoy this months beautiful, blooming colors of nature!

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure – Freecycle.org – When you start clearing through the clutter, think about how those items can serve another purpose. Whatever you do, please don’t trash reusable items. Instead, pass them on! Donate to a local charity or give it away through Freecycle.org. This internet based network is made up of 4,288 groups with 4,653,000 members across the globe. A highly successful grassroots effort whose whole premise is to reuse and keep good stuff out of the landfills by people who are giving (& getting!) stuff for FREE in their own towns. These community based chapters have many times become a lifeline for those in need and those wanting to help. Georgia alone has nearly 100 active chapters. Kennesaw/Acworth has one. Check out your county and/or city sites at http://www.freecycle.org/.


Cleaning out the garage, basement or attic and don't know what to do with used motor oil, or the dead battery from the car you junked 3 years ago, or old paint? Check out Earth911, type in your zip code and it will list the places closest to you that you can take the stuff for proper disposal.

Green cleaning alternatives - The CBS news show "48 Hours" had a special years ago with Heloise reporting on tests from The Good Housekeeping Institute that showed vinegar has high antibacterial properties. A straight 5 percent solution of vinegar—your typical supermarket stuff—kills 99 percent of bacteria, 82 percent of mold, and 80 percent of germs (viruses). Though vinegar has not been registered with the EPA, so the claims cannot be made on the label, generations have known the benefits of this simple product. Just go ask your Grandma. Annie’s Green Living Healthy Home touts natural cleaning benefits using such old fashioned items as vinegar and baking soda to clean everything from countertops to clogged pipes. Check out www.care2.com/greenliving for more ideas.

Earth Day is really every day but April holds a specially designated day to honor and celebrate our planet. This year the date falls on April 22nd. Special events will be held on or around this date throughout the world.

Close to home, Keep Cobb Beautiful in partnership with local Kiwanis Clubs, are holding document shredding events for sensitive documents to help citizens be safe with secure shredding at no cost. Of course, all those shredded papers will be recycled as part of Earth Day celebration. Each car will be limited to 100 pounds of documents to be shredded. ONLY paper products will be accepted (no binders with rings or metal).

DOCUMENT SHREDDING DAY will be Saturday, April 19, 2008 from 9 am – Noon at four Cobb Senior Service Centers in the county:
• West Cobb Senior Center 4915 Dallas Hwy Powder Springs, GA 30127
• East Cobb Senior Center 3332 Sandy Plains Rd Marietta , GA 30066
• North Cobb Senior Center 4100 Highway 293 Acworth, GA 30101
• Windy Hill Senior Center 1885 Roswell Street Smyrna , GA 30080

Go to http://kcb.cobbcountyga.gov/ for more info.

Swift Cantrell opens!

It was a blustery 30-something degrees on March 8 when Kennesaw officially opened Swift Cantrell Park on N. Main Street. In spite of the wind chill, about 100 hardy souls came out for free hot dogs and hot chocolate and the Best Dressed Pet Contest. The City also officially activated the wireless internet service now available at the Park.

Elicia Fritsch and Judy Hobbs represented the Kennesaw Enviromental Committee, passing out information about the city's curbside recycling and an anti-litter coloring book to the young visitors.

The Committee is busy planning for the Big Shanty Festival, Kennesaw's spring event that attracts thousands of people who like to eat and shop. They will be educating the visitors about recycling and making it a Litter-Free event.

Arbor Day celebration

Click here for pictures from our Arbor Day celebration!

March Eco-Tips

Lean and Green

• Encourage businesses to “Go Green”
• Banish bottled water
• Great American Clean-Up
  
  
  Top of the morning to you! Celebrating St. Pattie’s Day this month makes us all a bit green. Let’s look at some new ideas to make this green month greener.
  
  

Encourage businesses to “Go Green” – Seems like everywhere you turn these days green is in. Many businesses are starting to realize the enormous marketing potential of turning green initiatives into green dollars. It makes good business sense to do what’s right for the environment and, therefore, for the customers who live in the communities where your products are manufactured, bought and/or sold. Savvy business owners can capitalize on this emerging trend by being part of the solution to environmental problems plaguing the planet. Even small measures like committing to purchase recycled products or setting up a recycle program in your office can be helpful. Local businesses can pledge to adopt a school to donate all their used ink cartridges to (currently only 27% are recycled in the US with millions sent to landfills every year) that can then be used for fundraisers. Looking toward the future may mean building energy efficient buildings and finding ways to use less water and chemicals in manufacturing. Large corporations can buy carbon offsets to reduce their carbon footprints. Even knowing where raw products are purchased from can be impactful – many large corporations have pledged not to buy hardwoods from endangered rain forests strictly because of public outcry. As consumers we can use our voices to ask companies about their “green plans” (commonly called “Corporate sustainability programs”) and encourage those that don’t have one to get one. Remember ultimately, we wield a mighty sword to make changes happen with the power to choose where we spend our money!

Banish bottled water – Plastic water bottles are contributing to global warming and taking up precious landfill space. It takes over 47 million gallons of oil to produce plastic water bottles for Americans every year. By eliminating those bottles we could take 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere every year. That would be like taking 100,000 cars off the road annually! In most cases, bottled water is actually less safe than tap water. Corporate marketing has led us to believe that bottled is better, but the fact is bottled water is less regulated than tap water, meaning that tap water is often safer and less expensive. Next time, save yourself a buck and carry your own re-useable bottle filled from the tap. You can always buy a home filtration unit to make your water safer (check out Nikken.com for a personal sized reusable bottle with a built in filtration unit). Let’s put our efforts into protecting our drinking water from pollutants and practicing conservation to assure that we all have safe and plentiful water to drink for many generations to come.


Great American Clean-Up - The Great American Cleanup is coming. Join in March 1st – May 31st, as the annual, nationwide, community improvement campaign started by Keep America Beautiful in 1999, gets going once again. Last year an estimated 2.8 million volunteers donated more than 7.7 million hours to clean, beautify and improve more than 17,000 communities during more than 30,000 events across the United States.

Locally, Keep Cobb Beautiful (KCB) is challenging Cobb County Schools to get involved. Plan a cleanup, recycling event or beautification project and let KCB give you your supplies. Register your school and they could receive a cash prize to continue your environmental programs! Last years winning schools were Lewis and Shallowford Falls Elementary, Dickerson Middle and Harrison High Schools. Registration forms for participation must be emailed, faxed or postmarked by Friday, March 28, 2008, with events to be completed and reports filed by noon, Friday, May 2, 2008. Home Owner Associations, neighborhoods, scout troops, churches, civic clubs, and businesses can participate as well. If you have a scheduled cleanup during the months of March, April or May, KCB will be happy to supply garbage bags, gloves, litter bags for cars, certificates, posters, stickers and activity sheets for the children. Call (770) 528-1135 for more information. Participation and Cleanup Report forms for all events are available on the Keep Cobb Beautiful website.

Join the Kennesaw Environmental Committee or just volunteer for an event. Meetings are the fourth Tuesday of each month at 6 p.m. in the City Hall conference room. The public is welcome.

Yours in sustainability,

Lisa

February Eco-Tips

Love the Planet

• Plant a tree
• Adopt a street or stream for clean-up
• Ditch the paper and plastic – Use recyclable totes

Valentine’s Day infuses love into the air, and on the ground, and in our water – what a wonderful planet! Showing gratitude for what Mother Earth gives to us – the air we breathe, the water we need for life, and the soil to sustain the crops we grow, can be done in a number of ways.

Plant a tree – Trees help not only to provide shade and beauty, but also serve many practical functions including cleaning our air, water and soil, as well as helping to reduce the effects of global warming by acting as carbon filters. Our community is committed to becoming a Tree City USA. We have designated the Southern Magnolia as our official tree and planted it near the entrance to our newest park, Swift-Cantrell. On Arbor Day, almost 100 volunteers planted trees at the park, including 50 dogwood seedlings in the newly created Children's Forest.

Adopt a street or stream for clean-up – Litter has become a major problem along our roadways and stream banks. First line of defense – Don’t litter! Taking trash home to be responsibly disposed of can save precious resources so that we all don’t bear the costs of paying for clean up. It can also help prevent wildlife injuries caused by this careless act as well – many birds and fish have been strangled by plastic rings that hold soda cans in a six-pack. Some ways to help: Sponsor a neighborhood clean-up or adopt a local streambank to keep clean of litter. Check with local municipalities and environmental groups to see what they might have scheduled as well.

Ditch the paper and plastic – Use recyclable totes – Did you know that nationally consumers use over 10 Billion paper bags per year! Plastics are worse, with an estimate of over 500 Billion consumed worldwide each and every year. That means we are losing our precious carbon eating trees to make disposable paper bags and creating more need for oil consumption in the making of plastics. At a minimum, save your bags (plastic or paper) and take them back for recycling to places like Publix (recycle bins are right outside the front doors). Better yet, start a fashion trend with totes for take-out or groceries. These reusable bags, made from partially recycled products, can be found locally at Publix and Walmart. Jazz them up with pins and other ornamentals to create your own signature style!

Ready to make more of an impact? Then join us for our committee meetings and see what we are working on next. They are held on the 4th Tuesday of every month at 6:00 pm at Kennesaw City Hall conference room. We love Green volunteers who are willing to help out!

We hope you will check back frequently and we welcome your comments and ideas as well. Until next month, hope you find these helpful on your way to going green!

Your Eco-writer,

Lisa