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Kerry,
Summer is in full swing with backyard bbqs,
county fairs, canoeing, and boating. KOB
affiliates are enjoying the sounds and sights of
summer, but they are also out there reminding
people to keep things clean and beautiful. Many
affiliates set up booths at the local county fair
and others hold litter free events during their
city festivals.
Be sure to do your part
while enjoying outdoor activities during the month
of August. Car litter bags are not only a
must-have during a road trip, they are also great
to have on biking and hiking trails and on a boat.
Let's keep Ohio a clean and beautiful place to
live, work, and play!
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Great American
Cleanup A Success! 
The
Great American Cleanup (GAC) 2007 was a success!
The GAC is the nation's largest volunteer
cleanup and community improvement program.
Sponsored nationally by Keep America Beautiful,
the event takes place nationwide during the
months of March, April and
May.
Over 150 GAC events
occured around the state of Ohio during these
three months. 62,573 volunteers participated in
projects with KOB affiliates. That is a 10%
increase from 2006! Projects included cleanup
events, recycling collections, river sweeps,
graffiti paint outs, school makeover events,
beautification and planting events, and Earth
Day celebrations.
Great American Cleanup
by the numbers:
- 3,630,849 lbs. of trash was collected during
GAC events.
- 4,058 miles of roadway were cleaned.
- 9,734 acres of parks and public lands were
cleaned.
- 616,887 lbs. of tires were collected for
recycling.
- 450,199 lbs. of electronics were recycled.
- 147,784 lbs. of PET plastic were collected
for recycling.
- 10,501 new trees were planted in Ohio.
- 130,984 flowers and bulbs were planted in
the Buckeye State.
- 866 educational workshops were conducted by
KOB affiliates.
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Keep Ohio Beautiful
Welcomes New Affiliate! Keep Clark County
Beautiful  Keep Ohio Beautiful
welcomes a new affiliate into the Keep America
Beautiful network. Keep Clark County Beautiful
has been pre-certfified by KAB. The Clark County
team held their first pre-certification training
on July 23rd. Sue Smith, National Director of
Education and Training for KAB, was in Clark
County to lead the training session.
Keep
Clark County Beautiful is being led by the Clark
County Waste Management District, located in
Springfield. Clark County is home to 150,000
residents. The Waste Management District just
opened a new recycling facility this year and
they are truly closing the loop on recycling!
Their new building is made almost entirely of
recycled materials. The flooring, the paint, the
tile, the concrete, brick walls, and carpeting
are just a few examples. It's a wonderful
display of recycling at work!
Keep Clark
County Beautiful is the 33rd affiliate in Ohio.
Currently, Ohio ranks 4th in the nation for the
number of certified KAB affiliates.
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Meet the KOB
Executive Director  The KOB E-newsletter has
featured a "Meet the Board Members" section in
each issue. Since I have had all of them answer
my fun questions it has been suggested that I do
the same. So this month you are being introduced
to me, Kerry Crossen. I am currently the
part-time Executive Director of Keep Ohio
Beautiful, a position I have enjoyed since
February 2006. I am also a Program Manager for
Keep Cincinnati Beautiful and have been involved
in the Keep America Beautiful network for 6 1/2
years.
My duties with KOB involve
serving as a liason between our local affiliates
and KAB, compiling state reports, coordinating
in-state training for affiliates, fundraising,
pubic awareness, and coordinating statewide
events such as the State Roadway
Cleanup.
Originally from the Ashland,
Ohio area, I moved to Cincinnati nearly 11 years
ago. I hold a bachelors degree in Communication
from the University of Cincinnati.
In my
free time, I enjoy playing softball, camping,
white water rafting, reading, traveling and
planning group activities for friends. I am
heading back to West Virginia to raft the Gauley
River this fall.
Favorite TV show:
Grey's Anatomy and Cold Case are two
favorites
Favorite Ice Cream Flavor:
Anything peanut butter and chocolate--I love
peanut butter cup blizzards at Dairy Queen. But
Graeter's strawberry is nearly perfect
too.
Last Book I Read: I just started
to read Marley and Me. I'm partial to
thrillers and mysteries though, such as Dean
Koontz and Jonathan Kellerman.
What I
like best about Ohio: Traveling around the
state to visit KOB affiliates is interesting
because our state differs so much from region to
region. I love being by the river and all of the
hills in Cincinnati but the Lake Erie area is
great too---boating, Cedar Point, Put-in-Bay,
the list goes on. We have so many professional
sporting teams and great college teams as well.
We have urban centers full of arts and
nightlife and we have rural areas where the
church ice cream socials still have some of the
best food around. We have some of the best
roller coasters in the world, nationally ranked
zoos, wonderful state parks, and the Rock-n-Roll
Hall of Fame. So what I like best about Ohio are
the options. You can experience many things, all
within a four 1/2 hour drive at the most.
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Don't Miss the 2007
Partners for Sustainable Development Conference!
Early bird deadline
extended to August 1st!  The 2007 Partners
Conference is scheduled to be held October
2-4th, 2007 at the Sawmill Creek Resort &
Conference Center in Huron, OH. Be sure to register
by August 1st for the early bird
registration rate.
Joining the
Association of Ohio Recyclers as Conference
Partners are: Division of Recycling & Litter
Prevention, Ohio Environmental Protection
Agency, Organization of Solid Waste Districts of
Ohio, Buckeye Solid Waste Association of North
America, Keep Ohio Beautiful and Organization of
Litter Prevention & Recycling
Professionals.
Please join us as we talk
about issues in solid waste management, E-waste,
recycling, green building, composting and much
more. The Huron area has many opportunities for
exciting tours as well.
For more
information on the conference and to sign up as
a sponsor or exhibitor, please visit the AOR
website.
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Did you Know?
Turning your comupter
off saves energy  You wouldn't leave your
television on all day while you are at the
office, and yet, across the country, millions of
work PC's are left on all night-wasting energy
and costing owners millions in utility costs.
Nearly half of all corporate PC's in the US are
not regularly switched off at night, costing US
businesses $1.72 billion in energy per year and
causing emissions of 14.4 million tons of carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere, according to
recently released PC Energy Awareness
report.
The report combines statistics on
energy usage and CO2 emissions, alongside
research on behavior in the American workplace,
such as whether employees are turning their PC's
off at the end of the day.
"Few problems
match an impact so large with a solution so
simple," said Sumir Karayi, chief executive
officer, 1E. "A computer uses energy even when
it appears to be idle. Ideally, everyone would
shut down their PC's at the end of the working
day, but the research released shows that this
just doesn't happen," he
stated.
According to the report, some
people assume their IT departments need their
machines to be left on overnight in order to
deploy security patches and software updates.
Others believe an on-board "sleep" or
hibernation mode kicks in -- which isn't usually
the case. And, an alarming number of respondents
(21%) admitted that they just don't care so
never turn their computers off.
Play
the Energy Awareness Game
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Enjoy the rest of the summer in the Buckeye
state! I hope you get to enjoy one of our county
fairs, an ice cream social, a baseball game, a
camping trip, or any of the other wonderful
activities that Ohio has to offer.
Kind Regards,
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Did you know that only 2.5
million phones are collected to be recycled or
reused, accounting for less than 1 percent of
the millions retired or discarded each year? Why
not do something good for the environment
instead?
