Keep Irving Beautiful continues to make Irving a lovelier place to live
Written by Phil Cerroni
The Keep Irving Beautiful board and staff guided the program through many fun and exciting activities in 2012. KIB hosted and participated in 10 cleanups that involved 550 volunteers who contributed 1,543 hours collecting 19,640 lbs. of trash and 1,375 lbs. of recyclable materials from both the land and waterways in our community. In addition to the volunteer effort, we worked with 95 community service workers who completed 366 hours, cleaning over 77 miles of streets and collecting over 1,760 lbs. of trash. KIB also helped keep our community cleaner through our Green Event Pro-gram like the Fall Festival at the local YMCA. This year we supported 28 events that collected recyclable material. This program helps reduce what goes to our landfill, which in turn increases the life span of the landfill.
Keep Irving Beautiful also participated in 9 beautification projects and this year our theme was paint, paint and more paint! Eighty-eight volunteers donated 418 hours painting pavilions at Running Bear, Hurwitz, and nearby Luzon Parks. KIB volunteers also painted the gazebo at Heritage Park, the hand rails at Senter Park, the youth meeting room at Northwest Recreation Center and the bathrooms at Lively Pointe Recreation Center. KIB, spearheaded by Margie Stipes, also found time to help plant some trees. In fact, we helped plant 24 native trees in our community. A beautiful tree was planted on the grounds at the Nissan child care center and then with the help of VHA Inc. and the students from Thomas Haley, 22 trees were planted on the school grounds.
Lastly, in partnership with the City of Irving Parks Department, Irving I.S.D. and Abitibi Bowater we celebrated Arbor Day by planting a tree at T.J. Lee Elementary School. This year T.J. Lee was the top paper recycler. They collected 50,000 lbs. of paper!
Education remained a focus in 2012. Keep Irving Beautiful board and staff attended several school career days where we were able to talk about our efforts and encourage the teachers and students to continue to help make our community a better place to live, work and play! Guided by Dr. Yolanda Romero, we continued our work with the students and staff from North Lake College. North Lake students stood side by side and partnered with us on nearly all of our events. This was our 8th and 9th semester that we worked with the Service Learning Program. Twenty-eigth students completed 390 hours of service.
Our signature event “Trinity Trash Bash” brought together 100’s of students from the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society and the student body at large, making a huge impact.
Together, we make a great team! A big thank you to all the North Lake College students, faculty and staff.
Source: Keep Irving Beautiful
