UPS Keeps America Beautiful

The UPS Foundation Awards Keep America Beautiful Affiliates with Community Grants

Thirteen Communities Receive Grants Totaling $130,000 for a Wide Array of Local Projects

STAMFORD, Conn. (June 14, 2011) – The UPS Foundation awarded 13 Keep America Beautiful (KAB) affiliates with $10,000 community improvement grants, each supporting programs across the country that address recycling, beautification and community greening, litter prevention and waste reduction. The projects will take place during 2011 and into early 2012.

The grant awards were presented to KAB affiliates in recognition of their volunteer initiatives with local UPS locations throughout the United States. UPS employee volunteers will actively support many of these merit-based award programs in their respective communities.

“The UPS Foundation is a leader in supporting and initiating volunteer engagement throughout the country,” said Matthew M. McKenna, president and CEO, Keep America Beautiful. “Keep America Beautiful values this partnership because we know our affiliates will make significant and sustainable differences in their respective communities with the help of these grants.”

“The local affiliates of Keep America Beautiful continue to come up with creative approaches to addressing environmental challenges,” said Ken Sternad, president of The UPS Foundation. “UPS and our employees are proud to see it happen and stand ready to support projects that improve the communities where we live and work.”  

The winning KAB affiliates and a description of their UPS Foundation-supported projects are:

Keep Arizona Beautiful (KAZB), through its Oasis Beautification Project, is seeking to mitigate the cumulative impact of blight in the Lower Grand Avenue neighborhood of Phoenix and convert the Oasis Hotel into an affordable housing project, which will offer 60 one-bedroom and studio live/work residential units, with an emphasis on serving the needs of local artists. KAZB will also reseed community and pedestrian infrastructure in adjoining, public rights-of-way.

Keep Oakland Beautiful is supporting volunteerism through its Community Small Grant Program, which is providing small dollar amount grants to neighborhood groups. These projects are awarded to groups who propose creative and highly visible projects ranging from neighborhood park makeovers to beautification of entire median strips.

After recognizing the overwhelming need in the community to support revitalization efforts in the neglected community of Indiantown, Keep Martin (Fla.) Beautiful (KMB) plans to coordinate a series of improvements to 10 different structures in need of painting and minor structural improvements as part of its Indiantown Makeover.

Santa Rosa (Fla.) Clean Community System will create a Recycling Innovation Station at the site of the old firehouse in the county seat of Milton. This site will not only have recycling centers, but will show off recycled materials and give out recycling information at the park adjacent to the area.

The goal of KAB – Topeka/Shawnee County’s “No Children Left Inside” program is to help local youth realize how important Earth is and to create a legacy in future environmentalists through fun and educational lesson plans that would include outdoor activities for youth of all ages. 

Keep Covington (La.) Beautiful plans to create a Covington Nature Trail at the Covington Recreation Complex. The project will include planting supplementary native trees along the trail as well as providing educational information about trailside native plant species.

The goal of the Senior Citizens’ Center Landscaping Project is to install landscaping, an irrigation system, benches, and raised handicap accessible planters a new Center, which was destroyed during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  Keep Slidell Beautiful will involve senior citizens by forming a 15-member Senior Citizen’s Green Team trained by local Master Gardeners to plant and mulch shrubs, perennials, and ornamental trees.

The Roundup Recycling Project will address the needs of Miles City’s local recycling facility at Eastern Montana Industries, a sheltered workshop employing individuals with developmental disabilities. Keep Miles City (Mont.) Beautiful will work with the facility to contain the recyclable materials and improve the area’s appearance by providing covered bins. Volunteers will prepare the area, local youth will participate in a contest to develop a portable mural for the area, new bins will be placed, new paint applied and unsightly signage will be replaced.

“Got Your Bags?” is a promotion for reusable bags at local grocery stores. Keep Lincoln & Lancaster County (Neb.) Beautiful will partner with small franchise grocery stores to increase the number of customers using reusable grocery bags and decrease the use of plastic bags at their stores.

Keep Beatrice (Neb.) Beautiful will restore 18.2 acres of grasses along the Big Blue River Trail to a high-diversity native-ecotype prairie restoration as part of the Big Blue River Trail Riparian Restoration. Staff and volunteers will return this historic area to a state more closely resembling what it looked like when the first settlers planted native grasses along the Big Blue River. This project would have the distinction of being first of many planned improvements in this area.

Keep North Carolina Beautiful aims to address the problem of uncovered truck loads, which accounted for 50 percent of North Carolina’s roadside litter and contributed to $14 million of litter removal costs to the state last year alone. The goal of Tarp Day is to reach, educate and activate convenience center or landfill users to properly secure their cargo with the distribution of free tarps administrated by the 31 local affiliates.

In an effort to raise the quality of life for Oklahoma City’s residents, Oklahoma City Beautiful is launching a “No Butts About It” cigarette litter prevention campaign. The objective of this program is to reduce the amount of cigarette litter in Oklahoma City by half. Cigarette receptacles will be placed in public parks in areas that smokers frequent; volunteers will distribute portable ashtrays; and a public education campaign will be utilized. Success will be measured based on the scans that a volunteer task force will perform before, during and after all aspects of the program are completed.

Keep Yankton (S.D.) Beautiful will use grant funds to landscape and re-purpose an existing storage building for community and public event use at Tripp Park. The plans for the Tripp Park Project include landscaping the park and encourage outdoor use and enjoyment of a well-used bike trail in a section of town with no such public gathering spaces.

About The UPS Foundation

UPS (NYSE: UPS) is a global leader in logistics, offering a broad range of solutions including the transportation of packages and freight, the facilitation of international trade, and the deployment of advanced technology to more efficiently manage the world of business. Since its founding in 1907, UPS has built a legacy as a caring and responsible corporate citizen, supporting programs that provide long-term solutions to community needs. Founded in 1951, The UPS Foundation, which celebrates its 60^th anniversary in 2011, is responsible for facilitating community involvement to local, national, and global communities. In 2010, UPS and its employees, active and retired, invested more than $95 million in charitable giving around the world. The UPS foundation can be found on the web at UPS.com/foundation. To get UPS news direct, visit pressroom.ups.com/RSS.

About Keep America Beautiful, Inc.

Keep America Beautiful, Inc., established in 1953, is the nation’s largest volunteer-based community action and education organization. With a network of more than 1,200 affiliate and participating organizations, Keep America Beautiful forms public-private partnerships and programs that engage individuals to take greater responsibility for improving their community environments. For more information, visit www.kab.org.