Keep Dallas Beautiful, Inc., our local affiliate of Keep America Beautiful, received the state’s highest environmental award, the 1994-1995 Keep Texas Beautiful Governor’s Community Achievement Award in the largest population category.

This is the third time Dallas has received this honor, which was presented to Keep Dallas Beautiful officials by Texas First Lady Laura Bush.

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This award program recognizes communities in nine population categories for their grassroots efforts in environmental improvement. The award resulted in approximately $235,000 in highway landscaping for Dallas.

Community achievements are judged in six areas – public awareness programs, school programs, implementation of recycling programs, citizen cleanup efforts, stricter litter law enforcement, and beautification and enhancement of the community’s overall quality of life.

Some of the programs that made this award possible include the Keep Dallas Beautiful/Dallas Public Schools Environmental Education Program, the Dallas Morning News/Keep Dallas Beautiful Environmental Hotline, the annual Christmas Tree Recycling Program and the new Adopt-A-Christmas Tree program, Earth Day ’95, Clean Scene, and the annual Glad Bag-A-Thon cleanup and recycling program.

Award Committee chair David Clay notes that Dallas and the other winners “should be proud of the example they have set by building a public/private partnership with Keep Texas Beautiful.”

Congratulations to Keep Dallas Beautiful for their outstanding efforts, and to all the volunteers who helped with the programs.

New Recycling Programs Take Off

Two paper recycling programs that began a few months ago are thriving. Participants are eagerly recycling at the bins located at their neighborhood schools and churches.

Proceeds from the collected paper directly benefit the sponsoring organization. Initial monthly revenues were projected to be about $100 a month. With the cost of paper at an all-time high, and the response to these programs exceeding expectations, this figure is much higher at many locations.

These are great results for a program whose first goal is to keep recyclable paper out of the landfills!

Hundreds of paper recycling bins have been placed throughout Dallas, with many in our neighborhood. Items collected are newspapers with slicks, catalogs, magazines, and advertising inserts. A few neighborhood locations are:

Dan D. Rogers Elementary, 5314 Abrams

Lakewood Elementary, 3000 Hillbrook

Lakewood United Methodist Church, 2443 Abrams

Lipscomb Elementary, 5801 Worth

Long Middle School, 6116 Reiger

St. Bernard Catholic School, 1420 Old Gate

St. John Episcopal School, 848 Harter

St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic School, 3741 Abrams

Trinity Lutheran Church, 7112 Gaston

Wilshire Baptist Church, 4316 Abrams

Woodrow Wilson High School, 100 S. Glasgow

Recycling paper significantly reduces our trash volume. Neighborhoods with curbside pickup are able to recycle only newspaper. Even though recycling other paper means taking it somewhere, these successful programs make it easy – and our efforts are helping provide extra funds for worthy neighborhood organizations.