By: Claire Tribble
Keep Athens-Limestone Beautiful, a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit, has been serving Limestone County since 1977. KALB’s mission is to empower citizens of Athens and Limestone County to take greater responsibility for enhancing their community environment. While we are not a branch of the City of Athens or the Limestone County Commission, we work closely with them to accomplish many of our goals. Because we are a nonprofit, we rely on city and county funding, sponsorships, and donations to be able to accomplish our goals.
At Keep Athens-Limestone Beautiful, we focus on litter control and abatement, beautification projects, recycling, and education. We are an organization made up of an executive director and a volunteer commission. We have been very fortunate to have our amazing community of volunteers who have worked with us to make everything we have accomplished possible. In the past five years, Keep Athens-Limestone Beautiful has removed 192,372 pounds of litter from public lands and waterways throughout Athens and Limestone County with the unwavering help from 3,500 volunteers and various partnering businesses and organizations. How do we manage this? First off, we have an amazing volunteer base to work with. Keep Alabama Beautiful and the Alabama Department of Transportation provides us with supplies such as litter grabbers, gloves, safety vests, and bags. We are also lucky enough to have the support of the Limestone County Commission and the City of Athens.
For the past few years, we have been lucky enough to have the support of the Limestone County Commission to be able to provide the Household Hazardous Waste Collection for all of Limestone County. They have been fundamental in providing this service to the community. It is the only way to ethically dispose of harmful chemicals in Limestone County, and we appreciate all the support from the Commission. We hope to continue to be able to provide this service to Limestone County for as long as we can.
Our favorite event of the year, the Earth Day Expo is possible because of our amazing businesses right here in Limestone County. Because they believe in us and our mission, they sponsor this amazing, family-friendly event every year. Athens State University donates so much time, energy, and space to us, we can’t begin to thank them enough. So many businesses step up to make sure this can remain a free event to the public, and we are proud to see it grow each year.
We owe our success to our community, and we want to see Limestone County flourish in the future. We know that there are a lot of organizations asking for donations, and each one is as important as the next. Keep Athens-Limestone Beautiful relies on fundraising and donations to operate. We thank each and every donor for every dollar. We pride ourselves on being good stewards of the money and the environment!
By: Claire Tribble – Executive Director
Keep Athens-Limestone Beautiful
