Keep San Angelo Beautiful gives annual report

Aaron McGuire
·6 min read

SAN ANGELO, Texas (Concho Valley Homepage) — Keep San Angelo Beautiful presented its annual report for 2023 to the San Angelo City Council during a council meeting on March 19, during which changes to some of the group’s most widely used services were discussed.

KSAB is a nonprofit organization designed “to enhance the quality of life in San Angelo,” “create awareness and maintain clean, green and beautiful spaces through art, science and education in our community,” according to its webpage on the City of San Angelo website. The organization undertakes several community outreach events to accomplish this, including regular trash sweeps and popular services such as Tires-to-Go.

Completed Projects and Trash Pickup

Charlotte Anderson, KSAB’s executive director, presented the group’s 2023 annual report during the meeting. She began by sharing the successful completion of some of the organization’s recent projects, namely a series of signs placed around the community stating that San Angelo is an affiliate of Keep Texas Beautiful.

“We’re really proud of them,” Anderson said. “We hope you take a look at that and hope we can remind our citizens that, in San Angelo, we don’t litter.”

Anderson shared that KSAB hosted 15 trash cleanups during 2023, removing an estimated 51,055 pounds of trash and hazardous waste from around the city. Altogether, the organization has hosted 46 cleanups and removed over 156,458 pounds of trash across four years of activity.

“Hopefully we send that message again that real Texans don’t litter,” Anderson said.

Tire Disposal

Anderson then moved on to KSAB’s tire disposal initiatives, which have removed approximately 25,225 tires from San Angelo over the past three years. Volunteers and KSAB members alike roll up their sleeves and haul tires to contribute during tire collection events, which have their metals recycled before being chipped into tire-derived fuel.

“According to TxDOT, tire debris is one of our largest [problems] on our highways,” Anderson said. “Said it before and I’ll say it again, you haven’t lived until you’ve rolled and stacked.”

Mayor Brenda Gunter took particular interest in gauging the public’s reaction to the $2 donation per tire often requested from San Angelo residents disposing of their tires during events like Tires To-Go.

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“We’ve had an overwhelming response, and it’s quite a challenge depending on how many volunteers you have,” Anderson said. “We thought that maybe with the $2 donation, we would be able to curb that a bit.”

After some deliberation about how KSAB’s tire disposal initiatives and donation requests are handled, Gunter suggested changing the requested donation from $2 per tire to $5 per vehicle. Anderson agreed with Gunter’s idea, potentially solidifying a change to Tires To-Go’s monetization efforts.

“I think the efforts that you all have put together and have done to help improve the quality of life in San Angelo is worth $5 a vehicle to get rid of their tires,” Anderson said.

Anderson also revealed that KSAB would only be accepting up to 25 tires per person during the next Tires To-Go. The decision was made to give residents who arrive to disposal events later than others to still have a chance to get rid of their tires, as previous events often saw the trucks used to store tires reach maximum capacity before everyone was processed.

“I’m there at 5 a.m. in the morning, and there are people already there in line, and I think that’s where our challenge is,” Anderson said. “If they’re already in line so early, then the people that come later at the event are not going to get served because we’re going to run out of room.”

Hazardous Waste Disposal

Moving on from tire disposal, Anderson stated that KSAB’s hazardous waste disposal initiatives have successfully removed 3,000 pounds of oil, 2,000 pounds of shredded documents, 150 pounds of cardboard, 25,000 pounds of electronics and 10,491 pounds of hazardous waste chemicals and paints.

The organization has also removed 31,000 plastic bags and sent them to the Prayer Shawl Group, a group of women in Mertzon, Texas, who shred the bags into strips, weave them into yarn and knit them together into products such as blankets.

“These are handed out twice a year to our homeless community,” Anderson said. “They’re very durable, they’re washable, so they are reusuable.”

Tree Planting

The organization has planted roughly 950 trees during its four years of activity. KSAB planted 500 trees in the community during 2023, 130 of which went to schools.

“We’re really proud of enhancing our school campuses so that our students will have habitats, shade and fresher air,” Anderson said.

Awards, Accolades and Achievements

Anderson also took the time to share some of the achievements KSAB has acquired during its operational time. According to the slideshow presented during the meeting, the accolades are as follows:

  • TCEQ 2024 Texas Environmental Excellence Award: Community/Civic Tires To-Go

  • State of Texas Alliance for Recycling Texas Environmental Leadership Award: Extraordianry Recycling Event “Tires” & Outstanding Public Outreach

  • Keep Texas Beautiful Gold Star Affiliate — 3 years

  • Governor’s Community Achievement Award of Sustainable Excellence — 3 years

  • Keep Texas Beautiful Beautify Texas Award “Public Education & Outreach”

  • KTB HEB Green Bag Grant Winner — 4 years & recycling winner 2023

  • Keep Texas Beautiful Judge GCAA

  • Keep Texas Beautiful conference & webinar presenter

  • KTB mentor — Little Elm, Brazos, Big Lake, Andrews, Kemah

  • Apache Tree Grant — 4 years, 8-10 proclamations

  • San Angelo lifestyles 2021 — Texas Town & City 2022

  • “Tires To-Go” 2022, “Beauty & the Book” 2023

  • TxDot recognition & DMWT barrel presentation

  • Publishing ABC 26 Ways to Keep San Angelo Beautiful”

  • Initiate Youth Advisory Council & 1st recycled art contest

Overall

Anderson concluded her presentation by sharing some statistics behind KSAB’s overall outreach efforts, stating that the organization has particpated, joined and hosted over 220 during 2023. The group has been aided by over 1,000 volunteers and 4,085 businesses, costituting 3,496 hours of service and providing $112,381 in value to the City.

“We want to thank the City of San Angelo for the opportunity to be a conduit to the community and for supporting safe environmental activities to engage our families, our students and our citizens,” Anderson said. “In addition to fostering a love of the environment, we’re building better businesses and communities through relevant community needs with intentional acts of service and purposeful teambuilding.”

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