Green Ribbon
Working Together
To promote environmental responsibility
Keep Pickens Beautiful wants to recognize community members who are making extraordinary efforts to beautify Pickens and the reduce their environmental impact.
Green Ribbon Award is given to a selected individuals, groups, clubs or businesses in Pickens County in recognition of outstanding examples of a program, project or activities that protect or enhance our community’s environment through recycling, beautification, and other initiatives.
Big Canoe Receives The August 2022 Green Ribbon Award
August 2022
Keep Pickens Beautiful awards the August 2022 Green Ribbon to the Big Canoe POA. Big Canoe is famous for being a managed mountain community with scenic drives, well-maintained green spaces, an abundance of wildlife, and lots of outdoor amenities. KPB works closely with the Pickens County Recycling Center and has received reports regarding the volume they recycle, effectively diverting significant amounts of waste from the landfills. These were the initial reasons for awarding the POA the Green Ribbon. However, the KPB team learned there is much more happening within the Big Canoe community.
Ecological Foundation of Big Canoe
Beginning in 1972, rooted in ecological principals led by resident ecologist Dr. Robert Platt, the standards that are still practiced today were established. Upon speaking with the Big Canoe POA Director of Operations, Lydell Mack, KPB realized that many of Big Canoe’s principles support of the pillars of KPB’s mission, including beautification, environmental stewardship, and education.
Some of Big Canoe’s beautification initiatives include focusing on incorporating native plants into the landscape and eradicating invasive and non-native plants. This helps to maintain healthy ecosystems that require less maintenance while improving the biodiversity. The POA manages and maintains the public spaces to enhance the community and promote outdoor living. Additionally, there are more than 25 miles of hiking trails maintained through volunteerism.
The Big Canoe community recognizes the importance of environmental stewardship. For example, the POA enforces strict construction and other land disturbance regulations. This ensures that natural features are protected, streams and creeks aren’t altered, and trees, including their trunks and their roots are protected. After construction, erosion control measures must remain until the area is stabilized.
Additional examples of Big Canoe’s focus on environmental stewardship include being registered with the Atlanta Audubon Society as an official Wildlife Sanctuary and strict golf course water management and conservation practices. They have a wildlife and forestry management program that actively combats the woolly adelgid on their Hemlock trees, and the Black Bear Project promotes harmonious living with the area’s wildlife.
Educational opportunities are woven throughout the Big Canoe community to help the guests and residents better understand the intentions of the various programs and initiatives. Informative signs and brochures are available at trailheads, and the Parks and Trails of Big Canoe website offers additional details. Information is provided to guests and residents explaining the flora, fauna, and guidelines within the community.
Adopt-A-Road Volunteers
Keep Pickens Beautiful has had a long relationship with Big Canoe’s Wildflower Bunch Garden Club. In July of 2017, they adopted Steve Tate Highway though KPB’s Adopt-A-Road program. Since then, they have collected 14,866 gallons of garbage (or 496 30-gallon bags) and volunteered 435 hours. Just in 2022, the Wildflower Bunch has averaged 282 gallons of roadside trash collected and more than 6.5 volunteer hours per month. This Adopt-A-Road group has made a huge impact on keeping Pickens County clean.
As stated by Dr. Robert Platt, “Conservation begins with one flower and one person enjoying its undisturbed beauty and walking past….Property owners and their families expect to enjoy this natural beauty for a long, long time…. Because of our collective ownership, we have a great opportunity to develop for ourselves an ethic such that over the years we can continue to enjoy these natural areas and at the same time maintain their environmental quality. This is an attainable challenge. It comes down to each person treating the entire area as if it were his own home.”
Keep Pickens Beautiful thanks everyone in our community who helps to beautify, reduce waste, and educate. By working together, more will be achieved. Please submit nominees for future Green Ribbon Award recipients to KPB.
KPB Awards The May/June 2022 Green Ribbon Award To The East Side Recycling Center
May/June 2022
The Green Ribbon is usually awarded to a business for their beautification efforts and environmental stewardship. For May/June 2022, KPB has awarded the Green Ribbon to Pickens County East Side Recycling and Waste Management.
Keep Pickens Beautiful thanks the Pickens County East Side Recycling Team for assisting the Pickens County community in effectively recycling to reduce the waste headed for the landfills, and for beautifying the recycling center with their vegetable garden. KPB is honored to award them the Green Ribbon for May/June 2022.
In addition to their helpful recycling team and their beautiful vegetable garden (be sure to check out their tomatoes, peppers, and other veggies), the East Side Recycling Center is a busy place. The center currently collects roughly 20% of the county’s recycling.
Recently, Big Canoe residents started using the East Side center as their primary recycling facility. The East Side team is helping to educate the Big Canoe community on the different sorting processes the county has adopted to improve the effectiveness of their recycling program. The sorting at the Pickens Recycling centers has reduced contaminants, ensuring that the materials are not ending up in a landfill, but are truly getting recycled into new products. The East Side Recycling Center is excited about working with the Big Canoe community.
If you have a nominee for a future Green Ribbon Award, please let us know!
Keep Pickens Beautiful Awards The Green Ribbon To 1-800-Packouts
February/March 2022
The Green Ribbon is awarded to local businesses and organizations for their beautification efforts and environmental stewardship. For February/March 2022, KPB has awarded the Green Ribbon to 1-800-Packouts.
If your home or business experiences a flood, fire, or other disaster, 1-800-Packouts is there to help! They will come ‘pack out’ all the items in your home or business and will store them in their private storage facilities until you’re ready to move back in. If your items are damaged, such as fabrics that smell like smoke from a fire, they have specialized tools and processes to clean your property before placing it in storage.
1-800-Packouts’ Efforts to Recycle and Reuse
Keep Pickens Beautiful learned about the services provided by 1-800-Packouts from Kenny Woodard, the director at the Pickens Recycling Center (and one of our Board members). He told us that they recycle a tremendous volume of cardboard, to the extent that they bought their own roll-off cardboard dumpster that they take to our local center every week or two!
As 1-800-Packouts explains:
Recycling cardboard was something we saw as being a good steward of resources, but we did not realize the impact it had on our community. When we reached out to Kenny Woodard to discuss recycling options, he showed such enthusiasm for supporting our efforts to recycle. He explained the benefits of recycling and the impact we would have with reducing landfill waste and increasing revenue for Pickens County. He even allowed us to take our box truck filled with recyclable cardboard to the new recycling center. Since then, we have changed our recycling process to a dedicated recycling dumpster that we can easily dump at the recycling center.
In addition to the recycling efforts of 1-800-Packouts, they also divert truckloads of reusable items from the landfill. Often, after a disaster, people will decide that they no longer want their items. The 1-800-Packouts team takes these reusable items to the Community Thrift Store. They are either sold in the Thrift Store to help generate funds to support their many worthy causes such as community grants, CARES, Good Samaritan, the Pregnancy Center, and more. Any items that the Pickens County community can’t use are then taken to Must Ministries (who serves Cherokee and Cobb counties).
Keep Pickens Beautiful thanks 1-800-Packouts and their team for diverting so much from landfills through recycling and donating for reuse. KPB is honored to award them the Green Ribbon for February/March 2022.
Bigun’s Barbeque Wins KPB’s Green Ribbon Award
December 2021
Bigun’s Barbeque, located in Talking Rock at the intersection of Carnes Mill Road and Highway 515, has been serving their ‘Nearly World Famous Que’ to the Pickens community since 2008. Stop by to enjoy their delicious hickory smoked meats, including pork, brisket, baby back ribs, chicken, and turkey. They also offer a wide range of savory sauces and many side items, including cooked-to-order fried apple pies.
Bigun’s has been an Adopt-A-Road volunteer with Keep Pickens Beautiful since 2016. Their employee, Denny Oliver, has done an amazing job keeping the roadsides near their restaurant clean. This helps to maintain a pleasant environment for their customers and neighbors, but also helps keep trash out of our local waterways; Bigun’s is located just up the hill from Talona Creek.
In addition to Adopt-A-Road, the Bigun’s team has become a recycling leader in Pickens County. Their staff of 60 has learned what’s recyclable and how to sort it for our local center, so all employees, from the front to back, are helping. This year, they have been able to reduce their trash by one dumpster because of the volume they now recycle. That is a huge amount of waste being diverted from the landfills.
Bigun’s is very conscious of the environmental impact of doing business, particularly in our global economy, and works hard to mitigate what they can. For example, they use styrofoam because they are on a septic system which wouldn’t support the volume of water they’d need to wash all the dishes used by their customers, so they recycle all they can to help offset that use. This is an excellent example of how the Bigun’s crew is trying to help.
Bigun’s Barbeque recycles all they can, including cardboard, plastic, paper, and metal. They recycle more than 100 natural plastic jugs per week. That includes all their ketchup, gallon butter containers, and fryer oil jugs. According to the Pickens Recycling Center, #2 plastic has the highest demand and is the most needed recycling material.
In addition to recycling at the restaurant, now many of their employees are recycling at home. This demonstrates how recycling is contagious; their staff has seen the effect recycling has on trash volume, so they have embraced the practice in their home life. If we each do our part to help reduce our environmental impact and beautify our community, we’ll affect big change.
Keep Pickens Beautiful thanks Bigun’s Barbeque and their team for being a positive catalyst in our community. KPB is honored to award them the Green Ribbon for December 2021.
If you have a nominee for a future Green Ribbon Award, please let us know!
61 Main wins Keep Pickens Beautiful’s Green Ribbon Award for October
October 2021
Keep Pickens Beautiful recognizes that their mission is possible only through a team effort. Their focus is to promote beautification and waste reduction through education and leadership, and to demonstrate how the combined efforts of many can lead to big changes. Some of the programs sponsored by KPB are Adopt A Road, Edible Jasper, the Green Thumb Award, and the Green Ribbon Award, all of which are successful thanks to the hard work of their volunteers and community members.
The Green Ribbon Award recognizes extraordinary efforts made by local residents and businesses. Keep Pickens Beautiful awards 61 Main the Green Ribbon for October! Congratulations!
61 Main has been serving delicious farm-to-table dishes to Pickens County for more than 13 years. In addition to working with local farmers and resources for their ingredients and materials, they also make an effort to reduce their environmental impact in many other ways.
- Customers get compostable to-go containers.
- They use reusable containers in their kitchen for food storage rather than single-use to reduce waste.
- Glass, plastic, cardboard, and metal are recycled.
- Food scraps are composted or shared with local farm animals.
- Used vegetable oil is recycled.
- Whenever possible, they consolidate deliveries to reduce their carbon footprint.
- The 61 Main storefront is always beautified!
Keep Pickens Beautiful thanks 61 Main for helping to improve the community by preparing amazing food and for serving as an example for environmental responsibility! Nominees for the Green Ribbon and Green Thumb awards are always welcome!
Pickens Recycling Center Wins KPB’s Green Ribbon Award
June/July 2021
Keep Pickens Beautiful awards the Green Ribbon Award to local individuals, groups, clubs, or businesses. The award recognizes outstanding examples of programs, projects, or activities that enhance and beautify our community. The most recent recipient is the Pickens Recycling Center!
The Pickens Recycling Center and their state-of-the-art recycling facility is making a significant impact in our community. Through their efficiency and dedicated staff, Pickens County is able to reduce the waste headed to the landfill. Under the guidance of Director Kenny Woodard, the center is making noteworthy strides to establishing Pickens County as a recycling hub in our region.
In addition to the recycling services the center provides, the staff have done an amazing job of making the facility an attractive place to visit! The stacked stone wall, plants such as daisies and butterfly bushes, and the other efforts made to beautify are a welcoming as you drive through to drop off your recyclable materials.
Thank you to the Pickens Recycling Center! Keep Pickens Beautiful is happy to award you the Green Ribbon Award for June/July 2021!
If you have a nominee for a future Green Ribbon Award, please let us know!
July 2020’s Green Ribbon Award was awarded to Peggy Petty on Grandview Road in Jasper
Ms. Petty attributes this beautifully landscaped property to her late husband, Kenneth Petty. Ms. Petty was born and raised right here at Grandview Lake and enjoys maintaining her 2 acres of heaven.
KPB wants to thank Ms. Petty for her efforts in “Keeping Pickens Beautiful”.
Do you have a Green Ribbon nominee?
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Header image, Columbine Flower, donated by Bear Woods Photography