​Each year, the Governor's Community Achievement Awards (GCAA) celebrate ten Texas communities for their outstanding efforts to keep their communities beautiful. From the Texas coast to the Panhandle, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has awarded cities with this honor since 1986. Winners are selected for their ability to engage citize...

Hello to all you wonderful KTB folks. The official Texas Arbor Day is November 1, which starts the best time to plant trees in our great state. Mark your calendars, for this special day, as we want to encourage everyone to show your trees some love! Why do we have an Arbor Day you ask? Thanks to J. Sterling Morton's passion for trees and love of na...

Fall Sweep is now in full swing and we have an amazing 148 registrations this year!  That's even more than Texas participation in the Great American Cleanup! We are so excited that everyone has gotten into the cleanup spirit and can't wait to see all of your great wrap up data and pictures.   With less than half o...

What exactly is Household Hazardous Waste? The Environmental Protection Agency considers HHW to be "leftover household products that can catch fire, react, or explode under certain circumstances, or that are corrosive or toxic as household hazardous waste." Products that may become HHW are often readily accessible and contain labels that read "DANG...

Since around the time that "trash" became part of our daily lives and waste management became a necessity, cleanups to keep it out of the environment have also been happening. While we don't know who "started" the community, waterway or beach cleanup, Keep America Beautiful and Ocean Conservancy have certainly been at the forefront of nationwide an...

This year at our Annual Conference, we held a Disaster Preparedness and Management Focus Group to learn more about what's going on around the state with disaster preparedness and what work needs to be done. Because of the sheer size of Texas, environmental diversity and location on the Gulf of Mexico, the state must deal with threats on a regular b...

You're not sure what, but something is pulling you to up your preparedness game, and Keep Texas Beautiful applauds you. Recently, the great state of Texas has seen a lot of natural disasters and other emergencies that leave us thinking about how our life could change in an instant. We can't avoid disasters, but we can prepare ourselves and our fami...

Water conservation is an issue thought about frequently by most Texans, but the exact reasons for why it is needed are not often understood. Texas is a state that will almost certainly face water availability issues in the near future, and increased water conservation will almost certainly be required to ensure that all Texans have access to enough...

Keep Texas Beautiful is excited to launch our third annual Fall Sweep! Fall is just around the corner and its time to sweep away the lazy days of summer. Let's go back to school and back to work improving our communities. This year, Fall Sweep will begin right after Labor Day on Tuesday, September 3, 2019. Groups can plan their events all the way t...

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, environmental education helps people develop a deeper understanding of environmental issues and learn the skills to make informed and responsible decisions. It also teaches people to weigh various sides of an issue through critical thinking and strengthens skills in problem-solving and decision-maki...

We hope to see everyone at our Annual Conference in Rockwall from June 18-20! If you haven't registered yet and would like to attend, the deadline to register is ​June 11. Learn more and register at ktb.org/conference.  During the conference, there will be several educational sessions where you can learn more about how to improve your org...

As part of your process of onboarding new employees, don't forget that you need to file a New Hire Reporting Form with the State of Texas Attorney General's Office. Federal and Texas state laws require that employers report all new hires and rehires within 20 days of when that employee starts earning wages. If you have employees that require W-2s, ...

In the United States, the average family uses more than 300 gallons of water per day, with indoor water use accounting for about 70 percent of this. As the second most populated state in the country, Texas has a large and continually growing demand for water. But, if all Texans work together, we can conserve billions of gallons of water each year. ...

Spring is in full bloom! April is upon us, which means it is Earth Month! Earth Month is an entire 30 days dedicated to environmental education, impact, and appreciation. It's a great opportunity to observe the wonder of the planet, and to take steps to help improve it. In honor of this month long holiday, we created a guide of vario...

In 1985, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) launched an ad campaign to encourage citizens to take care of their state and stop littering. This slogan has been repeated countless times by presidents, athletes, super stars and ordinary Texans. We all know it well. "Don't mess with Texas!" In the 1990s, KTB joined the effort by encouraging...

I'm back and sharing my final blog on event planning! By now, you all are experts on knowing your audience, defining your budget and determining your needs from my Event Planning 101 blog, and you now know how to navigate RFP's and BEO's from my second blog post. But after all this planning, comes the day of the event!  In my third and final i...

The image of a great community stems largely from the quality of its public places – its roadways, green spaces, parks, trails, waterfronts, plazas, etc. It's easy to look at great public places and see them as nothing more than well-designed physical locations. But beneath the surface, these places are so much more. They are locations where commun...

Have you heard? Early bird registration for our Annual Conference is officially open! Check out our website to learn about the many fun additions to this year's conference in Dallas/Rockwall, June 18-20. To celebrate, I'm sharing my second list of tips to help you plan any event.  A few week ago, I shared my Event Planning 101 blog, where I di...

For 21 years, the Great American Cleanup (GAC)has been a signature program of Keep America Beautiful (KAB). On average, this nationwide event brings out 3.4 million volunteers in 20,000 different communities. The event runs from March 1 thru May 31 and encourages communities to improve themselves in various ways. Although started as a litter cleanu...

Spring is just around the corner and at Keep Texas Beautiful we have many ways to get youth involved in keeping Texas beautiful. From contests to clean-ups, check out all the ways youth and youth groups can participate this spring! Don't mess with Texas® Art K-12 Art Contest Texas students currently enrolled in kindergarten through twelfth grade ar...