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Businesses Can 'Go Green' By Joining Keep Highlands Beautiful

Kathy Waters/Highlands Today

Sherri Cooper, coordinator of the Keep Highlands County Beautiful, shows the goodie bag that a person gets when they join the organization.

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By Jim  Konkoly | Highlands Today

Published: May 29, 2008

SEBRING — Businesses have the chance to "go green" by becoming members of Keep Highlands County Beautiful.

Sherri L. Cooper, coordinator of KHCB, an affiliate of the national Keep America Beautiful, announced Wednesday that she's launching the organization's first membership drive.

Cooper's first target for signing up members is the 1,100-plus business community that are members of the Sebring and Avon Park chambers of commerce.

Cooper, who worked for the Sebring Chamber of Commerce for six years before joining Keep Highlands County Beautiful two and a half years ago, said there will be several benefits for businesses.
"First, I think it would benefit any business to have their name associated with a 'green' environmental organization, one that helps beautify areas of Highlands County," Cooper said in her office, at the Highlands County Recycling Center on Skipper Road.

Memberships start at $25 per year and climb through four other levels.

The $25 annual membership is called the "Perennial Level," followed by: the Elm Level at $50, the Magnolia Level at $100, the Grand Oak Level at $250, and the "other" level which accepts any amount of donation.

In addition to the good publicity of supporting a local environmental organization, businesses will receive dozens of Keep Highlands County Beautiful "goodies," she said.

Each item is made from 100 percent recycled or re-used materials and bears the KHCB logo.
The dozens of "goodies" run the gamut from: T-shirts and ball caps to wildflower seed packets and flower-seed planting sticks; pocket-size tools that include a magnifying glass, compass, knife blade, bottle opener and four types of screwdriver heads.

Other "goodies" include hand fans, rubber cup coasters made from recycled tires, kazoos, fold-up ashtrays that can be carried in your pocket or purse, and funnels that can be used either with food or engine liquids.

"Members also will get our Keep Highlands County Newsletter, and they can have their business names displayed at our (fundraising) events," Cooper said. Those events include the annual clay shoot and the Recycled Trash Fashion Contest, scheduled for September.

In the "trash fashion" contest, children and adults try to make the best clothing, using at least 75 percent recycled or re-used materials.

"No vintage clothes are allowed in this contest," Cooper said.

Also, businesses that become dues paying members of KHCB will get a decal designating them as a member of Keep Highlands County Beautiful, which they can put in their store, shop or office window.
Cooper said she hopes to sign up 200 businesses as KHCB members in the initial membership drive.
"That would be a good start," she said.

At that rate, figuring a modest $50 membership times 200 members, $10,000 would be raised for grants which KHCB distributes to schools and community groups for beautification projects.

Past beautification projects funded by KHCB range from the construction of a butterfly garden at Cracker Trail Elementary School to decorative trees planted in a streetscape project in Sebring's Washington Heights neighborhood.

Total funding for beautification projects available through KHCB this year is $12,000.
If the membership drive would raise $12,000, that would double the dollars for community or school beautification projects.

"The more money we have available, the more organizations that will seek this funding and do projects," Cooper said. "And I would really like to see more school projects. It benefits a school and these types of projects (like the butterfly garden) are a good educational tool for the kids."

Cooper should be able to talk easily with business people as she tries to sign them up. During her last two years working for the Sebring Chamber of Commerce she was the manager of membership and special events.

Cooper still volunteers for the Sebring chamber as an "ambassador." In that role she helps new chamber members learn about and meet people in Highlands County.

The idea to seek memberships to raise money for more local beautification projects came from KHCB's 10-member board of directors, chaired by Maria Sutherland, who is the project manager for Avon Park.

Lake Placid business people are not going to be solicited by KHCB, Cooper said, because they support their local Keep Lake Placid Beautiful organization.
"Keep Lake Placid Beautiful is running its own membership drive," Cooper said, "and I would not infringe on their territory."

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