KNHB Nominated in Global Marine Debris Grant Contest

Keep New Hanover Beautiful has been nominated in the Marine Debris Prevention and Awareness Grant Contest sponsored by The Turtle Island Restoration Network (TIRN).

The TIRN is a global nonprofit focused on "inspiring and mobilizing people around the world to protect marine biodiversity and the oceans that sustain all life on Earth." This is the second grant opportunity the organization has sponsored during the Covid-19 pandemic to support conservation efforts.

This grant contest features organizations from across the globe supporting efforts to clean our oceans and waterways. Keep New Hanover Beautiful was nominated for our new Seabin Project, created to remove and research debris from the Cape Fear River and Intracoastal Waterway. More information on our project can be found on our webpage.

The Seabin Project is an Australian company developing upstream solutions to solve marine debris at the source. We are happy to be partnering with them, as well as Keep America Beautiful to implement this project in our community.

Voting begins today for the Turtle Island Restoration Network contest! Click here to learn more about contestants and cast your vote! Voting is limited to once per day.

Every vote gets KNHB one step closer to expanding our Seabin program and cleaning up our community. Thank you for your continued support.

- The Keep New Hanover Beautiful Team

Special thanks to our volunteers for helping us clean 100lbs of marine debris out of the Cape Fear!

Keep New Hanover Beautiful's newest initiative with The Seabin Project is off to a great start with over 100lbs of debris collected. We are also proud to announce our newest partnership with the University of North Carolina Wilmington Aquatic Ecology Lab to research further collections and their impacts on our ecosystem.

For more on this project and commentary from our Executive Director, check out this article from Port City Daily!

Keep America Beautiful Announcement: Celebrating Cigarette Success

NORTH CAROLINA AFFILIATE HITS MAJOR MILESTONE IN PREVENTING CIGARETTE BUTT LITTER

Keep New Hanover Beautiful (KNHB) announced in October that it had collected and recycled one million cigarette butts, totaling 1,000 pounds, via cigarette butt canisters.

With the support of the Keep America Beautiful Cigarette Litter Prevention Program, KNHB has placed more than 200 cigarette canisters across the area in recent years. KNHB Executive Director Dick Brightman says the local effort is driven solely by volunteers.

“We want to give a very special thanks to the [University of North Carolina Wilmington] Environmental Studies Department and the hardworking group of interns who drive this campaign forward and make it sustainable,” KNHB writes in a recent newsletter.

The students and interns are responsible for emptying area cigarette butt receptacles weekly. Once they collect a certain weight, the discarded butts are shipped to TerraCycle, which recycles the materials into plastic pellets and compost materials.

Brightman also says KNHB recently joined Keep Brunswick County Beautiful, also located in North Carolina, to distribute 50 cigarette receptacles to a local nonprofit called Sunset Vision.

“[Sunset Vision is] planning on installing these canisters at the beach access points as well as outside local businesses,” said KNHB in its newsletter. “These 50 units are only the beginning of their cigarette butt litter campaign!”