iSustain employees hung around after the first cleanup to help Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful haul in all the trash collected by volunteers
photo by Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful
Volunteers remove litter from the shoreline of Chickamauga Lake on the Tennessee River
photo by Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful
iSustain employees hung around after the first cleanup to help Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful haul in all the trash collected by volunteers
photo by Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful
The first cleanup was held in one cove of Chickamauga Lake, where volunteers removed 2,578 lbs. of trash
photo by Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful
The trash boat was even fuller after the second cleanup of the Chickamauga Lake Cleanup Weekend presented by iSustain
photo by Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful
On day two, six volunteers helped to clean out two coves of Chickamauga Lake on the Tennessee River, resulting in 3,948 lbs. of trash being removed
photo by Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful
Volunteers piled back in Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful's boat to head back in after a successful evening's cleanup
photo by Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful
A total of 17 volunteers helped to remove 6,526 pounds of trash over the weekend in Soddy Daisy in a two-part cleanup series that Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful (KTNRB) hosted called "Chickamauga Lake Cleanup Weekend presented by iSustain."
"The impressive totals pulled at this cleanup series have now put KTNRB at nearly 85,000 pounds of trash removed by 280 volunteers in 2022 alone," officials said.
The cleanup held on the evening of Friday, June 10, resulted in 2,578 pounds removed by 11
volunteers, and the cleanup held on Saturday, June 11, yielded 3,948 pounds removed by six
volunteers. Items removed included:
• 142 bags of trash;
• 13 tires;
• three steel drums;
• 359 square feet of Styrofoam;
• 130 pounds of scrap metal;
• 86 pounds of random plastic;
• two 55-gallon plastic barrels; and
• 60 pounds of fire hose.
“The iSustain is a fun, passionate group to work with and we’re grateful that they once again requested to have a cleanup series to help preserve the beauty of Chickamauga Lake of the
Tennessee River,” said Kathleen Gibi, KTNRB executive director. “It’s great to see local river
champions inspiring others in their community to care for this precious river of ours.”
The cleanup series was made possible thanks to a $5,000 sponsorship from iSustain Recycling,
a national sustainability services company that processes over 182 million pounds of recyclable
products each year. Combined with 2021’s cleanup series on Chickamauga Lake that iSustain
sponsored, the company has directly supported the removal of 11,471 pounds of trash at a total of
four river cleanups.
Dawn Huber, owner of iSustain, and Mark Huber, vice president of Business Development for iSustain and KTNRB board member, each joined both cleanups with staff from their company and even family. The couple has also adopted Tennessee River Mile 489 on Chickamauga Lake through KTNRB’s Adopt a River Mile program.
“So excited to continue to support this effort to bring focus to, educate, and have ‘boots’ on the ground cleaning our beautiful river,” said Mr. Huber, “Our team loves supporting this initiative as it is a natural extension of our company’s effort to improve our impact on the environment. Together with KTNRB, we want to inspire people of all ages to change their behavior to reduce, reuse, and recycle, which ultimately eliminates litter in our environment.”
The event series was also held in partnership with the Keep Soddy Daisy Beautiful and the
Chickamauga Fly, Bait & Casting Club (a participant in KTNRB’s Adopt a River Mile program).
Both partners assisted with local volunteer recruitment and participated in the cleanups.
After each cleanup, the KTNRB boat was filled up with the trash collected by volunteers and
then dumped into a 30-yard roll-off dumpster provided by Priority Waste Services of Soddy
Daisy. The dumpster was packed to the brim by the end of the weekend series on Saturday.
For a list of upcoming cleanups with Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful, visit
www.KeepTNRiverBeautiful.org/upcomingcleanups.