Keep Angleton Beautiful staff reported on recent community events and recycling totals at the board’s June meeting, highlighting a strong turnout for an April Arbor Day giveaway and a May spring cleanup that diverted multiple tons of waste from the landfill.

On April 25, the agency distributed about 700 trees and provided some 450 butterfly seed balls; organizers said roughly 50 trees remained for upcoming cleanup events. Jason, Keep Angleton Beautiful staff member, said turnout continued to grow and that the group plans to aim for 750 seed balls next year.

The board reviewed recycling metrics from the spring cleanup: about 963 pounds of latex paint recycled, 167 tires amounting to approximately 2,300 pounds, just over 2,600 pounds of electronics, roughly 6,600 pounds from document shredding, and nearly 6.5 tons of heavy trash collected. Jason credited partnerships with Waste Connections for facilitating heavy-trash collection and with Texas A&M AgriLife for adding an educational pollinator-garden class during the event; he specifically noted an instructor from AgriLife led the pollinator session.

Staff also described operational learnings: paint recycling is costly and was nearly $5,000 the first time the program ran but cost about $2,700 for the most recent event after the program reduced per-household limits from 25 cans to 10. Board members discussed exploring additional recycling opportunities and revenue streams such as Christmas-light collection with a local scrapyard (Iron Horse), mattress recycling through specialized recyclers, and on-site scrap-metal collection to both reduce landfill disposal and potentially generate small revenue shares from recyclers.

Looking ahead, the board discussed a fall planting and tree-planting event supplied by Trees for Houston that would place about 100 free trees in Angleton; staff said organizers plan to promote volunteer sign-ups closer to October. The board also discussed keeping an educational component for future events, combining hands-on instruction with service activities. No formal actions were taken; board members encouraged staff to continue exploring partnerships and to track costs and potential revenue sources for future grant applications.