(above) NJCCC Board of Trustees President Patrick L. Ryan presents Berkeley Heights Innovation and Sustainability Alliance (Sustainable Berkeley Heights) members Jeanne Kingsley and Kim Diamond with the 2019 NJCCC Volunteer Award.
Sustainable Berkeley Heights receives Volunteer Award
On May 23, 2019, the Berkeley Heights Innovation and Sustainability Alliance (a/k/a Sustainable Berkeley Heights) received the 2019 Volunteer Award from the New Jersey Clean Communities Council (NJCCC) at the 16th Annual Clean Communities Conference held at the Nassau Inn in Princeton, NJ.
The Volunteer Award is one of NJCCC’s Stewardship of Public Lands Awards that recognizes outstanding efforts to promote clean communities by engaging volunteers in clean ups of public lands. Sustainable Berkeley Heights, a new non-profit formed at the beginning of this year, received the Volunteer Award as a result of the very first event that it hosted, the town-wide litter clean up of an approximately quarter-mile section of Passaic River Park held earlier this year on March 17 that attracted over 40 people, including members of Cub Scout Pack 368, Girl Scouts Bluebirds Troop 40568, their parents, and others of all ages from the community.
Sustainable Berkeley Heights hosted this clean up event as an opportunity to foster community engagement, appeal to people of all ages, and result in everyone who participated feeling like they each helped to make an impactful difference. The event was a huge success, meeting this objective while ridding Berkeley Heights of hundreds of pounds of trash.
“We are honored that NJCCC selected our new start-up non-profit to receive this award,” said Kim Diamond, President of Sustainable Berkeley Heights. “The Berkeley Heights community is truly a model community in terms of its residents’ high level of participation in litter management efforts, including litter clean ups. Sustainable Berkeley Heights looks forward to continuing to offer initiatives that both benefit our community and engage its residents.”
The mission of Sustainable Berkeley Heights is to develop, promote, and implement solutions that will leverage the Berkeley Heights community’s strengths to improve the environment, accelerate innovation, actualize sustainability measures, foster collaboration among community members, and transform the Berkeley Heights community into a smart city for future generations. The organization looks forward to hosting future events and partnering with other local groups, businesses, and government entities to achieve this purpose.
The NJCCC, the entity that administers New Jersey’s Adopt-A-Beach and Adopt-A-Highway programs, works together with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the New Jersey Department of Treasury to administer the state’s Clean Communities program in 558 municipalities and 21 counties. In addition to its statewide public information program regarding litter abatement, the NJCCC tracks local programs and their successes in satisfying this litter abatement objective.
To learn more about Sustainable Berkeley Heights, please visit its Facebook page at SustainableBH and its webpage at sustainablebh.org.
(above) The 2019 New Jersey Clean Communities Council’s Volunteer Award Plaque, awarded to the Berkeley Heights Innovation and Sustainability Alliance (Sustainable Berkeley Heights).
Sustainable Berkeley Heights receives Volunteer Award
