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Keep Blair Beautiful seeking help with battery project

Keep Blair Beautiful hopes to recruit local organizations like fire companies and human service agencies that would be willing to distribute donated batteries for home safety use.

If it can obtain enough commitments, KBB will apply to Keep America Beautiful, which is overseeing a no-charge battery bonanza, as the result of a “leading” — but unnamed — battery company’s production overrun.

KAB affiliates need to be willing to accept pallets that are loaded with 18,400 batteries each, according to an email from KAB provided by Katrina Pope, who oversees the local affiliate as education and enforcement coordinator for the Intermunicipal Relations Committee.

“We need to stir up the bushes,” Pope said at a KBB meeting Wednesday.

Affiliates that receive a pallet won’t be charged for shipping, but will need to sign an agreement pledging they’ll ensure the batteries are used for smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors and the like, according to the KAB email.

The batteries need to be stored in a climate-controlled environment, the email stated.

Pope doesn’t have time to distribute the batteries herself, and the IRC doesn’t have the wherewithal to store them at its compost site at the Buckhorn, she said.

“John (Keith, the facility manager) would kill me,” she said.

In addition to local homes, the batteries could go to schools or shelters, Pope said.

Deadline for the application is July 10, Pope said.

Pope has also been looking for potential beneficiaries of a UPS Foundation Community Tree Planting Project grant.

Logan Township’s Greenwood Park, Penn State Altoona, Canoe Creek State Park and St. Bernardine’s Monastery are potential destinations for the trees that are available, she suggested.

Project purposes include reducing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, restoring native trees in areas where they’re lacking and producing fruit for local consumption, according to the KAB email.

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