Keeping the Tennessee River Beautiful

Clayton Home Building Group® is excited to announce a three-year partnership with Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful, an organization dedicated to a clean, healthy, beautiful Tennessee River for generations to come.

Three-Year Partnership

Clayton is committed to environmental stewardship. Knowing that clean water is one of Earth’s most precious resources led us to team up with Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful, the first affiliate of Keep America Beautiful to focus solely on protecting a community’s watershed. In a series of river cleanups in 2023, Clayton team members volunteered with the organization to collect 82,717 pounds of trash from the Tennessee River.

To build on that success, we formalized a three-year commitment to continue river cleanups and participate in Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful’s cigarette recycling program. The partnership is a natural fit with Clayton’s dedication to drive change by advancing sustainability and to do good by giving back to others.

River Cleanup

Clayton celebrated the new partnership with three river cleanup events in March 2024, where team members from Clayton Rutledge, Clayton Bean Station, TRU Halls and TRU White Pine home building facilities volunteered at Cherokee Lake and Norris Lake in East Tennessee. Team members removed 45,823 pounds of trash from Tennessee waterways, including 175 tires, two TVs, an abandoned boat and two fuel tanks.

Cigarette Recycling Program

In addition to river cleanups, Clayton home building and supply facilities in Tennessee and Alabama are participating in an affiliated cigarette recycling program. “Littered cigarettes are a major contributor to microplastic pollution in our waterways,” says William Jenkins, Clayton Home Building Group senior director of environment and sustainability. “Since December, we’ve collected nearly 15,000 cigarette filters that will be recycled and repurposed into outdoor plastic furniture instead of littering our waterways.”

Continued Efforts

Up next for the two organizations are more cleanups along the Tennessee River in Alabama near Clayton home building facilities. “We are thrilled to have Clayton as an official partner of Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful,” says Kathleen Gibi, Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful executive director. “It’s great to partner with an organization whose footprint in Tennessee and Alabama mirrors the Tennessee watershed landscape and where Clayton team members can directly impact their community’s water quality for generations to come.”