PRIDE OF PLACE (POP)

PRIDE OF PLACE (POP) is an all-volunteer effort to clean up Tennessee's roads, increase recycling, bolster the economy and foster public pride by helping pass container-deposit legislation otherwise known as a bottle bill.

Sponsored by Scenic Tennessee and originally known as the Tennessee Bottle Bill Project, POP was founded in 2004 to help promote the container-deposit bill proposed by then-Rep. Russell Johnson of Loudon and Sen. Randy McNally of Oak Ridge. (In 2006, Russell Johnson left the state legislature to become district attorney for the Ninth Judicial District—a race he won with a landslide 74 percent of the vote!) Sen. McNally continues to be a sponsor of the 2007-2008 bill along with thirteen other legislators (so far) from both parties.

POP's supporters represent a broad cross-section of Tennessee citizenry: educators, public officials, farmers, retirees, engineers, landscape architects, wildlife biologists, business owners, urban planners, parks and outdoors professionals, marina operators, bicyclists, hunters and fishermen, clergy, academics, garden club leaders, advocates for the homeless and countless others. This large and utterly nonpartisan coalition has come together not only to support the bottle bill but to look at all ways that Tennessee might reduce waste while dealing meaningfully with its increasing litter pandemic.

POP works closely with Tennessee Conservation Voters, a 501(c)(4) organization that sets policy and raises funds. TCV and the Tennessee chapter of the Sierra Club employ registered lobbyists, both of whom are helping to promote this bill.

POP receives no direct funding whatsoever. All costs come out of the pocket of its coordinator, Marge Davis. From time to time, local companies have donated printing and other in-kind support.

We welcome your support. Together we can help make Tennessee the twelfth state in the nation —and the first in the South—to tackle chronic litter and resource wasting in the only way proven to make a significant and lasting difference: a refundable deposit on glass, plastic and aluminum beverage containers.

SCENIC TENNESSEE, INC.

Scenic Tennessee is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to protecting and enhancing our state's scenic resources. Founded in 1987, Scenic Tennessee has worked for such measures as thoughtful billboard regulations, historic preservation, scenic highway protections, urban forestry, unobtrusive placement of cell-phone towers and an end to illegal tree-cutting along highway rights-of-way. Now, through POP and its campaign for a bottle bill, it hopes to have a significant impact on litter.

For more information, visit www.scenictennessee.org.

Marge McCormick Davis, Ph.D., is vice-president of Scenic Tennessee, Inc., and the founder and coordinator of the Tennessee Bottle Bill Project, now known as Pride of Place (POP).

Marge grew up in Portland, Maine, and graduated from Bates College in 1976—the same year Maine voters passed the nation's third bottle bill, by a referendum vote of 57 percent. She joined the staff of the Maine Audubon Society in 1978—the same year the beverage industry launched a massive repeal effort. Maine Audubon led the campaign to save the bottle bill, and in 1979, in one of the largest turnouts in Maine referendum history, Maine's voters defeated the repeal effort by an overwhelming margin of 84 percent. Marge's dad gladly admits that he was one of the converts.

Later that year Marge moved to Nashville, where she began working on a doctorate in English at Vanderbilt University. Tennessee was in the midst of its first bottle bill campaign, and Marge quickly got involved. Though that bill failed, it launched the extensive support network that is behind the effort to pass a bottle bill today.

Today Marge is a writer and editor specializing in conservation issues. Her articles appear regularly in The Tennessee Conservationist, and her 1997 book, Sportsmen United: The Story of the Tennessee Conservation League, is considered an authoritative history of the conservation movement in Tennessee.

In addition to conservation history, Marge has a special interest in industrial waste reduction. While working as publications editor for the University of Tennessee's Waste Reduction Assistance Program (part of UT's Center for Industrial Services and the Tennessee Manufacturing Extension Partnership), she profiled dozens of Tennessee companies and manufacturers, large and small, who had successfully combined waste reduction with growth and profitability. She knows the beverage industry can—and eventually will—do the same.

PRIDE OF PLACE
Marge Davis, Coordinator
45 Burris Court
Mt. Juliet, TN 37122-2376
phone (any time)	(615) 758-8647
fax	(615) 754-0966
cell	(615) 294-2651
e-mail	margedavis@comcast.net