June 16, 2022

FirstEnergy’s Green Teams continue to keep local communities vibrant through tree planting events, pollinator garden installations, recycling drives and more. In the past six months, the teams have completed many projects designed to make the future more sustainable for residents and employees across our service territories. Here’s a few highlights of their dedicated efforts.

Tree Giveaways & Gardens

In celebration of Arbor Day, West Penn Power’s Green Team gave away 300 low-growing, flowering dogwood saplings to interested residents at the Jeannette Greenspaces community garden. The team also filled 20 raised garden beds with a mix of fresh topsoil and compost. Greenspaces offers the beds for a nominal fee to city residents who live in high rises or apartments without backyards to grow fresh vegetables.

Additionally, 12 foresters and planners from Potomac Edison spread out to participate in Earth Day tree-planting events at elementary schools in low-income neighborhoods in the Hagerstown, Md., area. The trees planted were donated by the Potomac Edison Forestry Department as part of our annual Tree Line USA® goal. Our employees educated students on how to properly plant trees, why tree planting is important and helped the schools plant a total of 20 large container trees.

Fruitful Bounty

Volunteers from JCP&L’s Green Team, including NJ Operations President Jim Fakult (center), donated 110 fruit trees to FulFill Food Bank to help provide fresh fruit to families in need for generations to come.

The JCP&L Green Team donated 110 fruit trees to FulFill Food Bank in Neptune, N.J., where staff members planted them at Fulfill’s garden, local schools and community centers around Ocean and Monmouth counties. Fulfill has provided food for families at the Jersey Shore for more than 30 years and currently serves 972,000 meals per month. The project’s long-term goal is to provide a steady source of donated fruit to the food bank each year from a variety of planted peach, cherry, pawpaw, apple, pear and nectarine trees.

Tree Line USA® Award

This year, our company was once again honored with the Tree Line USA® designation, which recognizes utilities for protecting and enhancing America’s urban trees and demonstrating how trees and utilities can co-exist.

FirstEnergy Vegetation Management has been a partner of the Arbor Day Foundation and recipient of the annual Tree Line USA award for more than 24 years. As an award recipient, FirstEnergy has consistently met Tree Line USA’s five core recognition standards year after year, which include quality tree care, annual worker training, tree planting and public education events, tree-based energy conservation programs and Arbor Day celebration initiatives.

The Green Teams have partnered with FirstEnergy Vegetation Management to provide volunteers for many company-sponsored tree planting events across our service territories and have also financially supported the purchase of larger trees for community initiatives. To date, our employees have planted more than 15,000 new trees this year alone (see chart).