Knoxville Operations

About the Program
The Cemex Knoxville Plant is a cement manufacturing facility located eight miles northeast of downtown Knoxville, Tennessee. The plant acts as an environmental steward in the community by adopting green initiatives such as planting native species to attract pollinators like the monarch butterfly. This pollinator habitat supports a site-wide sustainability initiative and conservation stewardship program for community and employee environmental education.

Practices and Impacts

• In 2023, two distinct learning opportunities were created and implemented.  The first involved a tree-planting activity with a local high school that had lost a number of trees. A native tree curricula was developed and taught to students who also then engaged in planting native trees at the school.
• The second involved students at Carson Newman University and was focused on pollinators generally, and monarch butterflies specifically. The pollinator garden at the Cemex plant was used as a focal point, and students learned about monarch natural history/life cycle, as well as policy and conservation considerations around their management.