Keep Arizona Beautiful 2011 Environmental Stewardship Awards

Keep Arizona Beautiful strives to preserve and enhance the environmental quality and beautification of Arizona.

They accomplish this mission with state-wide affiliate partnerships, community-wide educational efforts, individual and corporate driven volunteerism and philanthropy.

In 2011 Keep Arizona Beautiful held their first annual Keep Arizona Beautiful Environmental Stewardship Awards event recognizing people, companies and organizations that exemplify the spirit of environmentalism.

This short film created by Candee Productions, Inc. presents highlights of the awards event on May 19th, 2011. For more information on Keep Arizona Beautiful, visit www.kazb.org.

For more information on ways video can help you achieve your communication goals contact Rees Candee at Candee Productions, Inc. 623.266.3070 or write rwcandee@gmail.com.

Here is additional information on the recipients@

Arizona Interfaith Power and Light (AZIPL)


Arizona Interfaith Power and Light is a 2-year old organization with a focus on faith-based environmentalism. Their leadership has made a commitment to executing a training program called “Cool Congregations” designed to teach other congregational leaders how to explore the moral and spiritual issues related to climate change, as well as how to assess carbon use reduction opportunities. On the International Day of Climate Action, AZIPL set up a display in front of the Phoenix Zoo where committee members baked 350 cookies in solar ovens in an effort to support legislation toward climate change. The congregation has sponsored an educational biodiesel trolley ride and supports the use of local vendors, locally sourced organic food, and green suppliers for all meetings and events.



SRP


SRP is the nation’s third-largest public power utility and one of Arizona’s largest water suppliers. SRP provides electricity to nearly 934,000 retail customers in the Phoenix area, operates or participates in 11 major power plants and numerous other generating stations, including thermal, nuclear, natural gas and hydroelectric sources. The company also delivers nearly 1 million acre-feet of water annually to a service area in central Arizona. While its core business is providing resources through sustainable means, Keep Arizona Beautiful recognizes SRP’s internal Planet SRP (Sustainability) program that was launched in 2009. The program hosts a variety of educational opportunities for employees ranging from “green” fairs, recycling trainings, “green” bag training lunches, and an innovative competition for employees to transform trash into treasures. The employee educational campaign has reported a increases in recycled items as well as a reductions in waste. 



Earth911


Earth911 is an environmental services company that addresses solutions for products’ end-of-life for both businesses and consumers through a variety of services including operating the nation’s largest and most accurate recycling directory. Earth911 directs consumers to local recycling and proper disposal locations and services through its website, automated bilingual phone system 1-­800-­CLEANUP and mobile application, iRecycle. The company embodies a philosophy of environmentalism by providing staff sustainability trainings, moving into a LEED Silver-Certified business complex and designing its office space to meet LEED-certifying requirements, and hosting annual electronic waste collection events. Earth911 is recognized as an award finalist due to its extraordinary efforts as a title partner of America Recycles Day (ARD) 2010. In support of last year’s national recycling campaign, Earth911.com created the ARD Registration Process and also heavily promoted the ARD 2010 to its community.



ENSO Plastics

The mission of ENSO Plastics is to making the world a cleaner place through plastic solutions that are better for the environment. The company strives to end plastic pollution by developing earth friendly plastic solutions, like the ENSO Bottle. It is a clear, recyclable, and biodegradable bottle. If the ENSO Bottle is NOT recycled and gets disposed of in a landfill, the ENSO additive attracts single celled microbes to naturally break down the product into fresh soil, carbon dioxide, and methane, similarly to an apple core or a banana peel. Keep Arizona Beautiful celebrates this company’s innovative environmental practices and recognizes that our state will benefit from corporate champions like ENSO Plastics. 



Melisa Camp, M.Ed., CEO, Go Green Investments, Realtor ®, GREEN


Melisa Camp, also known as the “The Green Queen,” is CEO of Go Green Investments, Realtor® with the GREEN designation, and Consultant on sustainable living. Camp is a LEED Green Associate who has served as U.S. Green Building Council AZ’s Residential Green Building Advocate since 2009. She educates and raises awareness with other Realtors, builders, homeowners, government officials, green professionals, lenders, appraisers and students. Keep Arizona Beautiful recognizes Camp’s outstanding educational impact and tireless dedication to share her knowledge, as evident by Camp’s motto, “What good is what I know if I do not share it with the world?”



Environmental Concerns Organization, Inc.


Environmental Concerns Organization, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation that focuses its efforts on sustainable, community development projects. Since 1996, its Executive Director Gina D’Abella has volunteered over 30,000 hours of her time managing litter prevention, waste reduction and diversion, recycling/recycling education, and beautification/community greening projects. ECO Inc. hosts Free “Dump” Days and Cleanup Events year round – clearing hundreds of tons of trash, recycling over 10,000 tires, and thousands of electronics. ECO Inc. operates the Recycling Association of Maricopa, which accepts more household commodities for recycling than any other material recovery facility in the state of Arizona.



Greg Peterson, The Urban Farm 


The Urban Farm is an educational showcase employing urban farming, energy efficiencies, and rainwater harvesting that informs the public about how a home and the land around it can fuel our lives. Coincidentally, the Urban Farm is also Greg Peterson’s 2,000 square foot residence on a third of an acre in North Central Phoenix. Using edibles and energy as his tools, Greg shares his vast knowledge of sustainable living practices with all interested to learn. In the ten years since using his home as a collaborative community project, Greg has been able to grow about 40% of his diet and has decreased his power bills in half. Keep Arizona Beautiful applauds Greg’s tireless dedication to teaching us how to be better stewards of the earth.



Metro Tech High School


Phoenix’s Metro Tech High School is a magnet high school that combines all the necessary academic courses with a wide variety of Career and Technical Education Programs. All campus projects are student-led and supported by highly trained teachers. Some of these authentic learning projects include: the construction of a riparian area to create a habitat for native and migrating wildlife; the planting and maintenance of a campus orchard to provide fresh fruit for the cafeteria while reducing the urban heat island effect; menu creations utilizing seasonal, locally-grown, and organic foods served by culinary students; purchase of equipment to convertused cooking oil from the Culinary Program into bio-diesel for the Auto Collision Program; amongst many other green initiatives. Not only have the projects made the campus itself more sustainable, but the combined classroom instruction and authentic campus projects approach have increased awareness of sustainable practices significantly for the students, their parents, and the school’s faculty.



Goodwill of Central Arizona


Since 1947, Goodwill of Central Arizona has been much more than a retail store – the organization is an entrepreneurial leader, environmental pioneer, and social innovator of the “reduce, reuse, repurpose” practice. As part of its mission to put people back to work, the non-profit offers sustainability training through Goodwill’s Pathways Adult Training and Employment Program, which assists individuals who are interested in obtaining certification in green jobs. In 2010, the program provided training to 228 individuals in areas such as environmental literacy, weatherization, solar, and OSHA. Also last year, Goodwill of Central Arizona diverted more than 100 million pounds of stuff from entering area landfills. That’s truly keeping our state beautiful! 



RSC Equipment Rental


RSC Equipment Rental offers heavy construction equipment rental and used equipment sales to construction, industrial, petrochemical, governmental, and manufacturing businesses. The company has launched a training course titled “The Sustainable Choice” that 99% of their employees have completed! (i.e. 50% of total staff trained in sustainability including 80% of senior managers). RSC is implementing a waste vendor consolidation program, establishing partnerships with industry-leading waste recyclers to re-refine waste oil products into reusable base lube products – A true closed loop system. KAZB is also impressed with RSC’s E2T program that calculates pollutant emissions for their customers.



National Bank Of Arizona

Green doesn’t just mean money to National Bank of Arizona (NB|AZ), one of our state’s leaders and pioneers in making sustainable and renewable energy products available to residents, small business owners and municipalities across Arizona. The bank itself is green, recently investing in several of Arizona’s largest commercial solar systems, and also supports green projects by providing financing for energy efficiency and sustainable programs throughout Arizona totaling more than $100 million. The bank is also dedicated to educating its customers, as evident by the Green Returns program, which plants a tree in one of Arizona’s National Forests to honor of every customer enrolling in the bank’s paperless statement program. Keep Arizona Beautiful celebrates this environmental corporate champion.



Global Electronic Recycling 


Global Electronic Recycling is a leader in the electronic recycling industry focused on providing tailored “Specialized Recycling Solutions” to assist clients in the management of their obsolete and recyclable materials. Global Electronic Recycling takes responsible recycling seriously. The company engages in sustainable initiatives such as a zero-landfill policy and prohibition of e-scrap exports to developing nations. It has also earned numerous certifications, which very few electronics recyclers in Arizona have achieved. Keep Arizona Beautiful applauds Global Electronic Recycling’s commitment to environmental responsibility and sustainable innovations.



SquareCare


Since 1990, SquareCare has specialized in carpet maintenance; access/data flooring and fabric cleaning that utilize environmentally safe and proven cleaning processes. The company has adopted a variety of internal environmentally sustainable practices, including reducing its fleet of vehicles on the road through a four-day workweek, implementing an office recycling program, and moving its headquarters to a LEED-certified office. Keep Arizona is most impressed by its energy savings innovations as exemplified by SquareCare’s low moisture method of carpet maintenance that has been shown to use 55% less energy and 95% less water than the old extraction method of carpet cleaning.



Valley View Elementary, Roosevelt School District #66


Valley View Elementary School in Phoenix is a “Keeping It Beautiful” campus. The administrators, teachers, students and neighboring community are all working together to infuse sustainability into all aspects of the educational experience. From school lunch waste composting, to school gardening, to a 15-year history of active recycling, to service learning opportunities, to the implementation of a “Styrofoam Melter” that transforms 1,200 lunch trays into 6 flower pots – the list of innovative environmental practices is nearly boundless for this K-8 school. Recently Valley View opened a new gymnasium created with a solar-ready roof, reflective skylights to replace all artificial light during daylight hours, inside/outside filtered-drinking fountains to eliminate plastic water bottles and plans to monitor the energy savings in this new facility as part of next year’s curriculum.