Submitted by Grace Fix
Heartland Beautification Committee
The Heartland Beautification Committee recognized the recipients of its first recycling excellence awards, as well as the annual beautification champion for this year, at the Communities in Bloom judges’ reception July 26 at the Stettler Recreation Centre.
The Recycling Excellence Awards are to recognize all the good environmental stewardship that is going on in our community in the form of habits or projects that exemplify one or more of the 3 Rs: Reduce consumption of our resources, Re-use rather than use new resources, and Recycle.
In the “Individual/Household” category, Jill Reynolds is the recipient. Jill founded the Facebook group “Stettler Buy & Sell” in 2007 for Stettler area residents to be able to buy and sell items locally. It has grown exponentially and now has 4500 members. It has enabled thousands of items to be “Re-used” and has kept them out of our landfill. The many hours that Jill has spent in monitoring this site are recognized with this award.
Stettler IODE and Stettler Kinettes are Recycling Excellence Award co-recipients under the category of “Non-profit group/Institution” for their co-hosting of the annual Kinette/IODE Rummage Sale, Stettler’s premiere Re-use event. This year marks the 70th anniversary of this sale, which began in 1943 before “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” was even in vogue.
It was just common sense. They fill two arenas with furniture, clothes, sports equipment, books, toys, Christmas decorations, house wares, appliances, and much more. The Rummage Sale usually raises about $30,000 per year, which is put back into over 20 projects in our community. The thousands of volunteer hours that they put in keeps thousands of items out of our landfill, encourages “Re-use”, and funds projects that everyone in our community benefits from. The IODE had the vision to start this event and the Stettler Kinettes stepped up to the plate to help, now that the event is getting so large.
In the “Business” category, the Recycling Excellence Award was presented to Stettler ATCO Electric for their voluntary efforts to Reduce resource consumption in the design of their new service facility. The building has many efficiency features to reduce HVAC energy consumption (automatic smart lights, very high efficiency heating/cooling systems), a living, green roof to save energy requirements for the conference rooms and capture water, and a system to capture rain water off the roof and parking lot to reuse in their primary wash facilities. The entire facility is committed to reducing waste and their demand for resources. It serves as an example of forward-thinking environmental stewardship.
Four other very worthy nominees were also received:
Superfluity, for their many volunteer hours enabling Re-use of clothing and small items, the sale of which benefits many local projects;
Re-Glycol Ltd., a new, locally-owned, Stettler-based company that Recycles waste antifreeze into a top quality glycol product for use as either an antifreeze or heat transfer fluid. To date, the company has saved over 500,000 litres of waste antifreeze from having to be disposed;
Stettler Elementary School Grade 4 students and staff and The County of Stettler Housing Authority, both for their extensive in-house efforts to Recycle.
Beautification champion
Gord Lough was the recipient of the “Beautification Champion” award for going above and beyond in his efforts to keep Stettler clean. Before or after work, he walks every day, each time going in a different direction. As he goes, he picks up litter, separating out recyclables, and takes them for proper disposal or recycling. He is an example of the difference that a little extra effort makes to beautify our community, which everyone then gets to enjoy.