WESTFIELD – On Tueday, the U.S. EPA recognized twelve organizations and individuals in Massachusetts at the 2014 Environmental Merit Awards ceremony. The Massachusetts awardees were among 26 recipients across New England honored for contributing to improving New England’s environment.
Each year EPA’s New England office recognizes individuals and groups whose work has protected or improved the region’s environment in distinct ways. The merit awards, given out since 1970, honor individuals and groups who have shown particular ingenuity and commitment in their efforts.
“We extend our congratulations and gratitude to this year’s Environmental Merit Award winners, who are helping to ensure a cleaner environment and healthier communities here in New England,” said Curt Spalding, regional administrator of EPA’s New England office. “In addition to iconic natural beauty and vibrant communities, New England is fortunate to have citizens who care deeply about the environment we share.”
The Environmental Merit Awards, which are given to people who have already taken action, are awarded in the categories of individual; business (including professional organizations); local, state or federal government; and environmental, community, academia or nonprofit organization. Also, each year EPA presents lifetime achievement awards for individuals.
The Federal Green Challenge Regional Award Recipient for Electronics Management was the 104th Fighter Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard.
The 104th Fighter Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard achieved a 98 percent increase in the amount of electronics recycled on Base, recycling a total of 1.17 tons of electronics in 2013. The success of the e-waste recycling program was based on facility- wide awareness (supported by Base-wide emails, posters, and articles in the monthly newsletter), an expansion of accepted items (from computer items and keyboards to copiers, printers, and fax machines), and a central recycling location that stayed open five days a week.
And Westfield State University completed its fourth year of competing in the national RecycleMania competition this month, ranking first place nationally for the targeted paper competition and ranking in the top five for nearly all other categories.
Nationally, Westfield State placed first in the Targeted Paper competition, fifth in the Per Capita competition, and fourth in Can & Bottle recycling. In the state competition, Westfield State finished first place in the Targeted Paper competition and second place in all other categories, making this the highest ranking year for the university since it entered the competition in 2010.
RecycleMania is a competition that was created to encourage students and faculty on college campuses to recycle more often. The tournament is held over a series of eight weeks and includes universities from all over the United States and Canada. This year, 461 colleges throughout the United States and Canada participated in the competition.
James Rovezzi of the environmental science department at Westfield State acts as the university’s Recycle Coordinator through RecycleMania. He is responsible for sending weekly reports to RecycleMania on the amount of recyclables the university produces every week during the competition.
“Every week the maintainers took down the volume of everything we had recycled in each hall so we could do the appropriate weight conversion and send the numbers to RecycleMania,” Rovezzi said. “Then RecycleMania came out with a weekly report of which schools are recycled the most. They did a breakdown of schools by city, region, and state so you could see each week how you did comparatively statewide and countrywide.”
Although there is no physical prize for ranking highly in the tournament, Rovezzi says Westfield State’s success in RecycleMania is much bigger than a trophy of any kind.
“RecycleMania is a sustainability effort in the form of a friendly competition,” Rovezzi said. “The tournament was about learning the importance of recycling and getting people excited to recycle, which we clearly did. We are all very proud of our excellent performance in the RecycleMania contest and very excited about the national bragging rights Westfield State has for yet another year.”
RecycleMania was launched in 2001 as a friendly challenge between Ohio University and Miami University to increase recycling on their campuses. The contest has expanded from two schools in 2001 to 523 colleges and universities in 2013 spanning 49 states, the District of Columbia and Canada.
For complete competition details including a list of participating school, visit the RecycleMania website at “>http://recyclemania.org.
