2018 Rs of Excellence Award Winners

The 2018 Rs of Excellence Awards were presented at the RCA’s Waste Reduction Conference “Rolling Out the Recycling Red Carpet” banquet evening at The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity on September 20, 2018.

The City of Calgary launched its Green Cart Composting Program in July 2017, servicing over 330,000 households.

Food and yard waste collected in the green carts is processed at the city’s industrial-scale composting facility, which can turn organic waste into nutrient-rich soil in 60 days.

75% of households are participating in the Green Cart program, diverting over 72 million kg of food and yard waste in the first 10 months of the program. The program will cut residential waste to landfill by almost 50%!

Over 13,000 households received over 1.5 million kg of compost at giveaways in May 2018.

Cornerstone Cooperative, with retail facilities in 7 communities in northeast Alberta, recycled over 300 tonnes of cardboard and paper in 2017, and are also diverting shrink wrap, oily rags, oil and windshield washer jugs. They also donated 24,000 kg of produce and bakery products to Second Harvest.

During a major renovation, Cornerstone was able to repurpose items like used shelving and refrigeration equipment to organizations in need, like a food bank and animal shelter. This renovation also incorporated extensive energy savings features.

Cornerstone also has a Bag for Breakfast program that reduced over 45,000 grocery bags in the first quarter of 2018, and provided $5000 to the School Division’s Breakfast Program.

The Impact Centre, which opened in January 2017, is home to Goodwill’s first outlet thrift store in Alberta. The idea behind the outlet store is to give customers one last chance to re-use and purchase items at a great price thus reducing the volume of items diverted into recycling, re-sale, and waste management operations. The Impact Centre outlet store sold over 250,000 kg in 2017.

The Goodwill Impact Centre ships unsold products to its partners for recycling and reuse. Goodwill’s diversion from landfill now sits at 78%. They are continuously improving their recycling and reuse operations in order to become a Zero Waste organization by 2021.

Westerner Park hosts over 1500 events in Red Deer each year. In 2017, a waste audit was conducted at the facility, leading to enhanced programming.

From January 2017 to May 2018 they composted approximately 2000 kg of paper towel, along with coffee grounds, and fruit and vegetable peels. They also recycle cardboard, soft and hard plastics, batteries and mixed paper.

Another audit in Spring 2018 led to the elimination of Styrofoam cups in all departments and have incorporated the use of glassware during events.

In February, they introduced beer cup recycling stations to recycle the 90,000 plastic cups currently used.

Dave started in 1990 with the City of Lethbridge.  He led the Y2K preparation team – remember Y2K and the global panic for all of our computer networks – well, Dave single-handedly helped save us from this impending doom!!

It was after his Y2K triumph that Dave’s reputation for getting results was solidly established, and in 2001, he was appointed the city’s new Waste and Recycling Services Manager, and the rest as they say is history.

Some highlights of Dave’s career:

• Moved the city to fully automated cart collection.
• Established the first yard waste collection sites.
• Transitioned the original 7 recycling depots to 3 enhanced recycling stations.
• Aggressively promoted grass cycling.
• Helped kick start the corporate environmental sustainability initiative.
• Developed the city’s first waste diversion strategy in 2008, culminating in the Environment Policy, Waste Diversion Policy and the Residential and ICI Waste Diversion strategies.

And the list goes on.

Dave is also an accomplished Toastmaster and is credited with founding the “City Speakers”.

Dave is a musician and an accordion player – which are arguably two different things.

Dave is cherry grower, a part time mechanic (which he needs to be if you know what kind of cars he drives!), a landlord, a tinkerer, a handyman, a loving husband and a father to three boys.