Competition increasing for environmental awards

by Robert Burke
for Virginia Business
July 2005

Evans Drake thinks he’s got a winner for the next round of the Governor’s Environmental Excellence Awards. His employer, the Honeywell nylon plant in Hopewell, has built a 23-mile pipeline from the plant to the WMI Atlantic Waste landfill in Waverly to bring in landfill-generated methane gas. The new supply of methane has helped Honeywell cut its fuel costs by 15 percent and reduced the amount of methane burned at the landfill site, which has lowered greenhouse gas emissions.

The project has already garnered one award. In January the Environmental Protection Agency named it Project of the Year for its landfill methane outreach program. And Drake knows the Virginia program well enough —he’s chairman of VMA Outreach, an offshoot of the Virginia Manufacturers Association, which runs the competition.

But the competition can be tough. Now in its 10th year, the Virginia awards program has attracted about 150 award applicants from manufacturers looking for costs savings and a way to meet the increasingly tough environmental standards being set here and abroad. The good PR that comes with winning awards doesn’t hurt either. “These awards do provide a motivation [for companies] to do things that they might not have done,” Drake says. “They’re doing the right thing and everybody benefits.”

Last year’s competition attracted some of the state’s major manufacturers, including Canon Virginia’s Newport News facility, Philip Morris USA’s Chesterfield County plant and Mead-Westvaco’s Covington mill. The winner in the environmental projects category among large manufacturers was Infineon Technologies’ Henrico County plant, which switched to a lead-free plating process in its silicon wafer manufacturing and cut lead-contaminated waste by more than 4,400 pounds a year.

Infineon’s environmental manager, Dennis Slade, says this year the plant is trying to reduce the resources it uses. “We are focusing on items like energy usage, water usage [and] chemical consumption,” he says. It recently partnered with one vendor to reclaim a waste solvent and reuse it in automotive painting and refinishing. Once fully established this project will reclaim about 100,000 pounds of waste solvent a year, he says.

There are separate categories for companies above or below 5,000 employees, and awards given at three levels — gold, silver and bronze. Entries are judged largely on their environmental impact and cost effectiveness. This year’s winners will be recognized at Virginia’s Sustainable Future Summit on Sept. 14 in Richmond.

For years there were two categories, for environmental programs and projects, but recently the awards program began recognizing companies for land-use projects and environmental products. This year’s winners in land management were the U.S. Army Radford Ammunition Plant and the Alliant Ammunition and Powder Co. More than two-thirds of the installation’s 6,901 acres are set aside for land and wildlife management. Roanoke County-based Novozymes Biologicals won in the environmental product category for its natural microbial products used in areas such as waste treatment, industrial cleaning and agricultural applications.

Drake says the competition’s longevity reflects how environmental awareness has become an integral part of how manufacturers stay competitive. “We’ve evolved now to the point where people are doing a lot of these environmental projects simply because it’s the right thing to do, and it’s become ingrained in their corporate culture.”