Waste Connections Earns Environmental Award

This afternoon the 2011 Tahoma Business Environmental Award was presented by award sponsor Tom Taylor, Taylor-Thomason Insurance, to Eddie Westmoreland, Western Region VP of Government Affairs for Waste Connections.

The Chamber annually recognizes entrepreneurial efforts that meet a high performance for excellence for environmental, preservation and protection accomplishments through its Tahoma Business Environmental Award.

Waste Connections is an integrated solid waste services company that provides solid waste collection, transfer, disposal and recycling services in mostly secondary markets in the Western and Southern United States.

The company serves more than two million residential, commercial and industrial customers across 27 states and is devoted to the idea of protecting the environment through the management of waste. Since its inception in 1997, Waste Connections has worked with customers and local governments to lessen the impacts of waste generated by communities within their service area including Pierce County.

Eddie Westmoreland received the Tahoma Business Environmental Award from Steve Thomason, Taylor-Thomason Insurance Brokers.

These efforts include using any waste that is unable to be recycled or reused to generate clean, renewable energy and exploring alternatives to landfill disposal. In Pierce County, Waste Connections has worked with local governments, customers, residents and county government to increase their levels of recycling to be above the national average.

Waste Connections operates Pierce County-based companies Murrey’s Disposal, American Disposal, DM Disposal and DM Recycling, Tacoma Recycling and LRI Landfill as part of its "Northern Washington Division." The Pierce County system (excluding Tacoma, Ruston, and JBLM) has achieved a recycle rate of 49 percent above the national average is 34 percent.

One of the primary facilities for Waste Connections and its environmental efforts includes the LRI Landfill, a privately owned mixed municipal solid waste landfill, which serves residents from Tacoma and Pierce County. The Compost Factory located at the LRI landfill is a flexible and highly controlled processing and composting facility. It provides extensive new capacity for processing organic wastes into products at a competitive price. The environmental and management controls built into the Compost Factory assure that this new generation of compost facility can be a good neighbor with the community that generate these wastes, and demand these products.

Currently, Waste Connections is partnering with a private company to create a CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) plant capable of collecting methane, a natural gas that is the by-product of a landfill, and compressing it for use in CNG vehicles. Waste Connections’ fleet of garbage and recycling collection trucks will be running on “garbage” as the company moves forward in converting its trucks to CNG over the next decade.

Waste Connections was honored for its work innovating the methane collection, its recycling and reuse of waste in Pierce County and its operations in other regions throughout the United States.

Visit the Chamber's website for more information on Waste Connections’s environmental achievements.

Businesses Get Chambers Edge

The Chamber has added another opportunity to promote your business through the new smart phone application, ChambersEdge.

Your membership now provides a listing in the Chamber’s printed directory, website directory and the mobile application.

Added Benefits to “going mobile:”

• GPS feature on the app (Map button) allows someone looking for your business to locate you on their phone with either driving or walking directions

• Immediate access to your webpage (if applicable) to find out more about your business
• Call feature (Call button) allows instantaneous access to your business—by automatically dialing your contact number
• Search button (magnifying glass) lets users search for member businesses by company name
• Smart phone users are able to access the Chamber’s mobile membership directory by scanning the QR code as inserted here, to be added to the Chamber's website
• Soon  the new membership plaque decal (see left) and our publications will carry the QR code

More value-enhanced features will be added to ChambersEdge in the near future. Those without smart phones can also load the app (if they have web browser capabilities—remember data rates apply) by going to the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber’s ChambersEdge web address: http://tacoma.chambersedge.com/

Note: IPhones, Droids, Windows phones need to download a free QR screening app first to “scan” the code on the left.  Blackberry phone users need to input http://tacoma.chambersedge.com/

Gerry O'Keefe Speaks to "Ecosystem Targets"

Gerry O'Keefe, Executive Director, Puget Sound Partnership, will give the keynote address for the Chamber's annual Earth Day Event:  The Tahoma Business Environmental Award.

O'Keefe will discuss the Puget Sound Partnership workshops in April and May about "Ecosystem Recovery Targets" for Puget Sound that will form the basis for this year's update of the PSP's Action Agenda.

The workshops are slated to cover a wide range of environmental issues, including:  land use development, marine and near shore habitat, water availability and quantity, pollution prevention and control and water and stormwater quality.

The luncheon event is April 22 (Earth Day) and you may see a complete notice and registration at this link.

You're Invited: Tahoma Business Environmental Award

To Register for this Event Click Here.