Department of Environment and Conservation Receives Top EPA Honors
Wednesday, April 21, 2010 | 07:53am
NASHVILLE – The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation’s Office of Environmental Assistance has been recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a Partner of the Year for its efforts to remove potentially hazardous chemicals from Tennessee schools through the School Chemical Cleanout Campaign.
“This voluntary program helps us to protect Tennessee’s students by ensuring outdated and unknown school lab chemicals are safely and properly disposed,” said Environment and Conservation Deputy Commissioner Paul Sloan. “We’re pleased to receive this recognition, and we’re even more pleased to be able to help public and private schools in Tennessee maintain healthy learning environments for their students.”
Environment and Conservation is one of 71 universities, government agencies and private companies recognized for their environmental commitments to reduce waste under EPA’s WasteWise and National Partnership for Environmental Priorities programs. The partners were honored for environmental achievements to prevent and recycle waste, and for specific programs that go beyond current federal standards to reduce greenhouse gases and remove harmful chemicals.
The School Chemical Cleanout Campaign works to remove potentially dangerous chemicals from schools, while educating teachers and students about proper chemical management, lab safety, greener teaching options and chemical waste disposal. During the past year, the program collected 2,088 pounds of formaldehyde and 209 pounds of mercury, considered priority chemicals. Since its inception in 1993, the program has successfully removed almost 50,819 pounds of hazardous waste, including 1,085 pounds of mercury statewide.
The campaign is a cooperative program of Environment and Conservation, the Department of Education and EPA, with support from the Tennessee State Fire Marshal’s Office, Tennessee Science Teachers Association and the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents. The program includes on-site chemical management assistance, chemical segregation and disposal costs on a sliding scale to the selected schools based on their county economic index.
Since its inception in 1994, WasteWise partners have helped prevent and recycle more than 160 million tons of non-hazardous waste. Since 2004, NPEP partners have reduced 18 million pounds of priority chemicals, including lead and mercury. WasteWise and NPEP are both voluntary programs with a combined total of more than 3,000 members from private and public organizations nationwide. For more information, please visit www.epa.gov/epawaste/partnerships/wastewise/conf.htm.
Environment and Conservation also wanted to note that Marion County’s Tennessee Galvanizing, Inc. – a previous winner of the Governor’s Environmental Stewardship Awards - also was honored by EPA at this year’s WasteWise Awards, receiving an honorable mention in Gold Achievement for industrial materials recycling.
For more information about the department’s School Chemical Cleanout Campaign, please visit www.tn.gov/environment/sc3/.
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