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2015 MVP2 Awards

The 2015 Most Valuable Pollution Prevention (MVP2) awards presented by the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable (NPPR) celebrate the successes of innovators in the areas of pollution prevention and sustainability.

P2 Project Award: Analog Devices, Inc. (Wilmington, MA)

ADI’s vision of being “ahead of what’s possible” encompasses passion, impactful innovation, applied imagination, and an entrepreneurial mindset across all areas of the organization. With the strong support of top level management, ADI establishes ambitious 5-year goals for key environmental parameters, implements robust programs to facilitate achievement of goals, and continually monitors progress towards objectives. During the period covered by this application, ADI focused on being able to increase production capacity while decreasing use of water and energy, decreasing solid waste generation and decreasing air emissions. ADI targets top-level performance in its industry sector. ADI internal teams successfully identified and implemented innovative opportunities for reuse/recycle of water, energy efficiency improvements, alternatives to waste generation, and emissions reduction. Saving $2.5 million in water, energy, and waste reductions. These efforts are ongoing as ADI strives for continual improvements.

P2 Project Award: Columbia Manufacturing (Westfield, MA)

Columbia Manufacturing, Inc. in Westfield, Massachusetts originally started out in 1897 as a bicycle manufacturing company, but has transitioned into the second-largest manufacturer of school furniture in the nation. The school furniture manufactured at Columbia is made from tubular steel that is bent and welded into various configurations, cleaned, plated, and then completed with the attachment of the seat or desktop. The product is difficult to plate because of its size, various configurations, and tubular construction. The chrome plating process requires the use of toxic chemicals, including chromium compounds and nickel. The process also uses significant amounts of water, primarily for rinsing, resulting in significant amounts of hazardous wastewater. The company upgraded the plating equipment and integrated a zero-discharge wastewater treatment system. The new, more efficient plating line enables the company to recover and reuse 98% of the plating chemistry that previously would have been lost and discharged as wastewater.

90% reduction in water use

75% reduction in hazardous materials

100% reduction in water pollutants

P2 Project Award: Ecolink, Inc. (Tucker, GA)

Through extensive collaboration with industry and government, FluoSolv NC-786™ a nonchlorinated, non-ozone depleting and commercially viable is now available for the replacement of ozone depleting HCFC-225, banned 12/31/2014, and 1-bromopropane a suspected carcinogen per the 4/15/2015 EPA announcement “that it is proposing to add 1-bromopropane to the TRI list of reportable chemicals.”

The P2 and environmental, health and safety benefits are tremendous with over 90% reduction in hazardous materials used.

P2 Project Award: Franklin Paint (Franklin, MA)

Franklin Paint Company employs 28 people in Franklin, Massachusetts, and produces about 2 million gallons of traffic and field marking paint annually, primarily for customers on the Eastern Seaboard, though they have customers worldwide. In the past two decades, Franklin Paint has dramatically reduced the use of hazardous chemicals, including heavy metals, in its paint, and improved safety in the workplace. Larry Boise, CEO, and Steve Schultz, CFO, say that Franklin Paint undertook these actions because toxics use reduction is the “right thing to do.”

Reductions: (in Pounds)
100,000	Lead
100,000	Chromium
150,000	Methanol
500,000	Toluene
50,0000	Xylene

P2 Champion Award: Rick Reibstein

Rick Reibstein has been an energetic and prolific proponent of pollution prevention for over 25 years. He is one of the founding employees of Massachusetts' program of onsite technical assistance for toxics use reduction, the Office of Technical Assistance and Technology (OTA). He has helped develop the field of pollution prevention and has provided hundreds of workshops and public presentations on toxic use reduction, pollution prevention, regulatory compliance, environmental, health, and safety requirements and how to meet them efficiently through the application of preventive strategies. He has also served as a US Environmental Protection Agency enforcement attorney, and has taught environmental law and policy at Northeastern University, Boston University, Clark University, Suffolk University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Harvard Extension School. He has taught courses on environmental responsibility in real estate for realtors, specializing in lead poisoning prevention. He has prompted and participated in regulatory improvement efforts at the federal, state, and international level, advising Brazil, Chile, and others on instituting preventive strategies and establishing assistance efforts. He is a founder of Business Environmental Networks, the Massachusetts School Sustainability Coordinators' Roundtable, and the National Electronic Products Recovery and Recycling Roundtable, which prompted a national effort to address electronic waste. He is a former editor of Hazardous Materials Intelligence Report and the creator and editor of Radiation Events Monitor.

Fred Granek Memorial P2 Ambassador Award: Francesca DiCosmo

The National Pollution Prevention Roundtable established this annual award in honor of Fred Granek who suddenly passed away in January 2014. The Fred Granek Memorial P2 Ambassador Award is given to an individual who has demonstrated the same passion for pollution prevention that Fred demonstrated throughout his 39 year career in environmental protection. This award recognizes those who travel beyond their own borders to share information, ideas, and technologies that will avoid, eliminate and reduce waste in an effort to make the world a better place. These are qualities that Fred embodied and will be missed by the entire P2 community.

The second recipient of this award is Francesca DiCosmo from US EPA Region 3. Francesca has been promoting P2 in international trainings and events since the mid-1990s. She orchestrated a P2 conference in Tianjin, China in 1997 and followed that with training and another conference in China in 1998.

She has also arranged for P2 training in South Africa, Poland, Thailand, Morocco, Dubai, Oman and Egypt. She was responsible for oversight of the creation of the Arab P2 Roundtable.

P2 Volunteer of the Year: Greg Adolfson