P2 Multimedia Award:  Collin Street Bakery, Inc.  (Corsicana, TX)

The President of Collin Street Bakery was interested in reducing the bakery's environmental impact as a way to be responsible to the community. As a result, significant energy conservation was identified by installing upgraded freezer controls which will not only save an estimate of over 200,000 kWh of electricity annually (saving about $13,000 annually) but also will extend the lifespan of the system compressors. Additional savings include elimination of 1.7 million foil paper liners and modification to decorating methods to save a total of over $200,000 annually.

Ken Zarker Memorial P2 Champion Award:  Liz Harriman

Liz Harriman served as Deputy Director of the Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI) for 20 years. During that time, Liz was collaborative, generous, persistent, encouraging, Inspirational, and empowering while nurturing newer staff, making connections where she sees opportunities for progress, and not caring who gets the credit when her ideas succeed. She worked equally passionately with external stakeholders from environmental and public health advocacy organizations to academic researchers to industry associations, helping each to find common ground upon which to innovate for a safer economy.

Overall, Liz represents the very best by having dedicated her career to achieving the goals of healthier people, safer workplaces, and a safer environment for all.

Fred Granek Memorial P2 Ambassador Award:  Lloyd Hipel

Lloyd Hipel has been a practitioner, communicator and champion of pollution prevention since 2006. He had the honor of completing over a dozen pollution prevention projects under programs administered by Fred Granek and has managed portfolios of water conservation projects for the City of Toronto, Region of Peel, York Region, Region of Waterloo and the City of Guelph. For example, the 60 water conservation assessments completed for York Region found an average of 36% water savings per facility (with paybacks averaging under 1.5 years). And Lloyd is also helping manufacturers reach their carbon neutrality and zero emission goals.

Internationally, Lloyd has made presentations in the United States. He has even travelled to South Sudan to help train & equip local safe water social venture (SWSV) teams that provide sustainable safe water (and avoid deforestation to boil water).

Dr. Angel Contreras Cruz was a doctoral student for three years at Portland State University, while also working part time for the Pollution Prevention Resource Center (PPRC).

Angel not only knows a lot about environmental issues and pollution prevention, but he has also been very successful in outreach and recruiting participants for P2 services especially in Environmental Justice (EJ) communities in the Pacific Northwest.

He has been very proactive in EJ Community in-person outreach and public amplification of safer product use and also of PPRC’s EcoBiz green certification program, within the greater Portland OR area. He tabled at community events, presented or was interviewed on numerous radio and podcasts (in Spanish), and worked to obtain free samples from Safer Choice partners to hand out at in-person events. Angel also directly contacted Spanish speaking cleaning service businesses and culturally specific retailers in Portland area to educate them on EPA Safer Choice products.

When PPRC was challenged with securing attendees to attend a training under an EPA grant, he was able to find/reach out to Spanish speaking business NOT on PPRC's contact list. He was also very proactive in finding a suitable location and partnering with a small non-profit to host the training. Angel then determined a viable way to offer real-time translation of this training to Spanish speaking attendees.

P2 Educator Award:  Pam Eliason

Pam Eliason has been educating and building Pollution Prevention/Toxics Use Reduction (P2/TUR) champions in industry, academia, and government throughout her more than 2 decades at the Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI). First, she worked with industry and university researchers to identify safer alternatives to toxics and P2 opportunities. And for the last 7 years Pam has lead TURI’s education and training program. She has taught TURI’s TUR Planner curriculum each year.

In addition, Pam has educated colleagues across the US and around the world in P2/TUR and alternatives assessment by leading and facilitating workgroups, developing materials, and conducting webinars and trainings. She has guest lectured at UMass Lowell, Yale University, and Northeastern University. And Pam has also organized and conducted trainings for South Korean visitors from industry, labor, academia, and government.