Feb 14 2008
Pacific Gas and Electric Company and Your TV20 today were recognized by the California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB) with 2007 Waste Reduction Awards Program (WRAP) honors for environmentally-friendly waste management programs. PG&E and Your TV20 are two of five companies to be recognized statewide with the 2007 WRAP of The Year (WOTY) top honors from among 149 other WRAP award winners. It is the fifth time for PG&E and second time for Your TV20 to be awarded a WRAP.
Now in its 15th year, the WRAP awards recognize businesses that develop innovative and aggressive programs to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills. Businesses are evaluated on a number of programs, including waste prevention, materials reuse, recycling, recycled-product procurement, and employee education.
"PG&E and Your TV20 exemplify how California businesses can use creative and innovative approaches to achieve great reductions in waste," said Margo Reid Brown, chair of the California Integrated Waste Management Board. "Californians benefit from the efforts in waste reduction by WRAP winners. These businesses truly raise the bar for environmentally-responsible business and create a more sustainable society."
"We are honored to be recognized by the State as a leader in waste reduction for the fifth time," said Bill Harper, vice president of shared services at PG&E. "It's a testament to our ongoing commitment to environmental stewardship and to leading by example. Our recycling program has been so successful that the 30-yard compactor we once used for trash has been converted to the recycling compactor and trash is now stored in a four-yard compactor."
The WRAP award recognized PG&E's waste reduction and resource efficiency efforts in 2006, when the utility achieved a 67 percent waste diversion rate at its San Francisco headquarter offices through a variety of recycling and composting efforts, including food waste composting. The award also honored the energy and water efficiency measures incorporated into the company's corporate headquarters, as well as the clean fuel fleet that serves as a business resource for employees and is used to test new, emerging vehicle types such as plug-in hybrids. PG&E's leading building practices also include using a variety of green cleaning products. In addition, the company's historic 245 Market office building also received a large commercial building Earth Award through the Building Owners and Management Association (BOMA) and received Gold-level LEED certification for existing buildings by the U.S. Green Building Council.
Your TV20's mission over the past four years has been to significantly reduce paper consumption by using recycled paper and installing software solutions that use electronic documents for company-wide and inter-departmental procedures. The station has also diverted at least four tons of materials such as videotape, scrap metal and industrial electronics from landfill disposal while recycling industrial fluids, rubber, cardboard, plastics, bottles, aluminum, fluorescent lights, and over 100 pounds of alkaline batteries.
"We are committed to sustainability in practice -- and to being on the forefront of covering local and global efforts to sustain our planet," commented Craig Coane, president and general manager of Your TV20. "We are proud the board has, once again, recognized our efforts and invite other businesses to join the cause in reducing waste and using sustainable resources."
In addition to implementing environmental friendly business practices, Your TV20 was one of the first stations in the country to provide daily and weekly news reports, public affairs campaigns and tips on sustainable living, energy conservation, healthy lifestyles and protecting the environment -- both in on-air programming and at YourTV20.com.
The WRAP award is the latest in a long and distinguished history of recognition for PG&E's environmental programs. With more than 150 environmental honors in total, the company has also recently been recognized by California's Planning and Conservation League as the Environmental Business of the Year, the Natural Resources Defense Council for its environmental leadership, and won the Pacific Forest Trust Award in Climate Protection and Forest Management Leadership, two Governors Environmental and Economic Leadership Awards, and the Solar Electric Power Association's Solar Business Achievement and Solar Portfolio Leadership awards.