Oak Ridge Associate University employees and retirees combined their efforts to conserve Earth’s natural resources during the company’s two-day Earth Day recycling event last month, resulting in five tons of material being recycled — and not going into local landfills.
ORAU is hosting the event this year for the first time in two years. The event was suspended in those years due to the coronavirus pandemic.
As part of the two-day event, held at the ORAU South Campus site on Bethel Valley Road in Oak Ridge, ORAU’s Office of Environment, Safety and Health, with individual assistance from across ORAU, received nearly five tons of reusable and recyclable materials. of employees and retirees. That includes 6,549 pounds of “technotrash,” 150 pounds of battery and 793 pounds of household donated goods, according to the ORAU news release.
ORAU invited local vendors on site during the event to help shred 1,800 pounds of paper safely and collect 77 pounds of medicine for disposal. Michael Dunn Center conducts secure on-site enumerations; Allied Substance Abuse Prevention (ASAP) of Anderson County and the Oak Ridge Police Department collects unused or unwanted drugs as part of Operation Drug Cabinet.
“This year, we thought it would be a great idea to raise donations for a local nonprofit organization in Oak Ridge to help us celebrate more than 75 years of ORAU being a part of the Oak Ridge community,” Jennifer Clary, ORAU Environment, Safety and Health Specialist who organized the event. this year, according to the release. “During the event, we were able to collect nearly 800 pounds of used household items to donate to local nonprofits.”
Donations were raised for the Blossom Center for Childhood Excellence, a nonprofit organization in Oak Ridge that partners with parents to provide affordable, accessible child-centred programs seven days a week, and the Ecumenical Warehouse, an organization made up of several Oak Ridge churches, which collects, stores and distributes household goods to help people in need by setting up small dwellings.
Return to normal?
The Earth Day event is also another step towards normality for ORAU employees after the pandemic.
“Earth Day was a huge success for us, not only for the good we do for our environment and our communities, but also for our efforts for employee engagement and outreach,” said Mark Berkheimer, director of ORAU’s ES&H Office. “With so many new hires, as well as the fact that a large number of our employees have not been on site for a long time, we wanted to give them a chance to get together and hopefully start rebuilding some community and connectedness. we may have missed over the last few years from working from home during the pandemic.”
ORAU organizes Earth Day events to encourage employees to bring unwanted items from home for recycling or reuse. Since 2010, ORAU employees have recycled more than 44 tonnes of material from their homes as part of the company’s Earth Day recycling and donation event.
As an organization – whose corporate office building in Oak Ridge is Tennessee’s first new, gold-grade, LEED-certified office building – ORAU’s environmental management philosophy emphasizes sustainability through recycling, waste minimization, green purchasing and energy efficiency, the release said. Whether that means saving more than 125,000 pounds of material annually from landfills or ensuring that hazardous waste is handled properly, ORAU is committed to incorporating environmental responsibility into our business strategy and day-to-day operations.