Fred Hutchinson receives 2004 Recycler of the Year Award

General Article

The center's award-winning environmental efforts include recycling more than 78 percent of waste from PHS building construction

Fred Hutchinson is the recipient of the 2004 Recycler of the Year Award in the General Business category from the Washington State Recycling Association. The annual award goes to one Washington state institution whose primary business is not recycling that supports recycling through diversion of waste.

Bob Cowan, facilities engineering manager, said that the association was impressed with a number of the ongoing programs at the center. Thanks to these programs, the center averages across campus an estimated 57 percent diversion rate (the percentage of materials kept out of landfills each year by waste prevention and recycling activities) and an approximate 24 percent recycling rate.

Highlights of the center's recycling program include Shared Resource's implementation of a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottle collection system and purchase of a plastic grinder to grind pipette tip boxes for sale to a plastics recycler. These initiatives return 7.8 tons of plastic each year to the manufacturing process for use in new products. Other innovative efforts include the collaboration of Facilities Planning with Turner Construction to recycle more than 78 percent of the construction waste from the new PHS building. Twenty percent of the materials used for the building came from recycled materials, 30 percent were manufactured within a 500-mile radius of the center and 52 percent were extracted, harvested or recovered within a 500-mile radius of the center.

Cowan also praised Mike Shelhamer, environmental services supervisor, for providing information at the PHS building orientation sessions to educate new occupants about the recycling program and for setting up recycling points in every conference room, elevator lobby, kitchen and break room, in addition to the standard paper recycling effort available in every office.

Materials the center regularly recycles include: cardboard and paper; construction debris, aluminum, glass and plastic bottles; pipette-tip boxes and media bottles; and aluminum foil from lab activities.

Waste-prevention practices at the center include: use of durable glassware and a centralized glass-washing facility; reuse of furniture and medical equipment; use of online shipping- and receiving-tracking to reduce paper use; return of shipping materials for frozen samples and pipette-tip boxes to suppliers for reuse; and operation of a responsible copy center that uses paper saving techniques and leases its copy machines, so that machines are properly managed at their end of life.

Cowan said that the center will continue to look for ways to expand its recycling and waste-prevention efforts.

Center News Table of Contents