Ohio EPA Director Recognizes Scotts Company’s Exceptional Environmental Stewardship
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9/29/16
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Ohio EPA Director Recognizes Scotts Company’s Exceptional Environmental Stewardship
Ohio EPA Director Craig W. Butler is honoring the ScottsMiracle-Gro facility in Marysville today with a flag-raising event to bring to the fore its many achievements as environmental stewards in its community. The company has achieved gold-level recognition in Ohio EPA’s Encouraging Environmental Excellence program.
Director Butler said, “Scotts Company creates garden products, but as environmental stewards they have been innovative, obtaining waste feed stock that can provide plant nutrition, and incorporating this material into products that keep 5 billion pounds of what would have been waste, out of our landfills. Businesses with this type of innovative thinking are changing the way we do business in Ohio, creating jobs and making it a better place to live.”
Ohio EPA’s E3 program recognizes businesses and other organizations for completing environmentally beneficial activities and is an incentive for companies to commit to ongoing environmental stewardship. E3 recognition has four levels: Achievement, Silver, Gold and the newest Platinum level.
Scotts Company uses composted residential yard waste, processed agricultural livestock manure, forest industry sawdust, bark, woodchip byproducts, agricultural crop waste byproducts and pre-consumer food waste to innovate lawn and garden products. It has challenged suppliers to set and achieve their own sustainability goals to encourage stewardship practices in other companies. Scotts has made great strides preventing harmful algal blooms by eliminating phosphorus from all lawn food maintenance products, while working to reduce nitrogen, another algal bloom nutrient, in lawn maintenance fertilizers. In addition, the company boosted the amount of slow release nitrogen to allow longer feeding timeframes and less reapplication for grassy plants.
To obtain recognition for stewardship, an organization can work through levels of recognition including Achievement at the base level; Silver Level recognizing outstanding accomplishments in environmental stewardship; and Gold Level recognizing comprehensive environmental stewardship programs. The new Platinum Level recognizes organizations that have expanded their environmental programs beyond their own facility to make a positive impact on the surrounding community. All levels require a commitment to meet or exceed environmental regulatory requirements.
Through the E3 program, Ohio EPA’s Office of Compliance Assistance and Pollution Prevention helps businesses receive recognition for environmental stewardship efforts. Nominations for the 2017 awards cycle will continue to be accepted through Oct. 14, 2016. To learn more about the E3 program and the nomination process, visit www.epa.ohio.gov/ohioe3.aspx or contact Ohio EPA’s Office of Compliance Assistance and Pollution Prevention at 1-800-329-7518.
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The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1972 to consolidate efforts to protect and improve air quality, water quality and waste management in Ohio. Since then, air pollutants dropped by as much as 90 percent; large rivers meeting standards improved from 21 percent to 89 percent; and hundreds of polluting, open dumps were replaced with engineered landfills and an increased emphasis on waste reduction and recycling.
Ohio EPA Director Recognizes Scotts Company’s Exceptional Environmental Stewardship
Source: Ohio Environmental News