Inaugural Green Business Leadership Awards honor governor, Nashville MTA

Janel Shoun | 

 

 
 
Awards presented April 14 at Lipscomb’s Green Business Summit
 
For details on each winner click here
 
 
Gov. Phil Bredesen and the Nashville Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) are among the two organizations and three individuals chosen to receive the inaugural Green Business Leadership Awards, presented by Waste Management and sponsored by Lipscomb University’s Institute for Sustainable Practice. Winners will be recognized at Lipscomb’s Green Business Summit on Wednesday, April 14, at 12:30 p.m.
 
“The Green Business Leadership Awards were established to recognize businesses, individuals and organizations that have demonstrated unusually exceptional leadership in green business practices and to encourage others to exceed their example,” said Lipscomb University President L. Randolph Lowry. “Each honoree succeeded in establishing institutional practices, a policy framework, new products or services or a vision resulting in precedent setting, sustainable business practices in Tennessee in 2009.”
 
Awardees were selected by a committee of five business and non-profit representatives from within a newly formed statewide sustainable business roundtable. Eight categories were announced in January but only five nominees were deemed to have met the criteria in the following categories:
 
Public Official of the Year
Governor Phil Bredesen

Tennessee Green Innovator of the Year
Laurel Creech, Team Green

Southeast Regional Green Business Innovator of the Year
Verso Paper, based in Memphis, Tenn.

Green Service of the Year
Nashville Metropolitan Transit Authority

Community Servant of the Year
Ron Brooks, Bridgestone Warren County
 
 
“We wanted to create a series of awards to recognize organizations who exhibit the highest level of sustainable practices in their daily operations. This is bigger than green building, green committees, and recycling. These are organizations that are making change happen, creating innovations and impacting society and/or the environment in positive ways,” said William Paddock, chair of the awards selection committee and owner of WAP Sustainability.
 

The Green Business Leadership Awards Ceremony

 
The awards trophies were designed by Pat Matranga of Matranga Wood, and are made of native woods with no varnish.
The Green Business Leadership Awards will be awarded at the Green Business Summit, Lipscomb’s annual sustainability summit designed to serve businesses and industries in Tennessee who want to reduce expenses, expand profitability and provide socially responsible goods and services for our communities and planet.
 
Tom Szaky, CEO and Co-Founder of TerraCycle, producer of the world's first product made from and packaged in waste, will be the keynote speaker for the awards ceremony held on the Lipscomb campus.
 
Cost to attend the entire two day Green Business Summit is $295, or $175 to attend one day only. Non-Lipscomb students may attend the entire two-day conference for the cost of meals ($50).
 
To register log on to www.greenbusinesssummit.net.
 
 
 
 

Public Official of the Year

Gov. Phil Bredesen was honored with the first Green Business Leadership Award for a public official.  
 
Governor Bredesen with Commissioner Matt Kisber (who will also be recognized at the summit) has recruited numerous high-profile green industries to the state, including:
  • Hemlock Semiconductor
  • Wacker Chemie AG (produces a chemical used in solar power producers)
  • Volkswagen (which will build a LEED-certified plant to produce clean emission automobiles)
  • Nissan (which will build the nation’s first mass produced electric car in Tennessee)
Other accomplishments include:
  • The $62 million Volunteer State Solar Initiative creating the Tennessee Solar Institute at the University of Tennessee (UT) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the West Tennessee Solar Farm, a five-megawatt 20-acre power generation facility in Haywood County, one of the largest installations in the Southeast.
  •  A new ethanol plant in Vonore, Tennessee.
  • A $200 million solar manufacturing facility in Knoxville.
“Governor Bredesen’s sustainable business leadership was likely the most indicative of the qualities and innovation these awards seek to recognize and encourage in others,” said Dodd Galbreath, executive director of Lipscomb’s Institute for Sustainable Practice. “His leadership and vision for recruiting over $4 billion dollars in private and federal investments in Tennessee to create Tennessee’s new clean energy technology economy in unprecedented.” 
 
 

Tennessee Green Innovator of the Year

Laurel Creech, is the director of Team Green and on-air talent at WRLT Lightning 100. She created Team Green, a group to engage the community in the outdoors, in 1997 and continues to lead this environmental/service organization that has involved 90,000 participants over the past ten years.
 
Creech’s current initiatives include:
  • Leadership in Nashville’s annual Earth Day events that served over 10,000 attendees last year with over 100 free environmental education booths and green product displays.
  • Organizing 600 volunteers in 2009 to clean up islands on Percy Priest Lake and other nature events encouraging active volunteerism.
  • Live On the Green, Lightning 100’s new outdoor music concert series held in front of the Metro Courthouse. Live On the Green 2009 had a 60 percent lower eco-footprint compared to other concerts of its.
  • Creech also served on Mayor Dean’s Green Ribbon Committee, a local group of advisers to help create a greener Nashville.

“Laurel walks the walk, she’s a model for the rest of us.  She’s not only an influencer, but an innovator.  By taking people outside, she’s taught lessons they’ll never forget.  It’s a lot easier and more fun to learn from a hike in the mountains or kayaking down rapids than learning from a book.  Laurel makes sure the lessons stick,” said Tiffany Wilmot, president of Wilmot Inc., a sustainability consulting firm.

 

Southeast Regional Green Business Innovator of the Year

 
Verso Paper, a Memphis-based company specializing in papers for publishers, catalogers, advertisers and commercial print producers, works with its customers as an environmental partner, often sharing environmental performance data to enable them to better evaluate their supply chain sustainability, sharing best practices and technical expertise and working with customers on their specific sustainability goals like expanding forest certification and recycling. In 2009, the company worked closely with The National Geographic Society to measure the carbon footprint of National Geographic magazine, one of the most comprehensive paper footprint studies to date.
 
“With little doubt, Memphis based Verso Paper has taken tremendous strides to understand and reduce its impact on the environment,” said L.K. Browning, the interim sustainability coordinator at Lee Company. “Working alongside its largest customer, National Geographic, Verso has developed an innovative sustainability program that has delivered quality results and created positive impacts on the environment. Verso is a model company for sustainable practices in Tennessee.”
 
 

Green Service of the Year

 
In 2009, Nashville MTA introduced Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), a strategic new public transportation service designed to move riders along the city’s busiest corridors with fewer stops, more frequent buses and a greener attitude. BRT was implemented with the purchase of six, 60-foot, hybrid buses, reducing fuel consumption by more than 4,000 gallons per month and increasing the estimated miles per gallon by 16 percent. The second phase of the BRT service, including installation of solar-powered security lighting at newly-installed shelters, is scheduled to be completed in 2010. MTA’s new “green route” now connects the LEED-certified Gulch neighborhood with downtown activities, enabling high-quality, low-impact urban living to thrive even more.
 
“The committee felt MTA just keeps optimizing transportation sustainability in Nashville with its new routes, the new Music City Connector, new hybrid buses, and the ability to travel with MTA using Google Pedestrian. The committee agreed that we liked where public transportation in Nashville is heading. As Green Service of the Year, we hope that MTA will continue to build on its momentum and continue to improve Nashville’s public transportation needs,” said Alan Sparkman, a member of the awards committee and executive director of the Tennessee Concrete Association.
 
 

Community Servant of the Year

 
Warren County Plant Manager Ron Brooks, for Bridgestone Firestone North American Tire, has not only lead efforts within Bridgestone to create the first LEED-certified industrial plant in the Southeast, but he is also a leader in the surrounding community.
  • He led the creation of the Bridgestone Environmental Education Classroom and Habitat (BEECH) providing local school children with a sustainable educational experience in a wildlife habitat.
  • He led the Bridgestone plant to help launch the recycling club at Morrison Elementary School by providing recycling containers, trash bags and gloves.
  • He led Bridgestone to install air inflation stations around McMinnville to encourage people to pump up their tires, and thus reduce energy use.
  • Brooks also initiated the renovation of Mankin Park, which won an award from the Tennessee Parks & Recreation Association.
 
“Sustainability is also about environmental and social responsibility to the people in our communities and our world,” said Elizabeth Crook, one of the members of the awards selection committee and president of Orchard Advisors, a sustainability consulting firm. “Ron Brooks epitomizes this principle. In fact, it is fair to say that Ron and his Bridgestone team produce just as much quality social value as they do quality tires.”