Brookfield, CT - The Plastics Environmental Division of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) is pleased to announce the recipients of the Global Plastics Environmental Conference (GPEC) 2009 Environmental Stewardship Awards, recognizing "Plastics: The Wonderful World of Sustainability and Recycling."

The conference takes place February 25-27 in Orlando, Florida, at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort - Walt Disney World®. The awards will be presented at a banquet on February 26.

Through these awards, SPE’s Plastics Environmental Division recognizes corporations and other institutions that have demonstrated environmental leadership and excellence through significant achievements in a variety of categories.

The recipients of the 2009 GPEC Awards:

• Cereplast, Inc. of Hawthorne, California, for "Emerging Technologies In Materials" - for developing a  new  family of resins called ’Cereplast Hybrid Resins,’ a proprietary polypropylene resin blend  with about 50% renewable additives, with properties similar to traditional PP.

• Mohawk Greenworks of Eton, Georgia, for "Carpet/Floor/Wall Coverings Recycling"  - for their contributions to the ’total recycling’ of post-consumer carpets, establishing small scale (portable) ’total’ recycling centers.

• Western Digital of Lake Forest, California, for "Design for Sustainability" - for collaborating with Packaging Plus to develop a unique, lightweight, efficient  packaging  and shipping system (with their Geospring*, Upad* products made from recycled plastics) for safe transportation of  fragile computer hard-drives, across the globe, saving weight, costs and damage, and energy consumption.

 
• KW Plastics of Troy, Alabama, for "Plastics Recycling Technologies and Applications" - for their pioneering efforts in setting up a national paint can recycling program, and developing their unique plastic cans, made from recycled plastics.


• Eagle Performance Products of Calhoun, Georgia, for "Enabling Technologies in Processes and Procedures" - for their environmental stewardship in instituting the ’Voluntary Emissions Control Action Program (VCAP) at their plant to reduce waste and emissions from plastics additives and promoting such stewardship throughout their supply and customer chain.

• LIST AG, of Arisdorf, Switzerland, for New Technologies in Processes" - for their development of a continuous, free radical, non-solvent, polymerization system for methyl methacrylate monomer, using a unique kneader extruder system, with low power consumption.

• Cascade Engineering, Inc. of Grand Rapids, Michigan, for "New Environmental Technologies in Conventional Plastic Materials" - for their manufacture of wind turbines for domestic and community uses, using a recyclable thermoplastic engineering plastic material.

• Braskem S.A. of Sao Paulo, Brazil, for "Plastic Materials from Renewable Sources" - for their innovative process and their large scale manufacturing plant for producing polyethylene from ethanol, made from 100% renewable sources.

• E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Company of Wilmington, Delaware, for "Plastic Materials from Renewable Sources" - for their invention and manufacture of bio-based Cerenol* polyols  from renewably sourced 1,3 propane diol (Bio-PDO) for use in various applications including use as intermediates in the manufacture several polymers.

• Pace Industries of Reedsburg, Wisconsin, for the "Chairman’s Award" -  for their efforts in supplying recyclable/compostable sheet and film products and also, the recycling of their own and their customers’ plastics, reducing waste, energy consumption, use of alternative energy sources and facilitating such practices among their suppliers and customers in the Graphics Arts Industry.

• Peninsula Packaging of Exeter, California, is the receipient of the "Daniel Eberhardt Environmental Award" - for establishing an Environmental Sustainability program with the recycling of large amounts of  post consumer plastic bottles, and converting them to sheets and containers for the packaging and food industry, and  deriving substantial part of  their electricity needs from their own photovoltaic solar farms. They also, support academic research at many universities, in developing tools for the post-consumer plastics industry.  This award is given in recognition of their total commitment to the environmental sustainability.

Criteria
To be considered for the GPEC 2009 Achievement Awards, an entry had to meet the following criteria:
1. Must involve plastics.
2. Must contribute to environmental improvement.
3. Must have been commercially adopted or accepted in 2008.
4. Must promote leadership in environmental areas.
5. Contribution should be verifiable.
6. Should facilitate innovation, standards, regulations, etc.
7. Must demonstrate leadership in a specific area-technology, marketing, legislation, education, community, etc.
8. Must demonstrate creativity and originality.
9. Must have significant impact, showing value for its intended purpose.

The  ’Daniel Eberhardt Environmental Stewardship’ award, is awarded to the nominee who is totally commtited to the spirit of environmental sustainability in all their actions and involves all the aspects described above and beyond.