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Earth Day Wrap Up

Posted: 5/10/21

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While we strive to be sustainable every day in our operations, we enjoy doing a little extra on Earth Day as well. Many of our facilities celebrated Earth Day with various environmentally focused acts of service.

At our offices in Indianapolis, St. Louis, Lemont, Albany, and Benton, we held Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) collections for employees, where we collected items like oil-based paints, lawn chemicals, cleaning products, used motor oil, and household batteries.

After having to cancel last year’s event, employees at our East Liverpool facility were happy to reinstate our annual “City Sweep,” which has been held every year since 1997. A cooperative effort between Heritage, the City of East Liverpool, and the Southern Columbiana County Regional Chamber of Commerce, this event involves hazardous waste collection from residents, disposal of old and expired pharmaceuticals, and cleaning of city streets. Since it’s inception, over 248 tons of waste has been collected and safely disposed of.

We hosted a company-wide educational webinar with guest Ken Miller, who during his career created and ran a corporate sustainability program for a fortune 500 company, and now volunteers with the Indiana Recycling Coalition. He offered valuable insights into the circular economy and how our current manufacturing and consumption cycles have become less sustainable over the last 100 years, and what we can do about it.

Our Toledo service center joined Partners for Clean Streams and collected debris out of the Ottawa River. They collected tires, a car transmission, fuel tanks, and a cast iron sink, and wood. Employees from our Boston office helped assisted a local boy scout troop with a trail cleanup at Fort Lee.

In Louisville, we were able to practice our emergency response services while supporting a great local cause. The Ken-Ducky Derby is an annual fundraiser held by Harbor House Louisville, an organization that empowers individuals with disabilities. They released 46,000 rubber duckies into an area surrounded by containment boom (used in ER to contain oil spills) deployed by our members of our Louisville service center. The event raised $142,060!

While it may no longer be Earth Day, we continue to advance our sustainability goals by investing in cutting edge industries and are taking a new look at our internal operations with a materiality assessment. Reevaluating our priorities will help us identify where we can make the most impact, and we look forward to sharing those results with you in our 2021 Sustainability Report.

 

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