2012 winners of Menlo Park Environmental Quality Awards announced

The 2012 Environmental Quality Award winners, given to recognize outstanding efforts of individuals, businesses and organizations that improve environmental quality in Menlo Park, include:

• Facebook for its efforts to reduce water consumption, energy use, and waste, and its efforts in using or promoting alternative commute options to their employees through shuttles, vanpools, and bicycling that over 40% of their employees use to get to work.
• Menlo Business Park for its efforts in completing a substantial energy efficiency retrofit that will reduce over one million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions associated with electricity consumption and save over $300,000 in annual operating costs. This is the equivalent of removing about 200 cars from the road annually.
• Carolyn Dorsch for her remarkable dedication in educating the community about the benefits of backyard composting.
• Pacific Biosciences for its waste minimization initiatives that have diverted 66% of waste from being landfilled through implementation of recycling and compost programs.
• Hillview Middle School for reducing its energy and carbon footprint by designing and building a new energy efficient school and installing solar panels that produce clean energy that will save the school $85,000 in annual operating costs.

Residents and business are invited to honor the 2012 Environmental Quality Awards winners at the April 16th City Council meeting at 7 p.m.To learn more about the award winners, please visit our Awards webpage. For more information, please contact Environmental Programs at 650-330-6720.