Ribbons and Medals
SWANA’s Excellence Awards Program
Friday, December 31, 2010
By John Trotti
Awards are a part of every culture, every occupation, every endeavor, at every stage of our lives…a systematic means of rewarding us for conduct deemed valuable to the group or task in which we are involved. No organization knows this better than the military, where ribbons and medals are a very visible and immediate means by which soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen, or Marines can show off their “been there and done that” resumes.
Properly managed, awards can be an important tool in your human resource recruiting, performance improvement, and retention activities, not to mention as a way of communicating to the public and its officials the value and excellence of the services you’re tasked to provide.
For those of us involved in waste management, the most obvious rewards for our conduct and performance are found in our paychecks and occasional raises or bonuses. These, without doubt, are crucial to our livelihood, but there’s an area of recognition missing here…the public acknowledgment of achievement as displayed by a scouting merit badge, a military decoration, or a sporting event trophy. Is this important to the individual? You bet, but in our case it may be just as important to the organization. If so, then, what do we do about it?
SWANA’s Excellence Awards Program
Taken directly from its mission statement, SWANA’s Excellence Awards Program recognizes outstanding solid waste programs and facilities that advance the practice of environmentally and economically sound solid waste management through their commitment to utilizing effective technologies and processes in system design and operations, advancing worker and community health and safety, and implementing successful public education and outreach programs.
That’s a mouthful, but if you go back and read it carefully, it is indeed a proscription for the excellence the public expects and deserves from us. There’s more to it of course—fiscal and environmental responsibility and compliance with applicable regulations—but at the bottom line comes the recognition of programs and facilities with Gold, Silver, or Bronze awards in 14 categories of endeavor:
- Collection Systems
- Communication
- Composting
- Landfill Gas Control
- Landfill Gas Utilization
- Landfill Management
- Landfill Re-Use
- Marketing
- Public Education
- Recycling
- Integrated Solid Waste Management
- Special Waste
- Transfer Station
- Waste-to-Energy
Moreover, from the ranks of these submissions comes SWANA’s Innovation Award, recognizing new ideas and methods for managing today’s wastestream, a sort of Top Gun of the Year trophy. This year’s winners will be publicly recognized and presented with their awards at an Awards Ceremony that will be held this year at WASTECON in Nashville, TN.
All of us at MSW Management take pride in our sponsorship of SWANA’s Excellence Awards Program, and want to encourage your participation, but time is growing short. All submissions must be in SWANA’s hands by April 15 (think you can remember the date?), so for details on what’s required, please go to www.swana.org and click on the Excellence Award button. Why not do it right now? MSW
Author's Bio: John Trotti is the Group Editor for Forester Media. |
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