Clean North awards recipients strive to make city greener

Every year on Earth Day, Clean North recognizes local environmental stewards and champions through the Clean North Awards program. The press release announcing the winners follows: 

Every year on Earth Day, Clean North recognizes local environmental stewards and champions through the Clean North Awards program. This year, we’re pleased to recognize the five Clean North Award winners listed below. We congratulate them all and hope they inspire others to take action to protect the environment and help make our community cleaner and greener.

Elementary Student Award: Seven-year-old Calvin Trudelle of Calvin’s Crayons started reusing and recycling old crayons in August 2021 to keep them from going into the trash. Instead, he reforms them into new crayons in cool shapes. He quickly moved beyond working with his own crayons to develop crayon collection programs. He has formed partnerships with two schools, and Value Village is no longer throwing broken crayons into the trash either, instead giving them to Calvin. He has kept thousands of crayons out of the landfill. He also keeps crayon wrappers and accepts old candles to create fire starters, using the profits to help support local organizations. To date, Calvin has donated over $500 to local groups and charities. If you have any old/broken crayons, feel free to reach out to @CalvinsCrayons on Facebook.

Secondary Student Award: Paige Benoit is an active youth environmental steward and was a co-op student at Clean North in Semester 1 of the 2021-22 school year. She showed up on time every day and participated in the placement with great enthusiasm. She helped with cleaning up litter, processing materials for recycling at Harvest Algoma, delivering compostable material to Lemieux Composting, turning compost piles, screening finished compost, planting/harvesting/cleaning/maintaining community garden beds, weeding and watering potted trees, planting trees, assembling worm composter kits, managing worm composters including feeding and sorting worms, and recycling scrap metal. Her exceptional efforts were greatly appreciated.

Citizen Award: Susan Richards has been the garden centre manager at New North Greenhouses since the day their doors opened in 1992. She began her horticulture journey in 1982 after graduating from the Humber College Landscape Technician Program. She ran a landscaping crew, taught evening courses in horticulture, and had her own landscape design and consulting business before venturing into the garden centre world. Susan leads the team at New North and is the Garden Solutions 'go to' person. She also regularly writes gardening articles for local media outlets and is a supporter of Seedy Saturday. Visit her at New North for any plant or gardening questions as she is a valuable resource in our community.

Business Awards:

Hearterra at 112 March Street is a local leader in providing high-quality sustainable, low-waste healthy products for consumers. Owned by Jody Rebek, Brittany Chabot, and Angela de Geus, Hearterra is the Sault's newest refillery, aimed at reducing plastics and changing people’s shopping habits to cause less waste. Customers can bring in or purchase their own reusable containers for various cleaning and personal care products, which once empty can be brought back to the store and refilled. Refilling can greatly reduce household plastic waste. Hearterra also offers ethical household products made in Canada, many crafted by local artisans. They also helped promote the city’s Plasticfree Pledge and are a collection depot for Clean North prescription bottle recycling.

Lajoie Bros. Contracting Ltd. is a local, family-owned petroleum maintenance and spill response company, now operating under Norpro Environmental. They have provided local petroleum maintenance and emergency spill response services since 1967. Over the years, they have remediated many petroleum and fuel spills, preventing much environmental damage. They have also provided preventative maintenance, inspections, and support to various local fuel companies, gas stations, and private fuel outlets to ensure compliance and minimize environmental impact. They also have a strong tradition of volunteering, including supporting Clean North’s Christmas tree chipping since its inception in 1990.

Several other individuals and business were issued honorary mention certificates. We congratulate all who were nominated and hope they will continue their green efforts. Learn more about Clean North here.