The Tennessee Recycling Coalition announces 2024 Recycler of the Year Awards

The Tennessee Recycling Coalition (TRC), Nashville, Tennessee, has announced its 2024 Recycler of the Year Awards, a program recognizing individuals, organizations and businesses in Tennessee demonstrating a commitment to waste prevention and recycling.

TRC Director Lincoln Young announced the awards during closing ceremonies of a joint three-day conference at Gatlinburg’s Park Vista Hotel. The joint event was organized by TRC, the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Tennessee Environmental Conference.

RELATED: Tennessee Sustainability Conference announced

The award for Business Recycler of the Year was presented to Domtar, a Fort Mill, South Carolina-based provider of fiber-based products. The company idled its Kingsport, Tennessee, mill and entered the containerboard market in 2020. Resuming operations in 2023, the Kingsport Mill is home to the second-largest recycled containerboard machine in North America, TRC says. It can produce approximately 600,000 tons of recycled linerboard and corrugated medium annually. According to TRC, the Kingsport Mill is also the largest recycler of corrugated cardboard in Tennessee.

Metro Nashville received the Government Recycler of the Year award. In 2023, Metro Waste Services, a division of Metro Water Services, introduced the Food Scraps Pickup Pilot (FSPP), a program providing free curbside composting services to 750 Nashville households for one year. MWS worked with contractor Compost Nashville, and to date, FSPP has collected 42 tons of food scraps and anticipates diverting approximately 115 tons of food waste from landfills by the end of the pilot year.

Sewanee Mountain Grotto, Sewanee, Tennessee, was presented the Non-Profit Recycler of the Year award. TRC says the Sewanee Mountain Grotto has a long history of recycling, and since its reactivation in 2004, the grotto has participated in recycling aluminum cans and plastic bottles at regional caving events held in the area. In 2019, a grotto member recognized a need for The Caverns music venue in Pelham, Tennessee, to begin recycling. In the last two years, the grotto has collected more than 10,000 pounds of cans and plastic for recycling from The Caverns.

This year’s Top Leader award was presented to Gary Wayne Hyde, sanitation department manager and Lawrence County Solid Waste director for the City of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, and Lawrence County. Hyde has spent more than 40 years in the solid waste and recycling industry. In 2015, his department was awarded the governor’s Environmental Stewardship Award for Materials Management, and in 2022, he was named Tennessee Solid Waste Director of the Year. 

The Tennessee Environmental Conference presented the 2024 Paul Hayden Memorial Award to Kathleen Gibi, executive director of Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful, Knoxville, Tennessee. Gibi rallied 994 volunteers to remove more than 218,000 pounds of waste from the Tennessee River in 2023. Jan Compton, Tennessee Environmental Conference director, presented the award. 

The Tom Hattle Memorial Award went to Ginger Reasonover of The Tennessee Environmental Council, based in Nashville, Tennessee. Reasonover assists in planning, coordinating and executing Recycling Roundup collection events across the state, collecting an average of 22,000 pounds of materials at each roundup. TRC says Reasonover is passionate about the environment, and goes above and beyond in her community to promote recycling. She has received the TN Project Learning Tree Educator of the Year award, NEED Primary Teacher of the Year and the National Geographic Certified Educator award. 

In addition to the recycling awards, the Bob Fletcher Memorial Award Scholarship in the amount of $2,500 was presented to Lily Barrie. This scholarship will provide funding for Barrie to attend The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to study political science with a minor in environmental studies. The scholarship memorializes the late Bob Fletcher, an advocate who helped counties, cities and businesses with household hazardous waste, recycling and other environmental issues. Fletcher worked for the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation.