June 1, 2010
HALIFAX, NS
The Colchester Regional Development Agency has been recognized with a provincial award for its leadership skills on the environmental front.
“The Environmental Excellence in Business Award” is given to Nova Scotia companies who show environmental leadership. CoRDA is one of the first non-profit agencies to be recognized with the honour. CoRDA picked up its award Tuesday morning at an awards breakfast hosted by The Eco Efficiency Centre in Halifax, based partly on the steps it’s taking to turn the Debert Air Industrial Park into an Eco-Friendly Business Park.
CoRDA is promoting best practices for environmental stewardship among the businesses in the Debert Industrial Park and their 1500 employees as well as in other industrial parks around the Colchester Region. To do that, the development agency has been partnering with the Municipality of Colchester County, The Eco-Efficiency Centre and the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq, among others.
CoRDA signed a twinning agreement with the Devens Enterprise Commission in Massachusetts two summers ago. That group runs a more densely-populated eco-industrial park, which, like Debert, is also situated on a former military base. That move has allowed CoRDA to borrow from among the best ideas at the Massachusetts facility, in order to help companies in Debert meet the environmental standards of an increasing number of mainstream wholesalers and retailers.
Becoming “green” also saves money for companies based in Debert and the rest of the Colchester Region. That’s because CoRDA’s Business Sustainability Coordinator Ericka Wicks offers free energy audits to all members of the Colchester business community, showing them how to increase profits by lessening their environmental footprints.
Similar awards were handed out during the Tuesday morning ceremony to five other businesses and organizations. They are Halifax-based Wolf Collision, PolyCello of Amherst, Oxford Frozen Foods, Joggins Fossil Cliffs and CHAIRS Ltd in Dartmouth.
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For more information, please contact Ericka Wicks at 957-2423
Or Jo Ann Fewer at 893-0140 |