We Gave Bowling Trophies to Eco-Friendly Businesses — Here's Who Got Them
We just did something kind of audacious…
We started our own annual awards ceremony.
Why do this when others like Earth Day Omaha and Nebraska Recycling Council already have one?
We’re partnered with hundreds of the most eco-friendly organizations in the Omaha area. Because we’re the folks picking up the trash, we see lots of success stories. But it became clear to us that these stories weren’t making it to the wider public.
In contrast, if you turn on the news, you’ll be bombarded with disparaging stories about the environmental movement. It seems the negative story is all we get. But we all deserve better. We deserve to know about and celebrate the good stories, too. So, we created an annual awards ceremony to crystallize the eco-accomplishments in our community.
In April, we gathered some of our favorite eco-loving community members at Highlander’s The Venue to celebrate and honor the organizations leading the way for sustainability. Below, in words and video, are uplifting stories of people, organizations, and businesses setting goals and smashing them in 2023. Watch and read to get inspired and do the same within your sphere of influence.
In summary, here are the awardees …
Baxter Subaru for becoming the nation’s first zero-waste-to-landfill dealership
Kiewit Luminarium for designing zero waste infrastructure into its building
Amateur Coffee for eliminating single-use cups & utensils
Exist Green for showing us the true meaning of zero waste
Omaha’s Conagra office for 22.5 tons a month from the landfill
Marian High School for achieving zero-waste-to-landfill in the lunchroom
Duchesne Academy for being the first zero-waste-to-landfill school
Catering Creations for supplying Omaha with a trackable zero waste event service
Union for Contemporary Art for using donated soil from Compost Clubbers to give away free produce
Sustainable Suburbanite for showing us how to live a zero waste life in the Omaha suburbs
No More Empty Pots for the amazing circular food system it created
P.S. Yes, we gave away used sports trophies we got from Facebook “Buy Nothing” groups and a generous donation from Duchesne Academy. 😂
But first, we gotta brag about our own 2023 accomplishments
Between all three sectors of our organization — Hillside, Gretna Sanitation, and Soil Dynamics, here’s what we were able to accomplish last year.
50,000 tons of compostables kept out of the landfill
1,800 tons of recyclables sent to First Star Fiber
1,500 households using Compost Club
1,400 students composting every school day
600 partnered organizations contributing to the circular economy
500 compost cans shared among them
36 employees gracefully (sometimes) holding it all together
Zero Waste to Landfill Award: Baxter Subaru
This Subaru dealership used to send 96 yards of trash to the landfill each week. With our help, they’re now down to just 8 yards a week. They’re recycling and composting over 90% of their waste, which makes this quite possibly America’s only zero-waste-to-landfill Subaru dealership and repair shop.
How did we make that happen?
Trash Audit: We audited all their waste and figured out where it could be recycled or composted. This also included sourcing a new compostable coffee cup and finding a vendor to recycle their wood pallets.
Custom Signage: We created custom signage highlighting the top items employees and customers were tossing. Then we reassigned existing bins they had throughout the site.
Training Video: We put together a training video that all employees were required to watch to get them prepped and ready for the new waste system coming their way.
Assigned Responsibility: They assigned an employee the responsibility of overseeing employee participation.
Maintain: They do regular trash audits and sorts to ensure correct organization. Initially, to get everyone on board, all the managers participated in the waste sort to give them extra incentive to ensure all their teams were ready.
This training process took about two weeks, but now they’re reaping the rewards of sustainability!
Because of this accomplishment, we’re giving them our “Zero Waste to Landfill” award at this year’s Hillside awards ceremony.
Zero Waste Design Award: Kiewit Luminarium
We’ve found that one in four Omaha businesses want to recycle and compost but report they simply don’t have the space for it. That’s a result of something we call designing for the landfill model.
Most enclosures are designed to hold only one dumpster. Because there is not enough space for multiple containers, this prioritizes landfilling. The good news is that a group of designers and building owners is creating spaces for the zero-waste model.
That’s exactly what Kiewit Luminarium did. We at Hillside Solutions began talks with Luminarium 3 years before the doors ever opened. We collaborated with their design team at HDR and Luminarium staff to accomplish 5 goals:
The dock area had enough room to fit multiple recycling and composting containers.
Ensuring our truck drivers had room to access them while giving Luminarium plenty of space for daily operations.
Inside the building, there were well-coordinated locations and bins to collect and separate materials.
The most common waste items they produce have a place to go to be recycled or composted.
And 5, that employees and cleaning staff received training on how to recycle and compost.
This whole process went way more smoothly because the partners that Luminarium uses are also familiar with our practices. The architects and engineers at HDR use our services at their Omaha headquarters. And the restaurant partner Luminarium brought in, Fig, has another location named Lola’s in Dundee that’s partnered with us for years.
This has created a culture of sustainability at Luminarium. On our recent tour, seeing how the staff reuse materials like cardboard and plastic in art and science projects that visitors can participate in was fun.
Reuse Award: Amateur Coffee
Did you know the paper coffee cups at Starbucks aren’t recyclable? They go in the trash due to the plastic lining on the inside of the cup. (Which, BTW, is probably leaching micro and nano plastics into your drink). The same goes for the average cup at most coffee shops or even at your place of work. Due to this, over 500,000,000,000 single-use cups are created every single year just to be used once before being discarded as ”trash.”
But what if I told you in Omaha, NE, there’s a little coffee shop that’s solved this big issue?
This is our composting partner, Amateur Coffee. They’ve done what no other Omaha coffee shop has done: they created their own reusable glass jar program and give their to-go customers absolutely no single-use cups or utensils.
Here’s how it works: If you want coffee to go, you can purchase one of their $2 reusable glass jars that comes with a lid—they’re super cute. That way if you didn’t have a reusable cup already—you do now! Then, you can bring it back and refill it or turn it in for $2 off your next purchase! Now, if you want your drink to stay in the store, you don’t have to buy a $2 jar. That’s just for drinks to-go. And, if you already have a reusable cup, you can bring that in and they’ll certainly use it.
Amateur Coffee wants to leave the world—and the coffee industry—in a better place than how they found it, and reuse has been their mission. And best of all, people love them for it and they’re a thriving business. Because of this bold move, we at Hillside Solutions gave Amateur Coffee this year’s “Reuse Award.” So congrats to Amateur for setting a great example. Please go enjoy this lovely Omaha gem, and hit us up if you’d like to see your favorite coffee shop go green.
2023 Reuse Award: Exist Green
You can’t have an inaugural sustainability awards ceremony without giving Exist Green recognition. That’s because they’re the first zero-waste retail shop to open in Omaha. Located in downtown Dundee, Exist Green gives you a plastic-free shopping experience.
We love them because they remind us of a valuable lesson: it’s not about perfectly recycling and composting everything. It’s about figuring out how to create less waste altogether. That’s the future of this whole movement, and this shop is living in that reality now.
For being such a trendsetter, we gave them 2023’s Reuse Award.
Biggest Impact: Omaha’s Conagra Office
270 tons! That’s the amount of material the Conagra Brands office in Omaha is recycling and composting each year. In this short video, we’ll show you how they got their office of 1,200 employees to participate and how amazing their system is working. Plus, we’ll show you some easy things you can do to be more eco-friendly at your place of work …
When Conagra first approached us, they had recently lost their recycling program and decided to turn to Hillside Solutions to partner with.
Little known fact: Conagra actually helped to launch the first edition of the Hefty Renewbag program (which provides a way to recycle plastics that can’t normally go in your recycling bin). So, getting their recycling program back up was an absolute must.
They modernized their recycling program from single-stream (where all recyclables are put into one dumpster) to dual-stream recycling (where paper and cardboard are separated into one bin and plastics and metals into another).
Added in our composting service to capture food waste from their test kitchens, paper towels from the restroom, and compostable utensils, plates, and food scraps from the cafeteria. Our green composting carts sit right outside their building waiting to be filled with wonderful things and then transformed into nutrient-dense compost and distributed across the community.
Put out lovely new bins and signage to assist employees in separating correctly. The bins follow the color coding standard of blue for recycling, green for composting, and black for landfill. To take things a step further, they also developed this really unique sticker system where the employees simply look at the sticker/symbol on an item when they grab it in the cafe and then match it to the same symbol on the waste bin when they toss it … pretty crafty!
Reinforce Program: They reinforce the program with a short training video that all new hires watch, reminders on TV screens, and a “sustainability minute” held at the beginning of large events.
This office has put together a spectacular program. Because of all the great progress we saw in 2023, Hillside awarded the Conagra Omaha office our “Biggest Impact” award at our inaugural awards ceremony.
Eco-friendly School: Marian High School
Did you know that 530 thousand tons of food waste is coming from schools in America every year? But in Omaha, there’s an all-girls Catholic school sending less than 10% of its lunchroom waste to the landfill every day.
This is our composting partner Marian High School. In 2023 they reached their goal of recycling and composting 91% of its lunchroom waste. That means they have a zero-waste-to-landfill lunch program! And that comes out to 15,000 pounds a year.
Here’s how they do it in 5 easy steps:
Get folks on-board: they have an amazing student and teacher-led green team that oversees the success of the program. For example, they worked with kitchen staff to get compostable serve-ware in place of styrofoam trays.
Set-up Sorting Stations: They use this sorting station with posters to help students place stuff in the right place.
Go Green Team: The green team will stand by these stations and provide support to the students. They’ve gotten so good at separating material, one student said she could sort waste in her sleep!
Roll Carts to Pick-up area: After every lunch period, the green team rolls the compost and recycling bins to the pickup areas. Teamwork really makes the dream work at Marian; the green team helps each other out when dumping the waste into the correct bins. Then, they clean out the containers and put them back for the next day.
Report Info: They do a waste audit every week by weighing the bins with a go-cart scale (courtesy of someone’s husband).
Because of this wonderful accomplishment, we at Hillside Solutions are giving them our “Eco-Friendly School” award. BTW, we’re doing versions of this at over 20 schools. Hit us up if you’d like to see your school do this.
Eco-friendly School Award: Duchesne Academy
It's a no-brainer to honor Duchesne Academy for the eco-friendly School Award. Here's how they've achieved straight (sustainable) A's across the board:
In 2017, Duchesne Academy became the first Omaha school to compost lunch waste, leading the way for 35 schools to join the program since then. While some schools have stopped, Duchesne remains committed.
The first school to install solar panels
Awarded an "Energy Star" rating by the Environmental Protection Agency
In 2017, were one of only three schools in the Americas to receive a "Green Star" from the Ignatian Solidarity Network.
The French Embassy in the U.S. recognized them as a 2019 G7 Eco-Citizen contest winner for our zero-waste efforts.
Their partnership with Goodwill Industries resulted in the collection of 4,900 pounds of electronics for recycling in April 2018.
Hosts an annual recycling initiative that has saved over 2,400 pounds of Christmas lights from landfills since 2018.
In 2022, we conducted a waste audit and became the first school to achieve zero waste across the campus.
Our eco-friendly initiatives are a significant reason students choose our school. Assistant Principal Eric Krawkoski leads these efforts. Let's give him a round of applause, too.
Resilience Award: Catering Creations
We all know events like corporate meetings and weddings make a lot of waste. But what if I told you that there’s a catering company in downtown Omaha that’s keeping 80% of its waste out of the landfill?
Here’s Catering Creations. Thanks to a great tracking system, we know that in 2023, they recycled, composted, reused or donated nearly 14 tons of material. Of that, 44% of it was food waste they composted, and 9% was donated to Saving Grace Perishable Food Rescue.
Whenever they cater, nearly all the food waste prep, cans, and cardboard are getting composted and recycled. And whenever they host events at their own venue, Founders One Nine, they have the ability to recycle and compost much of the waste generated during the event as well.
Let’s take a look at what they do:
Food Prep: While the team is making the food, they put all food scraps into the composting bins and recyclables into their own bins as well. This step is made super easy because they keep the bins right by the workstations so they can toss it in with no trouble.
Re-think Dishware: Known for sourcing compostable serveware or utilizing reusable dishware whenever possible.
Sorting waste at events: The team has bins set up for attendees to easily sort their waste with a bin for plastic bottles, cans, and glass bottles. The employees also have back-of-house sorting stations.
Excess Food Donation: Catering Creations donates all extra food to Saving Grace Food Rescue, a local non-profit organization that takes excess perishable food from businesses to donate to those in need instead of throwing it away.
Reporting: They weigh and track their food waste.
Because of the efforts by owner and staff management and rallying a big group of employees around the cause, Hillside Solutions gave Catering Creations the “Resilience Award” at this year’s Hillside Solutions ceremony.
Compost Club Gives Award: Union for Contemporary Arts
We have a 1,500-household-strong subscription program called Compost Club. It allows residential folks to drop off compostables at over 6o sites around the Omaha area. Subscribers also get credits to redeem free compost.
We noticed many of our subscribers never redeemed their compost. So we began to give them the yearly option of donating those credits to non-profit gardens with which we’re partnered. Those gardens, in turn, use the free compost to grow organic food and feed members of our community who may have a difficult time accessing organic food from a place like Whole Foods.
It’s an amazing program. So, we decided to highlight one of those receiving gardens with an award. It's a sort of “who used the free compost best” type of thing. And of them all, we had to celebrate what the Union for Contemporary Art did with their Abudance Garden in 2023.
What was that? … They gave away all the food every Saturday to whoever showed up. And since they are nestled in the middle of a food desert, you just couldn’t ask for a better use of their resources. Imagine going to a grocery store and paying $8 for a delicious heirloom tomato or going to the Abundance Garden and getting that for free.
We absolutely love this.
Compost Clubber Award: Sustainable Suburbanite
Of the 1,500 households using Compost Club, this award is about our favorite user. And that hands-down goes to The Sustainable Suburbanites. Morgan Rye-Craft, her husband Ean, Morgan’s sister-in-law Reneelynn, and her husband Cade are a bold group of earth-loving folks.
Their mission? Live in the suburbs of Omaha while living a zero-waste lifestyle and start a Facebook community to show the rest of us how we can do the same. That Facebook group now has 31,000 followers worldwide.
A review on the FB page sums it up best, “This woman is sharing an experience I can relate to: how to care for the environment in our own little ways without the extremes of moving off the grid or only living with or around people who are quite similar to her in thinking. She’s lighthearted as well as serious.”
Truly an inspiration to us all. That’s why we gave them 2023’s Compost Clubber Award.
Circular Food System Award: No More Empty Pots
No More Empty Pots is on a mission to connect folks and groups to boost self-sufficiency, food security, and economic resilience in both urban and rural areas. And guess what? They just snagged the Circular Food System award. Why? Because they're all about making our food system sustainable – think less waste and smarter use of resources. They're aiming to close the loop on food systems by recycling and reusing stuff, cutting down on environmental impacts, and pushing for sustainability that's good for the economy, society, and the planet.
Here's how they're rocking it:
They’ve got a greenhouse and a micro market that the community can use.
There’s a start-up incubator and kitchens that small businesses can rent.
They offer culinary certification.
The coffee shop at their main hub? Green Restaurant Certified.
They run a CSA - a food subscription program. I mean, $30 for a box full of goodies like fresh spinach – it's a steal, and everyone should get on it.
That’s a wrap for 2023!
Thank you to all of you who helped make this night great. Special thanks to No More Empty Pots for the locally-sourced bites, Highlander for the incredible space, our intern Katilyn for the videos, DJ Crabrangucci for the soundtrack, and Katie Sharpe for the photography.
Until next year!
P.S. If any of these stories inspired you to do the same at your place of work, school, or worship, please contact us to see how we can do the same for your organization.
