Abitibi-Consolidated, Inc., and its PaperRetriever(c) program is the winner of a Texas Environmental Excellence Award from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

The company’s big yellow and aqua bins are a familiar sight at many schools, churches, and other nonprofits. Abitibi provides the bins free of charge and then pays the organizations for the paper they collect. Initiated in Houston in 1995, PaperRetriever(c) now reaches more than 3,500 organizations in Texas and has expanded throughout North America and the United Kingdom. In Texas alone, participants recycled 278,000 tons of paper in 2004 – enough to cover more than 9,000 football fields. Participants earned more than $1 million, which they used to enhance libraries and underwrite scholarships, among other projects. The program is being honored for complementing existing community recycling efforts by giving people new ways and new reasons to recycle year round, and for teaching good recycling habits by providing free educational materials in English and Spanish.

The Excellence Awards program was created by the Texas Legislature in 1993. The awards, chosen by a committee of environmental experts, commemorate Earth Day. Ten are given each year to recognize businesses, organizations, and individuals who have created programs that successfully conserve natural resources, reduce waste, and prevent pollution. The awards will be presented at a banquet on May 10 as part of the TCEQ Environmental Trade Fair and Conference.

The full list of winners and a description of the projects is at http://www.teea.org/