John de Gonzague Memorial Pollution Prevention Visionary Award
Background
On June 14, 2007, at the 11th Canadian Pollution Prevention Roundtable, the inaugural John de Gonzague Memorial Pollution Prevention Visionary Award was awarded.
The Award has been established to recognize Canadian environmental professionals who inspire and achieve excellence in advancing pollution prevention. The recipient will have had an outstanding impact on the vision and implementation of pollution prevention strategies, programs, projects and partnerships. The award was established in memory of John de Gonzague, a true pioneer in pollution prevention at Environment Canada's National Office of Pollution Prevention. John was actively involved in the early work on defining what P2 is, creating tools that helped establish it as a key component of environmental protection, promoting P2 through other government departments and sharing Canada's P2 experiences internationally.
The 2010 Award recipient was Bruce Taylor, president of Enviro-Stewards Inc., an international environmental consulting firm. Bruce is a chemical engineer with 20 years of experience in fields of pollution prevention and environmental consulting. Mr. Taylor’s work through Enviro-Stewards has helped advance the application of pollution prevention principles in the areas of energy efficiency, water conservation, sustainability, lean & clean, design for the environment, multi-media footprint reduction, toxics use reduction, brownfield prevention and corporate social responsibility. He has worked with his clients in each of these areas to develop integrated multi-media pollution prevention solutions that have generated greater savings than would have been possible with a single media approach. Bruce is deserving of this award because of his innovative approaches to putting pollution prevention into practice at various industries and organizations.
The 2008 Award recipient was Fred Granek, an experienced practitioner of P2 for over 30 years. Currently, a Vice President at the Ontario Centre for Environmental Technology Advancement (OCETA), since 2000, he is responsible for the Toronto Region Sustainability Program, which provides one-stop pollution prevention technical assistance for small-to-medium sized manufacturers throughout the Greater Toronto Area. The Program was honored with a MVP2 Award in 2003. Prior to joining OCETA, Mr. Granek had 24 years of public sector and consulting experience in the environmental field. At the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, he was Manager of the Pollution Prevention Office with responsibility for promoting the adoption of pollution prevention in Ontario through voluntary pollution prevention partnerships, programs and policies. He chaired a national task group, which developed the pollution prevention strategy adopted by Canada's territorial, provincial and federal governments at the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment. Mr Granek serves on the Board of Canadian Centre for Pollution Prevention, is an occasional university lecturer on P2 and Sustainability and has served on the steering committee of at the Canadian Pollution Prevention Roundtable and served in an advisory capacity to the Great Lakes Pollution Prevention and the U.S National Pollution Prevention Roundtables. Mr. Granek holds a Master's degree in Environmental Studies in Applied Ecology and a B.Sc. in Honours Physics from York University.
The inaugural Award recipient was James Riordan, Executive Director, Regulatory Innovation and Management Systems, Environment Canada. James had been the Executive Director of the National Office of Pollution Prevention (NOPP) since 1993 and his list of accomplishments is astonishing. His work has resulted in the adoption of pollution prevention within Canadian federal legislation as pollution prevention is now the cornerstone of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 (CEPA 1999). He has directed the development and implementation of pollution prevention policies, strategies and guidelines to enable improved environmental performance of numerous Canadian industrial sectors. He has been instrumental in initiating a national pollution prevention information clearinghouse, reporting out of P2 measures by federal government departments and the delivery of national and international conferences on pollution prevention.