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- Environmental Stewardship Award
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) offers Environmental Stewardship Awards annually to businesses, industries, and organizations that have made a significant improvement in protecting our environment by preventing pollution. This non-competitive annual award program recognizes projects that eliminate or reduce the generation of pollutants or wastes at the source or projects that conserve natural resources.
As you can see in the illustration, recycling efforts do not qualify as projects for the Environmental Stewardship Awards. While recycling does divert waste from going to the landfill, the bottom line is that the waste was still generated. The goal of source reduction is to conserve resources and not generate pollutants in the first place.
Eligibility
Any Kansas business, industry, community or community group, school, or organization is eligible to apply for an Environmental Stewardship Award. To determine the success of the project, the project must have been implemented at least six months prior to the application, but no earlier than January 1, 2019. Recycling projects are not eligible. Applications from prior award recipients must denote new projects.
These environmental stewardship efforts are in addition to or exceed what is required by law; therefore, submitted projects should be voluntary efforts to minimize or prevent industrial and environmental concerns. Compliance with current environmental laws and regulations will be taken into consideration during the review process.