Earth Day celebration capped off with awards

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control commemorated Earth Day yesterday for the 39th time in the Palmetto State. This year was a little different. Back in the fall, DHEC announced an annual competition where groups as small as a family to as big as a business could compete by creating projects to improves the environment. Depending on how many people participated on the individual projects determined which category they competed in. Their entries were received back in February and have been judged. The winners were announce yesterday. DHEC Spokesperson Claire Boatwright says the submitted projects were very competitive.
“We got a tremendous number of entries, many more than we had expected. The exceptional qualities made the judging process very difficult,” said Boatwright. “We had people who were developing all sorts of; energy efficiencies, cost savings, pollution preventions, waste reductions…anything that was really a measureable environmental improvement. We had people doing recycling types of projects. Some people did some creative art projects.”
Boatwright says it’s been a successful year at DHEC as they have released their first ‘Green Guide’ which is a great learning tool. “we have had quite a year of putting some things together. We produced our first ‘Green Guide’ which is available on our website, and if you’re searching for it, you can just type in green guide. Of course, we wanted to do it electronically because that’s the greener way to go. It is a magazine and it’s done in magazine format . We’ve had a great response from schools about that during it’s first year and we have continued to work with schools.”
Boatwright says they are looking forward to kicking off next year’s competition. Go to DHEC’s website for more information.