22nd Annual Emerald Awards
Education: School or Classroom
Award Recipient
Green School and Kids in the Garden
Emma Gilberston, Deb Greiner, Antonella Bell
Let children get dirty? Run through a meadow? Hold leaches? Snowshoe at -20 degrees? Follow moose tracks through the forest? Yes to all and much more. The 100,000 children who have participated in Devonian Botanic Garden’s Green School and Kids in the Garden programs immerse themselves into the outdoors with either daily or week-long nature…
Shortlist
There are no other finalists in this category.
Emerald Challenge Award: WATER
Award Recipient
Oldman Watershed Council
Shirley Pickering
Shirley Pickering’s leadership on progressive water management and stewardship has no peers in the private, volunteer, or public sectors. She has built community and agency capacity and then crafted strategies that address intractable watershed issues with solutions that last because they meet provincial needs and are based on community consensus and technical competency. Shirley’s accomplishments…
Shortlist
There are no other finalists in this category.
Government Institution
Award Recipient
Alberta’s Wet Areas Mapping Initiative
Alberta Department of Environment and Sustainable Resource Development
Alberta’s Department of Environment and Sustainable Resource Development actively pursues innovative solutions that balance economic, environmental and social concerns. Stewardship requires particular emphasis be placed on conservation of aquatic habitats and sensitive lands. The problem is traditional mapping of water in Alberta relies upon photo interpretation. But unseen, wet areas, soils that are sensitive to…
Shortlist
There are no other finalists in this category.
Individual Commitment
Award Recipient
University of Calgary, Biogeoscience Institute Experiential Education Programs
Michael J. Mappin
Since 1988, Mike has worked at the University of Calgary’s Kananaskis Field Station (now called Biogeoscience Institute BGS) where he has pioneered the development, implementation and evaluation of field-based education programs to enhance ecological understanding for students, teachers and educators, policy makers and the general public. Mike has worked tirelessly to create programs for students…
Dory’s Enviro Work
Dory Rossiter
For more than 20 years, Dory has created and organized events and campaigns to help bring awareness and positive change to many environmental issues. In response to manufacturers using excessive amounts of packaging when marketing products, she organized a national letter-writing campaign generating more than 145,000 letters. She wanted to clean up areas that were…
Shortlist
There are no other finalists in this category.
Large Business
Award Recipient
The Nutriboost Program
DMI, Peace River Pulp Division
The Peace River Pulp Division of Daishowa-Marubeni International Ltd(DMI) runs a soil amendment program known as NutriBoost. This program involves the land application of biosolids from its treatment process to farm fields supplying farmers with slow-release nitrogen and phosphorous nutrients to boost agricultural productivity and eliminate the need for commercial fertilizers. This program has effectively…
What’s the Green Deal Program
London Drugs Limited
London Drugs is a 100 per cent Canadian-owned retailer with 75 stores. ‘What’s the Green Deal?’ is a program that brings together the organization’s 4 pillars of sustainability; Upstream Buying; Energy & Operations; Customer/Employee Communication and Recycling/Reuse. Through this initiative, they are well on their way to meeting their goal of diverting 95 per cent…
Shortlist
There are no other finalists in this category.
Not-For-Profit Association
Award Recipient
Preserving our lands; Preserving our Legacy
Edmonton and Area Land Trust
The Edmonton and Area Land Trust EALT is Alberta’s newest conservancy, conserving and stewarding land in the Edmonton region. Land conservation focuses inside a hundred kilometer radius of the city. In city regions, land is expensive, yet in less than five years, they have secured five properties totaling 1,000 acres of healthy ecosystems. This speaks…
Road Watch in the Pass
Led by Rob & Loretta Schaufele
Road Watch in the Pass (RW) is a successful “cutting edge” citizen science project located in the Crowsnest Pass (CNP) of southern Alberta that has diligently endeavored to protect the diverse wildlife species in this area of the Rocky Mountains. Highway 3 (HWY 3) has a negative impact on wildlife by restricting their movements, reducing…
Eco-initiatives Program
Calgary Folk Music Festival
For 34 years the Calgary Folk Music Festival (CFMF) has been a cultural beacon bringing together music lovers and makers from all over the world. In 1997, the CFMF began to introduce environmental initiatives aimed at reducing waste, increasing recycling and promoting human-powered travel back and forth from their verdant urban site on Prince’s Island…
Shortlist
There are no other finalists in this category.
Public Education and Outreach
Award Recipient
Teacher Professional Development Programs
Inside Education
Inside Education’s Teacher Professional Development Programs provide career-changing experiential learning opportunities for school teachers, community educators and career counselors. Since the first program in 1991, nearly 3,000 Alberta teachers have been immersed in the science, technology, issues and futures surrounding Alberta’s precious water, forest and energy resources. Visiting places like Fort McKay in the north…
Shortlist
There are no other finalists in this category.
Shared Footprints Award
Award Recipient
Montane Elk Project
The Montane Elk Program is committed to research ensuring the environmentally sound development of Alberta’s energy resources. With a particular focus on mitigating the effects of energy development on elk in southwest Alberta, the project has become the world’s largest radiotelemetry study on elk. Mitigating the ecological effects of energy development is achieved by sharing…
Shortlist
There are no other finalists in this category.
Small Business
Award Recipient
Afforestation Project
The Carbon Farmer
The Carbon Farmer Inc. is a grass roots agricultural business that addresses climate change, creates habitat and helps sustain the family farm through its “Carbon Farming Project” that began in 2007. The business concept is to plant native trees, shrubs and grasses and create forests that sequester carbon and help offset emissions while at the…
Shortlist
There are no other finalists in this category.
Youth
Award Recipient
Mycoremediation of the Oil Sands
Kelcie Miller-Anderson
Since the age of 15, Kelcie has been pursuing her own research in an effort to create a method of remediation to combat the tailing ponds created by one of Alberta’s leading industries – the Alberta Oil Sands. Developing a novel method of remediation that utilizes oyster mushrooms, her research showed a substantial reduction of…
Shortlist
There are no other finalists in this category.