Workers sort paper as it moves along a conveyor belt at the recycling facility at the Central Landfill in Johnston. The state is now working with businesses, to improve recycling rates in the state.

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL / KATHY BORCHERS

When the state announced in January a renewed effort to improve the woeful recycling rate of Rhode Island stores and businesses, Terrence Gray, associate director at the state Department of Environmental Management, was embarrassed to admit that the DEM headquarters is in leased space that doesn’t provide recycling.

News of that lapse brought help, however, and, starting a few weeks ago, the DEM finally began getting its papers shredded and recycled.

The rescue came from Christine Botts, disability business enterprise coordinator for the Governor’s Commission on Disabilities. She was using $10,000 in grant money from the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation to pay for paper from her agency and two neighboring state agencies in Cranston to be recycled by Better Shred, a business launched by CranstonARC to provide work for people with disabilities.

Better Shred guarantees to shred office paper and then recycle it.

Botts saw Gray’s admission about the DEM in The Providence Journal in January and called to offer help. Gray also got calls from private recycling companies, but they wanted money, which DEM doesn’t have with the state’s budget crisis.

Botts, though, had enough extra grant money to pay for the DEM to have its office paper collected by Better Shred.

“The timing of this offer was great,” Gray said. Even though DEM staffers were setting aside office paper for recycling, it was routinely being mixed with trash and discarded as a waste.

“As an environmental agency, we found this to be unacceptable and have worked to come up with a solution,” Gray said. He said the funding offer gave the DEM an opportunity to practice what it preached.

Better Shred delivered 17 locked 60-gallon containers to DEM several weeks ago. They are being used to collect copy paper, bond paper and newspaper from 320 employees.

Botts said her agency was looking for ways to help people with disabilities, so the service at the DEM is a win-win, she said.

Meanwhile, DEM staff continues reviewing responses from some 2,300 businesses that it wrote to in January, reminding them that state law requires them to recycle.

It is estimated that businesses produce 60 percent of the 700,000 tons of waste that go into the state’s Central Landfill each year, and the landfill will reach capacity in two years if that rate continues.

Gray said the DEM got about 400 responses from businesses, which he felt was “pretty good.”

DEM will use the data to work with Resource Recovery to launch a sector-by-sector education and compliance assistance program this spring.

A look at some special naturalists

Roland Clement, a major force for many decades in New England’s ecological movement, will be the featured speaker at a special meeting of the Rhode Island Natural History Survey at 7 p.m. Friday in Independence Hall on the University of Rhode Island’s Kingston campus.

Also, the group’s Distinguished Naturalist Awards will be granted to Rick Enser, who led the Rhode Island Natural Heritage Program for nearly 30 years, and the late Ken Weber, who wrote for years about Rhode Island’s natural places before he died last August at age 63.

Clement is a biologist, administrator, author and artist. He will talk about great naturalists and landmarks he has encountered in his long career.

Enser was a longtime employee at the state Department of Environmental Management who tracked the state’s endangered species for nearly three decades. He was also a leader of the Rhode Island Wild Plant Society and the Rhode Island Natural History Survey.

Weber wrote and edited for The Providence Journal and the Audubon Society of Rhode Island and published several outdoor guides to the state. For many years he was the state’s leading writer about the state’s natural places. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call (401) 874-5800.

Master Gardener fundraiser Friday

Two veteran environmentalists and one statewide group will be honored Friday for their contributions to beautifying and protecting the state’s natural resources.

Peggy Sharpe, Trudy Coxe and the Rhode Island Nursery and Landscape Association will be given Tradition of Excellence awards by the Master Gardener Foundation of Rhode Island, a nonprofit arm of the University of Rhode Island’s Master Gardener program.

The awards will be presented during an inaugural fundraiser for the foundation, established to provide for the long-term needs of the foundation and the outreach efforts it supports throughout the state.

The gala will begin at 6 at the Roger Williams Park Botanical Center with food catered by Johnson & Wales University.

Sharpe is being honored for her longtime environmental efforts, which include promoting the establishment of what is now the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation, and her service on the national board of governors of The Nature Conservancy. She also helped form the group’s Rhode Island chapter.

Coxe was executive director of Save the Bay for 11 years and she also served as director of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She is currently executive director of the Preservation Society of Newport County.

The nursery and landscape association is being honored for decades of work to promote the state’s “green industry” and its support of URI. In 1994 it donated the landscaping that is today the URI Botanical Gardens, and it continues to donate operational funds as well as contribute toward the hiring of a horticultural professor and the establishment of plant science scholarships.

Tickets are $75 and can be purchased by contacting the Master Gardener Foundation at (401) 874-2900.

Audubon seeks Earth Day essays

The deadline is April 1 to compete in the Audubon Society of Rhode Island’s Earth Day 2008 essay contest.

The contest is open to students in grades 3 through 12. This year they are asked to write one-page essays on the topic, “How my Family’s Transportation Affects Global Warming.”

Prizes will be awarded by grades and for entire classes, based on the top five essays from each class.

Prizes will be awarded during the society’s Earth Day celebration April 19 at its Environmental Education Center in Bristol.

For more details, contact Audubon policy director Eugenia Marks at emarks@asri.org.

DEM names parks director

Robert Paquette, a 27-year veteran of the state Department of Environmental Management, has been appointed chief of the DEM’s division of parks and recreation. The job places him in charge of all of the state parks, beaches, campgrounds and roadside picnic and rest areas.

The promotion was announced last week by DEM director W. Michael Sullivan, who praised Paquette for his “outstanding financial management, communication and supervisory skills.”

Paquette has served in the DEM’s division of parks and recreation since 1980. For the last 12 years he was director of the region that includes Goddard Memorial, Beavertail and Fort Wetherill State Parks, six roadside rest areas and the John H. Chafee Nature Preserve at Rome Point.

A West Greenwich resident, Paquette is a licensed arborist and a commercial chemical applicator.

Septage haulers to pay extra fee

Starting April 1, local sewer plants will charge septage haulers an extra fee to help pay extra costs in managing Rhode Island waterways. Haulers are expected to pass that fee on to homeowners who are having their septic systems pumped out.

The extra cost will be $10 for 1,000 gallons pumped.

Blame the Greenwich Bay fish kill back in August 2003.

The fish kill prompted the General Assembly to endorse a new system for managing Narragansett Bay and other state water bodies, a system that requires spending more money on monitoring water quality and sources of pollution.

To help pay the extra cost of the new system, the General Assembly last year agreed to the new fee of $1 for each 100 gallons of septage disposed at local sewer plants.

Septage haulers at a recent meeting complained that their customers are going to blame them for the price increases. They said the state should collect its own taxes and not pass the job onto communities and business people.

The DEM responded with an information sheet the haulers can provide customers.

You’re invited to a beach cleanup

The Town of Narragansett is looking for volunteers to help restore the dunes at the Town Beach at 9 a.m. on Saturday.

No experience is necessary. Volunteers will plant native vegetation on the dunes after meeting at the beach just north of the town pavilion. The town will provide training, tools and refreshments. For questions, call the town engineering department at (401) 782-0636.

The Environmental Journal is a listing of brief news items about the actions of individuals, organizations, and businesses that affect the air we breathe, the water we drink and the landscape that surrounds us. If you have comments or suggestions, please contact environment reporter Peter B. Lord at (401) 277-8036, or by e-mail at plord@projo.com or by writing him, care of the Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, RI 02902.