Cascade, Moen, Lowe’s Earn WaterSense Partner of the Year

by | Oct 8, 2010

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has named three organizations and one individual as WaterSense Partners of the Year for their efforts in promoting water efficiency and WaterSense labeled products. The WaterSense program helps consumers to use less water with water-efficient products, new homes, and services.

The partners of the year are:

–Promotional Partner of the Year: Cascade Water Alliance, King County, Washington

–Manufacturer Partner of the Year: Moen Incorporated

–Retailer Partner of the Year: Lowe’s Companies, Inc.

–Irrigation Partner of the Year: Judy Benson of Clear Water Products and Services, Inc. (Clear Water PSI), Florida

These partners have helped consumers save 36 billion gallons of water and more than $267 million in water and sewer bills in 2009.

As an example, Cascade Water Alliance collaborated with retailers and plumbers to promote water efficiency in the Puget Sound region and rebated more than 3,000 WaterSense labeled toilets for households and local businesses.

Moen earned the WaterSense label for all of its 267 bathroom faucet fixtures, ensuring availability of water-saving faucets for consumers at every price point, and earning national media attention for WaterSense.

Moen also helped home builder KB Home surpass its goal to add four environmentally-friendly products in 2009 to the standard features built into every home at no additional cost to home buyers.

The EPA put its first WaterSense label on a commercial building product in October last year.

Lowe’s launched a “Build Your Savings” program to help customers select products that save energy, water, and money. This is the second year in a row that the retailer earned the retail/distributor Partner of the Year.

Judy Benson educated businesses and consumers on outdoor water efficiency and encouraged other irrigation professionals in the central Florida region to partner with WaterSense.

WaterSense expanded its Partner of the Year awards program this year to include its first Excellence Awards, which recognize additional organizations and individuals whose WaterSense support stood out in one or more of the evaluation categories.

Winners of the Excellence Awards are:

–For Excellence in Strategic Collaboration: Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority,  Drains Plus, Kohler Co., Robert Dobson

–For Excellence in Labeled Products in the Marketplace: Caroma

–For Excellence in Demonstrated Results: Bryan Condray

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) also announced the winners of its 2010 Federal Energy and Water Management Awards. More than 30 individuals, teams, and organizations across the federal government were selected to receive the awards for outstanding and innovative efforts to implement sustainable strategies that improve energy, water, and vehicle fleet efficiency.

The 31 initiatives receiving awards saved taxpayers almost $42 million in energy and water costs in fiscal year 2009 and saved the equivalent of about 190,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Award winners include employees from the U.S. Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy; the Departments of Defense, Energy, Homeland Security, Interior, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs; the Environmental Protection Agency; General Services Administration; and National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Click here for the list of award winners.

The combined accomplishments of this year’s winners include saving 38 billion Btu through the installation of renewable energy systems, and implementing facility-wide changes to operations and maintenance practices, saving 1.7 trillion Btu by upgrading heating, ventilation, and air conditioning equipment, and by installing high efficiency lighting and energy management control systems.

They also made water efficiency improvements, saving 3.2 billion gallons of water through high-efficiency plumbing fixtures, upgrades to irrigation systems, use of native landscaping, discovery and repair of major leaks, and reuse of reclaimed and recovered ground water, and are building Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) facilities.

They are also implementing energy savings performance contracts that guarantee that the improvements will generate energy cost savings sufficient to pay for the project over the term of the contract, as well as utility energy services contracts, where a utility arranges financing to cover the capital costs of the project, which are repaid over the contract term from cost savings generated by the energy efficiency measures, said the DOE.

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