The 2012 RCO Waste Minimization award recipients were announced at a gala held on October 18. Ontario Automotive Recyclers Association (OARA) and  Ontario Tire Stewardship (OTS) jointly walked away with a silver award in the Festivals and Events category  for the OARA/OTS Tire Take-Back event. This event ran May 28- June 2, 2012 and collected 139,098 used tires, an increase from 48,000 the previous year. Steve Fletcher of OARA and Susanne Robins of OTS were in attendance at the gala and thrilled to learn the Tire Take-Back event won such a prestigious award.

Steve Fletcher, Executive Director of OARA proudly shows off the silver award

The Festivals and Events award category evaluates organizations, service clubs or other associations in the ‘for profit’ and ‘not for profit’ sectors hosting community events in public venues. Tire Take-Back, which  was held at over 70 OARA member locations across the province, encourages Ontarians to dispose of their old tires responsibly, and by doing so the community that collected the most tires (Stirling, Ontario) was awarded a gift-in-kind of up to $15,000 worth of tire-derived products, which will be used toward the Stirling-Rawdon community arena.

This is OTS’ first RCO Waste Minimization award and is recognition of the work  that OTS does to recycle the more than 10 million tires that reach their end of life each year in the province.