2013 DART Circle of Excellence Award

For the third year in a row, Waste Management is celebrating the winning companies of our Sustainable Circle of Excellence Award, which recognizes the top customers in the construction industry who achieved outstanding sustainability milestones. Congratulations to:

• Balfour Beatty Construction, LLC – Mark Layman, Chairman & CEO
   
• Big-D Construction – Jack Livingood, Chairman & CEO
   
• Brasfield & Gorrie LLC – James Gorrie, President & CEO
   
• Gilbane Building Company – Thomas F. Gilbane, Jr., Chairman & CEO
   
• JE Dunn Construction – Gordon Lansford, President & CEO
   
• M.A. Mortenson Company  – Thomas F. Gunkel, CEO
   
• McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. – Michael D. Bolen, Chairman & CEO
   
• Skanska USA, Inc.– Michael F. McNally, President & CEO
   
• The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company – Richard Warhall, Vice President of Sustainability
   
• The Walsh Group – Matthew Walsh, Chairman & CEO

For the minute or two it takes to read the rest of this blog post, think of all the work that goes into constructing the buildings we occupy every day. Think about the metal and lumber, the concrete serving as reliable foundation and the different materials and products that create the environments where we live and work.

Think about all of these materials and then imagine how the companies listed above are each committed to finding uses for construction items that go way beyond their applications at a construction site. In fact, the winners on this list put over 90 thousand tons of materials to reuse and achieved a 70 percent diversion rate.

We know those specific numbers because each used WM’s Diversion and Recycling Tracking tool (DART^®) to create those plans, monitor their progress through implementation and report their final performance on a project-by-project basis. With a few keystrokes, they were able to see exactly how a project was performing, which is not only good for environmental reporting but also good for setting benchmarks and then creating new ones.

I want to thank all of them for their commitment, as well as for the care they took to track their performances. Each day, Waste Management helps builders, developers and architects find sustainable solutions. Working together, we turn concrete into new road base, lumber into compost and rock into decorative landscaping. We divert materials from the landfill, and in doing so help dozens of projects achieve LEED^® certification.

Recycling from a construction project is no easy task (we’re talking tons of materials), but we’re doing it every day.

With that, congratulations again to these customers.