The Environmental Respect Awards has launched its 27th year of honoring stewardship among agricultural retailers with an improved online entry process and a new deadline.
Retailers will have until March 13, 2017 to submit their Environmental Respect Award Self-Audit. The deadline is earlier to accommodate the significant rise in applications and entrants over the past two years.
“Participation in this program has more than doubled since 2010,” explains Jim Sulecki, Corporate Content Director, Meister Media Worldwide and program lead. According to Sulecki, retailers across the U.S. and Canada are eager to demonstrate their stewardship and share that information with others.
“Our right to operate as an industry depends on our ability to work safely and effectively,” says Sulecki. “There are good things happening out there. The Environmental Respect Awards is about honoring those in our industry who are doing it right – and sharing that good news with the rest of the world.”
For 26 years, the Environmental Respect Awards, sponsored by DuPont Crop Protection and Meister Media’s CropLife® and AgriBusiness Global® magazines, have been the agricultural industry’s highest recognition for environmental stewardship. Participating entries are examined by an independent panel of industry experts for excellence in site design, in-plant storage and handling procedures, emergency preparedness, proper application and leadership among customers and employees.
“The bar is higher now that it has ever been,” says Sulecki. “Those who serve in this industry must not only do their work with great care, but communicate their efforts so others understand. There’s a new story to tell and retailers are responding through the Environmental Respect Awards.”
Retailers can enter online at www.environmentalrespect.com. For questions on how to enter, call Sue Betteley, Environmental Respect Awards Entry Coordinator at 440.602.9131.
Scenes from the 2016 Environmental Respect Awards program:
One of the highlights of the Environmental Respect Awards is a visit to Longwood Gardens.
The orchid room in the greenhouse at Longwood Gardens always captures visitors’ attention.
The dancing fountains at Longwood Gardens provides a few moments of rest and shade from the hot sun. The site has also played host to numerous entertainers.
Attendees of the Environmental Respect Awards were treated to a guided tour of Longwood Garden’s extensive grounds.
The flag ceremony is one of the long-standing traditions that takes place during lunch along the point, next to the water at Chesapeake Farms. When a country not previously represented at ERA is honored, that attendee gets to place his or her country’s flag into the stand.
No one leaves hungry from lunch at Chesapeake Farms.
Learning how to crack open crabs is one of the more enjoyable (and often humorous) traditions of the visit to Chesapeake Farms during the events surrounding Environmental Respect Awards.
DuPont’s Ray Forney shows attendees of the Environmental Respect Awards some of the weeds that have traveled from various parts of the world that farmers must deal with.
DuPont’s Wendelyn Jones, strikes a pose at the Rocky statue, one of the favorite photo spots on the tour of Philadelphia during the Environmental Respect Awards program.
Another favorite event is an evening dinner cruise along the Delaware River on the Freedom Elite.
The awards reception is always one of the most anticipated events of the Environmental Respect Awards.
Stories about the winners from the Environmental Respect Awards are turned into posters, which all the attendees then sign. The posters are shipped home with the winners as a memento of the experience.