The Los Alamos Cooperative Market has been named the Los Alamos 2015 Business Recycler of the Year.

Environmental Sustainability Board Chair Stephen Boerigter made the announcement with assistance from Environmental Services Manager Angelica Gurule today in Central Park Square during ChamberFest. 

“The Los Alamos Co+op goes beyond recycling of glass, paper, plastic and cardboard to also include TerraCycle collection and composting,” Boerigter said. “TerraCycle re-purposes and recycles items that would normally be thrown away, for example, chip bags, cereal box liners and energy bar wrappers.”

Interim General Manager Triny Vigil accepted the award on behalf of the Co+op Market.

“Our composting tumblers allow us to recycle 95 percent of our food waste into usable compost,” Vigil said. “As we work toward even more sustainable business practices, we hope to continue these recycling methods and reduce and reduce our impact on the Earth.”

The Business Recycler of the Year award is sponsored by the Los Alamos County Environmental Services Division and the Los Alamos County Environmental Sustainability Board.

The recognition is a great avenue to promote recycling in the business community and get more businesses participating in the program.

To become eligible, a business is nominated by a member of the community for contributing to recycling and waste reduction. The nominations are presented to the Environmental Sustainability Board and the Board narrows down the nominees based on information provided by staff and their knowledge of local businesses.

The County then conducts a public survey in which the community selects the top recycler.