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Bluegrass goes green

Blue is the new green! The Southern Nevada Bluegrass Music Society has launched its inaugural event, Viva Las VeGrass The Green Initiative Bluegrass Festival. This multiday festival is scheduled for Oct. 13-15, 2017, at Craig Ranch Regional Park in North Las Vegas and features nonstop music performed by 20 bluegrass groups. Attendees can learn about sustainability, recycling, renewable energy and conservation. The festival also hosts 50 commercial and nonprofit vendors specializing in sustainability and 100 artisans and craftspeople with recycled art and crafts and organic products.

Visit www.vivalasvegrass.org for more information.

Business by the book

Former scrap metal recycler and business owner Judy Ferraro has written a book titled On Sales, Leadership & Other Helpful Business Stuff that is available in print and Kindle formats from Amazon.com.

Ferraro spent nearly two decades in the scrap industry as the owner of a scrap company and working for larger firms. She subsequently has contributed columns to Scrap magazine and now operates the Chicago-area consulting firm Judy Ferraro & Associates Inc.

As a consultant, Ferraro says she regularly provides employee development services, speaks at conferences and facilitates panel discussions for a variety of companies in the retail, insurance, manufacturing, recycling, transportation, telecommunication, health care and sports industries. In October 2016, she led a one-hour workshop addressing sales and marketing training and supply development at the Paper & Plastics Recycling Conference in Chicago.

Reducing with RightCyle

As a life sciences company, Cell Signaling Technology (CST) uses about 200,000 pairs of gloves each year. Thanks to a new program, those gloves no longer go into landfills. Through RightCycle by Kimberly-Clark Professional, the first large-scale recycling program for nonhazardous lab, cleanroom and industrial material, CST began recycling its old gloves in 2014.

CST has recycled more than 4,400 pounds of gloves in three years. Used lab gloves are sent to domestic recyclers, where they are turned into raw materials that are used to make a wide array of products, including flowerpots and lawn furniture. The RightCycle Program has helped CST reduce the costs of trash removal and move closer toward its goal of zero waste to landfill.

“We created The RightCycle Program because we recognized that our pharmaceutical and university customers wanted to reduce landfill waste, and single-use gloves made up a significant portion of that waste,” says Randy Kates, director of the Kimberly-Clark Professional Global Scientific Business.

Do you have a unique recycling-focused story that you would like to share? Please send a press release to Megan Workman at mworkman@gie.net.