2024 Award Winners

Business of the Year Award

Danfoss - Ames

For over fifty-three years, Danfoss - Ames has served as an industrial leader in sustainable manufacturing throughout the world, the nation, the State of Iowa and the Ames community. 

They have insisted that sustainable, long term, end-of-life, handling solutions were found. They continuously seek and develop replicable technology and infrastructure to facilitate waste reduction and recycling and continuously enhance these processes to ensure maximum efficiency.

As a certified Gold member of the Ames Smart Business Challenge and as a requirement of certification, Danfoss goes above and beyond in several sustainable areas including:

• Water Capture / Conservation

• Energy Conservation

• Waste Reduction & Recycling

• Customer Collaboration

• Onsite Recycling

• Used Oil Recycling

• Enhanced OCC Collection

Project of the Year Award

City of Iowa City Public Works and Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity's Ped Mall Brick Reuse Project.

In the summers of 2023 and 2024, City of Iowa City Public Works worked with the Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity to organize volunteers to palletize bricks that had been removed from the downtown pedestrian mall. 

Over the last decade, the City of Iowa City has removed bricks from the downtown pedestrian mall in order for the ped mall to be resurfaced. The bricks were stockpiled at a City drop-yard with the intent to find a use for at least some of them. Over time, members of the public saw the brick stockpile and called City Hall to see if they could have access to them. 

This led to the Resource Management (RM) Division being tasked with finding a way to safely and efficiently move the bricks into the hands of residents who could use them. RM talked with staff at the Habitat ReStore and devised a plan to palletize the bricks with volunteer labor and then transport them to ReStore for sale to the public. 

In the end, over 100 pallets of bricks were stacked for reuse and then sold to the general public through the Habitat ReStore. Approximately 60 volunteers and staff worked about 160 hours over 13 events to palletize an estimated 63.6 tons of bricks.

Habitat ReStore marketed and sold the bricks for $0.50 each; the total revenue for Habitat ReStore is estimated at $10,600. 

Lifetime Commitment Award

Alan Schumacher

After 43 years of working in printing, sustainability, and recycling industries across the great state of Iowa, Alan Schumacher retired in June 2024.

He most recently worked at Quincy Recycle, but is also very proud of his time spent at both City Carton and Can Shed over his years of service to this industry.

Alan has been a long-time member and supporter of the Iowa Recycling Association (IRA), serving on the IRA's Board of Directors for several years up until 2022. He served as the IRA's Board President from 2018 to 2021 and guided us through a few difficult pandemic years.

Alan has always stayed very involved and supported our IRA legislative events, member recruitment, and other educational and networking opportunities. IRA has greatly appreciated Alan's hard work and dedication to the IRA and to the waste and recycling industry for the last four decades.