Roscoe Earns IL Governor’s Sustainability Award
(l/r) Mark R. Ryan, executive director of the Prairie Research Institute; Jim Buik, president, The Roscoe Co.; Albert Quintana, maintenance supervisor; Miriam Avila, production team leader; Israel Cartagena, service & operations team leader; and Kevin O'Brien, director of the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center.
Roscoe Co., a Chicago-based independent industrial textile service company, recently was honored among 25 public and private organizations with an Illinois Governor’s Sustainability Award, according to a news release.
The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), a division of the Prairie Research Institute, administers the program. Based at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the institute provides cutting-edge research and solutions to allow citizens and decision-makers to make choices that can help ensure sustainable economic development, the release said.
In an e-mail to Textile Services Weekly, Jim Buik, president of Roscoe, described several steps his company has taken in recent years to enhance its environmental performance. “Take Pride!” he said, echoing the company’s catchphrase, as he noted that Roscoe operates one of the most efficient laundries in the nation following a multimillion-dollar modernization project that yielded significant savings in water, natural gas and chemical consumption.
More recently, Roscoe adopted new techniques that reduced the volume of solid waste produced in cleaning textiles and saved 60,000 gallons of water containing the waste needed to isolate it, emerging with only 78 cubic yards of solids, reported Buik, who serves as vice chair of TRSA. The company also installed energy saving LED lighting throughout the facility and energy-efficient gas unit heaters. Plastic disposable bags gave way to reusable bags to transport textiles.
Roscoe, locally owned and operated since 1921, became Clean Green Certified in the program's inaugural year in 2012 and continues to qualify for that certification this year.
Other winners in this 30th anniversary edition of the Sustainability Awards included Abbott Laboratories, the Field Museum in Chicago in Chicago and United Airlines. “This is not an easy thing to get,” said Kevin O’Brien, director of the ISTC, in the release issued on Nov. 1. “It takes a lot of work. There is a lot of screening and frankly there is a lot of competition for this award.”