The Recycling Council of Alberta has never deemed a reporter to be worthy of one of its annual awards until this year, when St. Albert Gazette reporter Kevin Ma became the first member of the media to receive an Rs of Excellence Award.
“It’s a category we always wanted to recognize but we never felt anyone deserved it,” said executive director Christina Seidel.
The awards date back to 1998.
The council has been aware of Ma’s work for some time and this year a member within the organization chose to nominate him for an award, Seidel said. What put him over the top was his effort to subject his own family to a household waste audit for the sake of research and a story.
Larger city papers rarely cover waste issues to the depth that Ma does and waste issues in the Capital region have benefited from his attention to detail, she said.
Many waste management professionals agree that, over the years, Ma has interviewed them more than all other reporters combined, she said.
Ma is no stranger to awards. While still an intern at the Gazette in 2005, he produced an in-depth series on the health of the Sturgeon River that garnered the top prize for environmental writing from the Suburban Newspapers of America. Since he became a full-time staff member in 2006, his efforts to delve into complex waste issues and explain them in terms that people can understand have continued to be recognized by newspaper associations and conservation groups.
Seidel said that even though recycling has been around for a long time and people are used to doing it in their homes, it’s important for the media to keep reporting on recycling issues because Alberta still lags behind the rest of the country in diversion rates, mainly due to the amount of construction waste that winds up in the landfill.
She credited Ma for continuing to go after the waste story with “his unique focused and objective style.”
“Those in the waste management industry appreciate his ongoing interest in this topic,” she said.
The council handed out its awards at a gala at Edmonton’s Westin last week. The recipients were as follows:
• Leadership in C&D Recycling Award: Alberta Waste and Recycling Limited
• Community-Based Social Marketing Award: Green Calgary – Healthy Homes Calgary
• Government Leadership Award: Government of Alberta – Greening Government Strategy
• Media Award: Kevin Ma, St. Albert Gazette
• Corporate Leadership Award: London Drugs
• Lifetime Achievement Award: Larry George
A listing of the awards and their summaries can be found at: http://www.recycle.ab.ca/recent-winners.
