County to Honor Parsippany Library for Reycling Efforts

The is among the individuals, businesses, organizations and municipalities being honored at the 24th annual Morris County’s Recycling Awards Dinner Friday night at the the Hanover Manor in East Hanover.

The theme of the Morris County Municipal Utilities Authority-sponsored event is "Recycling: It’s in the Cards." The evening is designed to acknowledge entities coming up with innovative ways to live up to the mantra of the green-inspired movement: reduce, reuse and recycle.

Parsippany's Recycling Code Enforcement Officer Greg Pavlic nominated the township's library for the honor.

"The library deserves recognition," Pavlic said. "In the course of my enforcement duties, I witnessed great things at the library—how they consistently separate items, provide bins to allow library visitors to handle paper responsibly and deal with bottles and cans."

Pavlic said he caught library staffers "doing the right thing" without their knowledge.

"I even watched maintenance employees making the effort to go through dumpsters and individual trash bags to make sure bottles and all went into the correct bins," he said.

He added that it's clear the library is conducting its recycling efforts "not because they were told to do it or gently intimidated to do it," but because its staff is really committed to taking positive action for the township's—and the planet's—long-term health.

"Sustainability is all about persuading people to take the initiative and the responsibility to do what's right," Pavlic said, adding that he was surprised and pleased to see his nomination was accepted. "The library has earned this award. It's setting a great example for the whole community."

Jane Beline, the library's executive director, told Patch that the institution's committment to recycling is genuine.

News that the library had won the award came as a surprise, Beline said.

"We didn't even know until we heard the news that Mr. Pavlic had been observing us," she said. "We feel very honored."

The library is getting notice for a number of its actions, including using recycled materials for children's crafts projects at its Mount Tabor and Lake Hiawatha branches; offering "green" tote bags through its Book Nook, which sells recycled books; lending out Nook electronic readers and pairing recycle bins with trash bins.

"We have three dumpsters outside and our custodial staff works hard to make sure they are never contaminated," she said, adding that the library has a staff recycling committee that meets quarterly to "come up with ways to make our library even greener."

"The award is recognition that we really are trying to make our town even a better place to live and work," Beline explained. "We really think that by abiding by the recycling initiatives that have been started that we help to improve the town."

Among the other entities to be recognized with awards Friday night are Stephanie Gorman of the Pequannock Health Department, Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals, Inc. of Montville and Sanae Miyawaki, a student at Morris Knolls High School in Denville.

Tickets for the dinner, which begins with a cash-bar cocktail hour at 6:30 p.m.,
are $39 per person. To obtain tickets or more information, call the Morris County Municipal Utilities Authority at 973-285-8395.