KENNETT SQUARE – Exelon Generation has been recognized by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf with the 2015 Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence. Exelon Generation’s Kennett Square Environmental Council Stewardship and Outreach program was one of only 15 environmental projects from across Pennsylvania to receive the honor. Kennett Square is the headquarters for Exelon Generation, one of the nation’s leading competitive power generators.
Exelon’s Kennett Square Environmental Council organized several environmental stewardship efforts involving company employees, their families and the local community. These efforts promoted environmental stewardship, sustainability practices and habitat improvement through the planting of more than 800 plants, reducing building energy use by 21 percent, recycling 10,000 pounds of electronic material and creating 15 nesting structures for birds, which has contributed to a reduction of 79,662 pounds of equivalent carbon dioxide (eCO2) from the atmosphere.
Several of the efforts were in cooperation with Chester County organizations; construction of songbird nest boxes on the campus was supported by local Cub Scouts and the tree planting was in partnership with the Brandywine Conservancy. In the spring of 2014, a pollinator garden was planted as part of Exelon’s Earth Week and Take Your Children to Work Day activities, where employees and their children planted milkweeds to help propagate the monarch butterfly, an important pollinator for plant life. Following the planting, students participating in the Big Brothers and Big Sisters: Beyond School Walls program at Kennett Square released monarch butterflies into the environment.
“The members of the Council put in a great deal of time to support activities at Kennett Square that minimize the environmental impact of our operations here and help employees and communities do the same, which is in addition to their regular work,” said Vicky Will, vice president of Operations Support for Exelon Power and executive sponsor of the Kennett Square Environmental Council. “This recognition reflects the commitment of our employees and the company to the environment.”
Winners were selected by the Department of Environmental Protection and were honored by the Pennsylvania Environmental Council at a dinner on April 28 in Harrisburg.
For more information on the award visit www.dep.state.pa.us and click the “Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence” banner, or visit www.pecpa.org.
