2023 Making Waves Awards
Announcing our 2023 Making Waves Award winners!
Congratulations, Karen Zuckerman, Luke Haverhals, Elisabeth Reed, Preston Jackson, Bradley University Dining, Sous Chef Peoria, Karen Cotton, and Frank Blain.
Luke Haverhals
CEO and Founder of NFW
NFW (Natural Fiber Welding), Company Culture of Sustainability, Circular Economy, Plant-based Materials
Luke’s professional Mission is to collaborate with and empower material scientists, manufacturing workers and engineers, investors, change makers, creators, and brands around the world to create a truly circular and sustainable material economy from the ground up. His vision to develop materials from renewable natural nutrient inputs has become the foundation for NFW’s ecosystem
Elizabeth Reed
Illinois State University Sustainability and Campus-Wide Composting
The office of sustainability at ISU is making changes on campus to incorporate sustainability into the students’ lives. They have 3 locations for students and faculty to drop their food scraps and compostable materials to be turned into compost through Better Earth Logistics. They organize a pumpkin drive in the fall to stop more organic waste going to the landfill.
Preston Jackson
Art to communicate for the environment
Preston Jackson is one of America’ most respected artists and the quintessential artist of our time. He has been living and working in the Peoria area for decades. Jackson is an internationally celebrated sculptor, painter, guitarist, and teacher—a master of every medium he touches. Preston has focused his art on social and environmental issues. His life-sized Whale sculpture was built with welded stainless-steel tubing. The Whale sculpture is filled with plastic bottles. Ocean beached whales have been found with plastic in their stomachs.
The sculpture has traveled far and near to bring the urgent message of the plastic plight on the life and health of the oceans and on the life of the largest water mammal on earth, the whale. Preston’s epic paintings of the magnificent, endangered wolf, the coyote, the elephants…. call for us to protect their life and habitat.
Bradley University Dining
Sustainability and Community Collaborations
Bradley Dining Services / Aramark work together to continually develop and implement sustainable solutions. Through Green Thread, their environmental sustainability platform, they bring innovative and efficient solutions to life, such as: Reducing the use of small plastic wears with our skip the straw campaign, recycling fryer oil, promoting sustainability with the meals to go program in the residential dining halls. They plan for special events during Earth Day & Earth Week with a zero-waste event, and lots more.
Sous Chef Peoria
Sustainability, compost kiosk site, supporting local farmers, circularity in food management
Sous Chef Peoria is a specialty grocery store that features local farmers and vendors from the Greater Peoria Area. With a circularity perspective, nothing goes to waste here. The Sous Chef team also has an onsite kitchen preparing imaginative, healthy, and delicious meals to grab and go utilizing the grains proteins and produce they carry. Nothing is wasted and many of their to-go selections are packaged in compostable containers. Sous Chef also hosts the community composting kiosk for Better Earth Logistics in Peoria.
Karen Cotton
VP Communications & PR, Corix Group of Companies
Dedication to sustaining the Clean Water Celebration and collaborations for the environment
Karen is one of the people that is most integral to the Clean Water Celebration. She has been in the water industry for the past 16 years, as a senior level public relations and strategic communications professional. Her efforts have resulted in funding and grants that have made the Clean Water Celebration possible over the years and we are all very grateful. Karen says that “reaching our young customers is incredibly important because they are the ones who will help change the world, who will help protect the environment.”
Frank Blain
Pro Video Productions
Dedication to sustaining the environment
Frank Blain has a long history of supporting the Clean Water Celebration. He has worked for the Peoria Civic Center for almost every CWC since our earliest days. But Frank’s most important contributions happened in the past three years during the pandemic. We would not have had a virtual event without Frank’s tireless efforts. He helped to direct, film and edit more than 50 mini-documentaries - Clean Water Champions, that not only provided a great on-line resource for teachers during the pandemic, but these videos are all there for students and teachers to use moving forward.