. –The winners of the 2011 Environmental Initiative Awards were
announced last week by Environmental Initiative. The Environmental Initiative Awards annually
recognize innovative projects that have harnessed the power of partnership to achieve extraordinary
environmental outcomes. Winners were announced on Thursday, May 26, during the Environmental
Initiative Awards dinner at the Nicollet Island Pavilion.
Forty-nine award nominations were submitted by partnerships from across Minnesota. A team of
independent judges selected three finalists, including one winner, in each of the five award
categories: Energy and Climate Protection, Environmental Education, Green Business and
Environmental Management, Natural Resource Protection and Restoration and Sustainable
Communities.
In addition, almost five hundred community members voted online to select one of the fifteen
finalists as the 2011 Partnership of the Year. The online vote was conducted in partnership with
InCommons, a new collaborative community in Minnesota that connects people on- and off-line,
allowing them to find and share credible tools, knowledge and resources for solving community
problems.
The winners are:
Many of Minnesota’s most innovative environmental projects have succeeded through
collaboration, often involving partners from business, nonprofit, and government sectors. The
Environmental Initiative Awards were established in 1994 to honor these projects and their many
partners, to inspire other organizations to create similar successful projects, and to encourage
innovative collaborative approaches to environmental problem solving. For more information on
this year’s finalists and winners, as well as descriptions of all nominated projects, visit
