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Staff Feature – Connie Choy

August 31, 2020

Partners in Project Green’s Material Exchange program facilitates the exchange of material between businesses and non-profit organizations to divert waste from landfill, support local communities, and move towards a circular economy. Recently, one of our non-profit partners that occasionally receives donations from the Material Exchange program contacted Connie Choy, Waste Coordinator for Partners in Project Green after hearing of a request from a large business who was faced with over 50 skids of crayons and activity books that were brand new but had nowhere to go.

Given the large volume of material to be moved and a short window of time, Connie quickly contacted key stakeholders across the Greater Toronto Area to gauge their interest in receiving these items. Groups that were contacted included public and Catholic school boards, private schools, YMCA childcare centres and summer day camps, home childcare agencies, non-profit organizations, and regional family and children’s services departments. Assisting in this effort was the large business who was willing to deliver the requested volumes to multiple locations as needed at no cost.

In the end, Connie’s tireless efforts of external facilitation and coordination with variety of stakeholder locations resulted in the diversion over 25,000 kg of crayons, activity books, and other educational materials from the landfill! These items were distributed in Toronto, Markham, Richmond Hill, Whitby, Milton, and Schomberg and tens of thousands of children and students will benefit from these materials in their hands. Please see below for some key numbers from this exchange:

  • 44 skids of crayons and 6 skids of activity books were distributed
  • Over 2.6 million crayons and over 280,000 activity books will be reaching children and students in the Greater Toronto Area

16 locations received varying volumes of materials that will be distributed on to students or through community programs benefiting families.

Connie Choy has been the Waste Coordinator for the Waste Management program within Partners in Project Green since 2019. She works in tandem with Program Manager for both the Waste Management and Water Stewardship programs, Eric Meliton. As of August 2020, Connie’s coordination of Partners in Project Green’s Material Exchange program has diverted a total of over 29,000 kg of waste from landfill – equivalent to more than four African elephants! We would like to thank Connie for all of her hard work!