A Productive Year in the Books

As hard as it may be to believe, 2014 is about to come to an end and many businesses are already focusing on their 2015 initiatives. December tends to spark a bit of reflection about the past year’s accomplishments as we formulate goals or New Year resolutions for the next year, both in business and in our personal lives. This year as I reflect back on what TRC accomplished, I feel extremely proud. I have been with the organization for two years now, watching it grow, and 2014 was a pretty stellar year if I do say so myself.

We started the year with hiring Ryan Kiscaden as the new Director of National Accounts to expand TRC’s network of wholesale collection sites and increase collections at existing sites. Then in September we added another employee, Alex Monié, as the Operations and Marketing Assistant. The addition of two full-time employees helped TRC visit nearly 1,200 program collection sites throughout the nation! We were also able to call more than 400 collection sites. In 2015 we will continue these collection site touches to increase engagement and participation in the program.

This past year was also a big year in mail for us. Our home office staff of four mailed more than 10,000 pieces of mail, including postcards to collection sites, program posters, the product stewardship calendar we helped develop, and more. I’d say we probably went through at least ten of those envelope moistener sticks, no joke. We also used third parties to mail an additional 28,000 pieces of other collateral, including branded mouse pads and posters to HVAC contractors nationwide.

We had a lot of marketing initiatives and programs going on this year. This included our Big Man on Planet competition (which recovered more than 55K thermostats!), creating branded merchandise displays to increase visibility of our TRC bins at HVAC wholesalers nationwide, and limited-time promotions in various states for chances to win gift cards and TVs. It was a good year to recycle mercury thermostats. So much so, that our collections are up almost 11% over last year!

But alright, I’ll stop there even though I could keep going. The last thought to end this productive year on is this: we couldn’t have had such a successful year without the cooperation and dedication of all our supporters. This includes our collection sites, those who are doing the actual recycling, the processors at our facility who physically remove the mercury from these devices, our TRC members, and new faces we met along the way this year. THANK YOU. And here’s to a successful 2015 to come!