Sustainability Award Winners 2020

Congratulations to all the individuals and organizations working to build sustainable communities. The award winners were honored at the 12th Annual Leadership in Sustainability Awards Presentation on September 17th, 2020.

Shoshana Wechsler

Shoshana Wechsler has held leadership roles for many years in Bay Area environmental organizations, including the Sunflower Alliance, the Contra Costa Clean Energy Alliance, 350 Bay Area, and 350 Contra Costa. Shoshana is also a member of the Contra Costa County Sustainability Commission and provides input to the Board of Supervisors on environmental and sustainability issues. Shoshana provides research and education, forms coalitions, and formulates and implements strategies to improve the long-term health and well-being of low-income residents and communities of color who experience the worst air and water pollution in the county. Shoshana is a founding member of Sunflower Alliance, a union of scientists, workers, professionals, and unofficial leaders in local towns and neighborhoods who work to build bridges between elected leaders and eco-activists. In 2013, when a crude oil rail terminal was proposed in a residential area near downtown Pittsburg, Shoshana worked closely with community organizations and leaders and engaged environmental organizations from all over the East Bay to successfully fight this threat to public health and safety.
From 2015 to 2018, Shoshana inspired and guided teams who advanced the clean energy programs offered by Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) for both climate protection and economic development. Ultimately, the county and multiple cities selected MCE as their CCA, which allowed residents to increase the renewable energy powering their homes and businesses. In 2020, Brentwood residents asked Shoshana to join a campaign to stop proposed oil-and-gas drilling dangerously near their homes. She assisted residents in accessing the growing body of scientific research on the harmful health effects of drilling close to sensitive sites like homes and schools and connected them to key Bay Area supporters. In her role on the CCC Sustainability Commission, Shoshana presented a proposal for a moratorium on fossil fuel extraction in the county until the General Plan is completed and it was adopted unanimously.

Urban Tilth

Urban Tilth, based in Richmond, hires and trains local residents to cultivate agriculture to help the community build a more sustainable, healthy, and just food system. Urban Tilth’s garden and farm programs serve primarily extremely low income communities of color and functional “food deserts.” Urban Tilth programs started in the schools and developed partnerships with government and key stakeholders, which led to the establishment of the Richmond Food Policy council. They train and employ young people as “home grown experts”; teach local residents about the relationships among food, health, poverty, and justice; and teach community members to grow, distribute, and cook tens of thousands of pounds of local produce each year. They plant and manage school gardens and farms, teach an accredited course in Urban Ecology and American Food while also managing an 8,000 square foot school farm, provide in-school and after-school programs in partnership with district teachers, and farm four acres of public land for their community-supported agriculture program in collaboration with Contra Costa County. During its first 10 years, Urban Tilth directly engaged over 19,000 community members in redesigning blighted public spaces, repairing urban soil and water, and collectively reimagining how our community should work.
Volunteers at Urban Tilth learn and serve through building, farm improvement and community clean-up projects such as planting orchards, building greenhouses, and beautifying miles of the community greenway. The Kaiser Foundation recently recognized Urban Tilth’s contribution to our community health, recommending programs like theirs to combat chronic and ongoing health issues that affect low income cities.

Ken Haworth – Aquamenities

Ken Haworth is the owner of Aquamenities in Concord, a leading bulk amenity fixture provider for hotels, offices, gyms, and amusement parks. Because of Ken’s efforts, these businesses have switched to bulk, refillable amenity bottles, saving countless packaging materials and partially used soap products from hitting our landfills and oceans. Just one converted hotel room saves 1,000 bottles and 5 gallons of product from being dumped. The fixtures are in hundreds of thousands of locations all over the world, and several large chains have converted to the system locally as well.
Ken is passionate about our water quality and safety. He is on the water board of the City of Lafayette and actively looks for ways to be more sustainable in our community. Ken donates his fixtures and soap products to Lavamae mobile showers for the homeless, local yacht harbors, and shelters for at risk teens. His fixtures are in Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley, and Los Angeles, giving the homeless something we take for granted. Ken is a generous employer who gives anyone a chance to succeed and learn and stands for social justice and the well-being of all.

Chloë De Smedt – Rising Star

Chloë De Smedt is a junior at Carondelet High School in Concord. She leads a sustainable lifestyle and encourages others to do so through projects in sustainability, including creating videos for her school that promote sustainability, managing her school’s environmental council’s social media pages, attending and speaking at environmental leadership conferences, and promoting sustainable events.
Chloe is an active member of Carondelet’s Green Team, a newly-founded environmental council, and was promoted to president this year. She has led projects such as building an on-campus garden, leading in-person composting training, planning Earth Week activities, and collaborating with local organizations for a sustainability expo. She is currently working on building vertical garden structures and living walls to display around Carondelet. She is a passionate individual and leads a lifestyle that follows the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and sets an example for those around her.

Manuel Alonso – Lifetime Achievement

Manuel Alonso was born in Spain and is an anthropologist and archaeologist interested in the protection of cultural and biological diversity. He has worked with environmental non-profit organizations in Europe, Central and South America, and the United States for more than 25 years. Manuel has been the executive director of EarthTeam since 2013 and oversaw the complete upgrading of its operational infrastructure, staffing and programs. He is a grant writing genius and won several major national grants, including a $1.3M National Science Foundation grant. He developed a relationship with AmeriCorps and retained, trained and inspired volunteers to grow with Earth Team while shifting their funding profile from almost exclusively grants to a more diversified revenue, which allowed Earth Team to not just survive, but thrive. He worked with Earth Team staff to lead a successful strategic pivot in the spring of 2020 from in-person to online program delivery, with virtually no loss of time or intern engagement.

Manuel founded the TUVA Foundation in Costa Rica, and acted as its executive director from 1990 to 2001. As a local nonprofit headquartered in the town of Puerto Jimenez, TUVA launched collaborative community conservation initiatives using their pioneering “working landscapes” approach to build a coalition of stakeholders, including local residents, landowners, government agencies, eco-tourism operators, illegal loggers, gold miners, indigenous groups, and a wide network of over 50 local, regional, and international organizations. In a highly conflictive area, which in 1989 had the highest deforestation rate in the world, Manuel led TUVA in ultimately saving over 5 million trees in a 20,000-acre buffer zone around Corcovado National Park.