FREDERICTON, NB -- January 29, 2008 -- Dana's Collision Center/CSN in Fredericton NB has been recognized with the first Mayor's Environmental Award for converting to a more environment-friendly, waterborne refinishing system.

Mayor Brad Woodside presented the inaugural award to Dana Alexander of Dana's Collision Center during Monday night's regular city council meeting.

The shop was recognized during a meeting of Fredericton’s city council recently for its numerous environmental efforts, including a conversion to the waterborne compliant Sikkens Autowave refinishing system.  

"The cutting edge technology that Dana's Collision is using will help reduce the amount of harmful chemicals being emitted into the environment, and will help to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions in the community. If more businesses were as diligent as this, we would certainly reach our Kyoto reduction targets," said Mayor Brad Woodside as he presented the inaugural award to Dana Alexander. "You and your whole team deserve our congratulations and this award."

This is the first time the Mayor’s Environmental Award has been presented. Although special attention was drawn to the environmentally friendly waterborne coatings systems used at Dana’s Collision Center, the facility’s environmental efforts don’t end there.

“We recycling everything,” says Dana. “Our ultimate goal is to go completely paperless. All of our faxes now come in as e-mails, and everything that comes in is scanned into our management system. About 80 per cent of our parts orders are through e-mail. We've achieved a nearly 50 per cent reduction in paper to date. This is an ongoing process with a target date of 2009.”

Dana’s Collision Center is also currently involved in converting to natural gas heating to replace the current propane system, and conversion to a new T8 energy efficient lighting system is also underway.

“We’re also looking at a computerized energy management system,” says Dana. “It will manage the temperature and lights, and automatically turn them down or off when not in use.”

For more information on Dana’s Collision Center, please visit danascollision.com.