TOPEKA – The Kansas Department of Health and Environment have announced the 2011 Pollution Prevention (P2) Award recipients during an awards luncheon at the Kansas Environmental Conference.

John Mitchell, KDHE’s Division of Environment, presented award plaques to two Hutchinson area businesses, Eaton Corporation-Hutchinson Division, and Collins Bus Corporation of Hutchinson.

The Kansas Pollution Prevention Program promotes pollution prevention as an environmental ethic to achieve improvements in public health and environmental quality.

Eaton Corporation, an internal supplier of machined components for PVE and medium duty piston pumps and gear pumps, is reducing water through reverse osmosis, allowing for a “greener” treatment of the water used in its boilers and cooling towers. The company also changed its lighting from the old 400W high-pressure sodium lights to T5 and T8 energy efficient lights.

Collins Bus Corporation, a manufacturer of Type-A buses, was awarded for its efforts in water conservation and solid waste. Collins Bus reduced its reservoir change-outs to save more than 420,000 gallons of water annually, and it implemented a reusable shipping frame for its bus windows, replacing the wooden shipping frames that had to be disposed.

More than 400 people representing various industries and government agencies attended this week’s conference.