Dan DeMagistris, purchasing coordinator of the University of Rochester’s School of Medicine and Dentistry (URMC), has been awarded Kimberly-Clark Corporation’s “Greenovation Award” in honor of his role in leading the university’s PPE recycling program, RightCycle. DeMagistris has led this program since August of 2019 which has since diverted over 12,500 pounds of PPE from the city’s landfill in the last 5 years.
Through RightCycle, URMC’s Division of Comparative Medicine has partnered with Kimberly-Clark Corporation to collect and recycle medical equipment–largely consisting of exam gloves–to be turned into Adirondack chairs, many of which are annually raffled off to the university’s research staff. The Greenovation Award specifically recognizes the University as the largest recycler of exam gloves in New York State by Kimberly-Clark, which was presented to DeMagistris on May 16.
As part of the award ceremony, department members created “Chelsea’s Tree” in which they added their handprints with brightly colored paint (pictured above). Chelsea’s Tree honors Chelsea Santucci (1988-2014), who was a Kimblery-Clark sales representative. As Chelsea worked to educate and motivate customers to recycle their PPE, her passion for the environment fueled the success of the RightCycle program. You can see pictures of the creation of Chelsea’s Tree as well as the rest of the ceremony on the UR Sustainable Facebook page.
“I could not be prouder of our U of R Sustainability Stakeholders and our recycling champion, Dan DeMagistris, promoting a healthy planet beginning in our very own workplace and backyard,” shares Jeff Wyatt DVM, MPH, Professor of Comparative Medicine and Professor of Environmental Medicine. By diverting waste into sustainable chairs instead of the landfill, DeMagistris and his hard work have helped his department go green and made the Rochester community ever better.
Written by Carole Wilay (‘25)
Pictured Top: Dan DeMagistris receiving the RightCycle Greenovation award from Tony Mirando of Kimberly-Clark