Richmond, VA -- (SBWire) -- 05/17/2012 --K2 Trophies and Awards is doing its part to rid the world of disposable water bottles by offering a free engraved reusable water bottle to anyone who uses a promo code available to anyone who "likes" K2Awards on Facebook. This promotion is just the latest effort by the company to go green.

The environmental focus started in the spring of 2005, when a customer called Charlie Moss, president of the online trophy company, K2Awards.com and stated bluntly that the company "had to get rid of those packing peanuts". As most people are aware, those "packing peanuts" are polystyrene foam pieces used in packaging to prevent damage to products during shipment. As a leading online trophy retailer, K2Awards used a lot of those peanuts to ensure that the trophies arrived undamaged at their destination.

Despite this dependence on the polystyrene packaging, Moss agreed with the customer and immediately banned the packing peanuts from any K2Awards packaging. Moss says, "When I told the production employees of the new policy, the production manager gave me about 10 very valid reasons why we could not do it. I patiently listened to the reasoned argument and politely repeated the new policy of no packing peanuts." Moss continues, "As it turns out, working with our packaging suppliers, within a few hours, we were able to replace the peanuts with alternatives at less cost to the company. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand that saving money while making our customers happier was a good idea."

Since that time, K2Awards had instituted many new environmental policies with similar results, Reusing boxes is quicker and saves money. Relying on post-consumer packaging materials like newspaper is really cheap and abundant. Reducing the amount of volume associated with packaging materials saves on shipping costs, and the list goes on and on.

Still, Moss says there continue to be challenges. "We have worked with our suppliers to get on board without policies, but it is often a struggle. While we control the packaging of products that are exclusive to K2Awards, we cannot always dictate packaging specifications, but we do try to influence the final packaging." Despite these efforts Moss concedes that there is more work to be done some for the packaging of products that K2Awards from its supplies is "downright embarrassing."

The company remains confident that as a leading online trophy company that it will be able to continue to push the awards industry in a greener direction.

About K2 Trophies and Awards
The company, established in 2002, K2 Trophies and Awards has become a leading on-line supplier of trophies, plaques, medals and awards throughout the United States.