Rene Kormos has been involved in environmental initiatives for as long as she can remember. The investment advisor with TD Waterhouse Private Investment Advice in Vancouver uses every opportunity to share her personal passion with her co-workers and with her clients.

“Recycling is something that I have been involved with on a personal level for years,” says Kormos. “My friends call me the Recycling Queen. It is something that everybody around me knows I am passionate about and love to do.”

Throughout Kormos’s 13 years as an investment advisor, she has found ways to demonstrate her commitment to the environment while running a growing book of business.

She manages $60 million in assets for slightly more than 160 client households, most headed by working professionals or retirees. Kormos holds the personal financial planning, fellow of the Canadian Securities Institute and Canadian investment manager designations.

Over the years, Kormos has moved from cold-calling for new clients to building her business strictly through referrals. Today, Kormos uses client appreciation events featuring guest speakers from TD’s economics department to generate referrals; she invites clients and urges them to bring friends. Further, she promotes these events with the help of the North Vancouver Chamber of Commerce, whose members often attend, thus generating more prospects. Many of these prospects, Kormos says, are business directors, chief financial officers and lawyers of corporations.

“Over the past five years,” she says, “most of my new clients have come from referrals from existing clients.”

Kormos is also known for her community involvement. As soon as the announcement was made seven years ago that Vancouver would host the 2010 Winter Olympics, Kormos knew she wanted to get involved. A native of Saskatchewan, Kormos offered to help out in the Saskatchewan Pavilion, where she has greeted and guided visitors from around the world.

“The whole Olympic experience has been fantastic,” she says. “And everywhere you look, people are enjoying themselves.”

Kormos was able to share her Olympic experience with many of her clients who had dropped by the pavilion.

At work, Kormos is an active participant in the TD Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, a project of the TD Friends of the Environment Foundation. Participants in the program across the country pick up garbage along their local beaches and waterfront areas.

“You can walk along the shore and it looks clean until you get down underneath the surface,” Kormos says. “There is so much garbage out there that people assume will decompose, but it doesn’t. It makes you realize how much education really is needed.”

Educating others on the benefits of recycling and composting is a passion for Kormos. When Cadillac Fairview Corp., the manager of the office building she works in, put out a request for tenants to join its “Green at Work” task force, Kormos jumped at the opportunity to get involved.

The program explores ways to reduce energy consumption and waste while increasing environmental awareness and education in its office buildings throughout Canada. Kormos is among 25 volunteers in the Vancouver area who are promoting awareness within their own office environments.

“Some people just aren’t interested in recycling at all,” she says, “while some people are interested but just don’t want to spend the extra time needed to find out more. This program is the perfect outlet for me to use what I have learned over the years and begin to educate more people on the importance of recycling.”

Part of Kormos’s participation involves compiling information — such as what materials can and cannot be recycled, and the impact of energy consumption — that can be shared with other committee members and presented to staff in branch meetings.

In another project, Kormos took it upon herself to produce and post pictures above the recycling containers in her office, showing what goes into each bin.

“Many people don’t have time to stop and read a list,” she says. “A picture makes it easier to identify what is recyclable.”

As part of the Green at Work committee, Kormos educates her co-workers by sending out weekly email tips: “Your used paper towels are compostable”; “Remember to turn off your computer monitor.”

Kormos’s recycling efforts go far beyond the boardroom. At home, for instance, Kormos and her husband are careful about what is placed in the garbage and what goes in the blue bin, and they place only one small grocery bag of garbage on the curb for pickup each week.

@page_break@“You can cut your garbage [volume] down immensely, even just by paying attention to the packaging of products that you buy,” she says, “and by knowing what can be put in the compost.”

Kormos had participated for years in a community garden — a project in which participants grow vegetables on designated plots and donate the proceeds to charities such as food banks.

Now, Kormos has her own natural garden at home. She uses no pesticides or herbicides and avoids even “green” lawn fertilizers in favour of natural compost.

“It is an environment-friendly, as well as a people-friendly style of gardening,” she says. “Your garden isn’t just your own little plot; you have to protect the wider environment around it.” IE