Magenta:
All right. Great. I'd like to thank everyone for coming. My name's Magenta
Widner. I'm the moderator for this Sustainable Operations peer learning series
which is webinar 23. We have some great topics today and some wonderful
presenters. We start the fiscal year '14 Sustainable Operations program
directions, which will be presented by Laura Polansky and we've got the E.P.A.s
Federal Green Challenge with our special guest Theresa Blaine. I think we can
probably get started with Laura here unless anyone has any other housekeeping
items they'd like to put in now. Not seeing anything that says a reminder that
everyone can click on the Raise Your Hand button if you have questions or at the
end of the individual presentation at the end of the presentation as a whole,
we'll have an opportunity for answering questions.
I guess we can get started with Laura. Next slide, please. Laura, I'm going to
hand over the slide control to you after this since you're going to be the speaker.
Laura:
Sure, so [inaudible. 00:01:22] This is the webinar outlining. As Magenta just
mentioned, we're going to start with a description of SF14 region station area
Sustainable Operations program direction, then move into an excellent
presentations by one of the key partners at the E.P.A.
This presentation will be about the Federal Green Challenge, the overview of
benefits and Forest Service participating. Next slide, please. Great, so today I'll
actually be presenting solo Michelle Parker who would have joined me for this
presentation, if it had happened when we were shut down, was not able to make
it today. She was scheduled for annual meet so I will be presenting on her behalf
but know that this document which is now translated into presentation came
from a brainstorming session that Michelle, myself and Katie Newcomb, who is
the Region 6 Sustainable Operations coordinator, is currently on maternity leave
which is why she isn't with us today but it was really a three part effort coming
up with what you're about to see. Next slide please.
Just slipping back on objectives. The idea for creating this Sustainable
Operations program direction which you'll soon see is quite different than your
standard program and budget advice that we see in the Forest Service. It really
comes down to these objectives. We wanted to provide an example of how
R.S.A.s can integrate into annual program direction and we wanted to increase
system literacy in the R.S.A. and assisting us to peering the national program
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direction as well as Sus Ops priorities this year. Moreover, we wanted a thing
that was applicable to climate and green teams, there's different names and also
leadership team planning.
We also wanted [inaudible 00:03:34] climate change unit coordinators,
particularly for the element three piece. Just to take a pause for those who may
not know the Forest Service approach is climate change to a 10 element
structure. Element one for instance is education. Element two is do you have a
unit coordinator, someone responsible for integrating climate change program
policies? Element three is have you integrated climate change or the adaptation
piece and the mitigation piece into your program guidance. if you go all the way
to element 10, that particularly last element is all about sustainable operations.
Today, here, we're making this connection, this bridge to element three as
suggesting a way that a unit might go about integrating at least this Sus Ops
piece into program guidance.
Finally the fourth item is to include both what we're calling core and this is going
to be obvious in a second and then optional sustainable operations effort so that
there's a piece that is consistent, than a piece that is location specific, just to take
advantage of the different strengths throughout the organization most likely.
Before we dive into the details, I thought it was worth recognizing that what
we're trying to do here is put together a three-part reporting system and where
we're operating today is where these circles intersect. We have had and will
continue to have of course our performance accountability measures and we will
discuss those in just a sec so that you're aware of what they currently are
because they actually have shifted slightly.
Then we have our core or our national actions so these are the things that would
envision have in near formally across the operation. Then there's the optional
actions that are the pick and choose, the choose your own inventor type thing
where we would have a region look at their available resources, the capacity,
their strength and tear off of this subset of optional actions. Then, together this
would compose what you're particular location is trying to aim for and the kind
of things you might integrate into your local P.B.A. Slide, please.
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I mentioned that we could be going over the performance accountability system
and task measure. I'm sure most on the line know this, but [PASIS 00:06:20] is
our official system of record. There are three things that we put in this system on
an annual basis. One are the B.T.U.s of energy consumed per gross square foot,
second is miles driven by Forest Service passenger carrying vehicles and the third
is percent of eligible faculties that need guiding principles. You see here where
the accomplishment code is and how the data is reported. For instance, you see
that the first one is actually collected through our annual greenhouse gas and
energy report data call which is ongoing right now. The second piece is
something that can be extracted out of the free automotive statistical tool or
STATS report. The different things that are compiled in different ways.
The idea is for our phase to set up by 14 goals for each one of the listed
performance measures because each one of these has an aggregate goal, a
national goal but an R.S.A. might want to think, "Okay. Are we going to be
operating in step with a national goal?" For instance, that was the first one that
would be we and then throughout my region, Region 5 is going to reduce by
three percent from FY2012 or are we going to come up with a different goal that
is more realistic? Next slide, please.
Okay. How do we take these past measures to the next level? What we want to
do this fiscal year is work through the Sustainable Operations Network, through
the effort that's described in the table and the subsequent slides. Performance
measures should be summarized annually in a report to the regional forest
station director. This is a little bit different than in the past. What we're
envisioning is a conversation here, see what I mean? Report annually? Yes, of
course. [Inaudible 00:08:33] formal system. In this case, it's really pulling the
information together and having that conversation with leadership so that
they're aware of how we're doing within the more nuanced things that I'm going
to talk about in just a sec. The idea is that these actions are going to assist the
agency with a capacity and understanding and also some stability in our Sus Ops
efforts as well as to increase the accuracy and transparency of our data in order
to stay true to some our regional foundational objectives of Sus Ops.
It should say that as we're talking today, one of the things to keep in mind is that
the single operations is operating in a different structure now. Those who have
been around for a few years, they remember what was called the Western
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Collective, which then became The Collective, which is now the Nationwide
Sample Operations Collective and it is essentially replaced the national program,
so there isn't any collective in a national program anymore. These things are one
and the same with field representation, with Washington office representation
on our board and that's one of the things about introducing this new way of
having a conversation or thinking about developing program budget advice as we
think about consistency and working at all levels as part of our new operating
structure under the nationwide collective.
What are we trying to do here? These efforts are going to focus on what we call
our Four I's. The first one is incorporate, incorporate and maintain long term
programs, practices, tools and policies that integrate environmental footprint
principles throughout the organization by removing barriers and promoting use
of appropriate technologies. Next one is institute, that's instituting a culture that
emphasizes education, in other works, positive action, recognizes achievements
that reduce our environmental footprint in long lasting ways. The third is
integrate. We want to integrate sustainable consumption practices and activities
in our daily decisions, habits, planning and operations. The fourth is to increase,
that's increase capacity and capacities, to implement Sus Opss at all levels of the
organization. Again, incorporate, institute, integrate and increase. Next slide,
please.
Now, we're going to dive into some of the details here and while I recognize,
depending on how you have your screen scaled, this may be difficult to see,
these materials will be posted online after the fact. Individuals participating
today will get a link to the actual PDF file so you can look at this a little bit more
clearly.
Here's an example of the SF14 core Sus Ops effort. Again, core efforts as
described in the text box on the bottom of the slide, are designed to pair to
national priorities and core items at its top priority for implementation, so things
like utility bill cleanup or to implement a sustainable operations microgrant
program or if you build skills in order to be compliant with the climate change
performance scorecard element 10 action item.
What you see here is a description of the effort and then a performance
measure. The performance measure is something that you at the local level
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would say, "Okay, what can you reasonably do? Are we going to say, 'Complete
utilities bill clean up at 100% of unit,' or are we going to set a goal for 50% this
year?" You see that some of the pieces aren't filled in so you might find
microgrants at several units with a total investment at $25,000 or maybe
$100,000. It's going to obviously vary depending on where you are but this core
set of grants, and there's a few more slides about this, are set up in a way that
you can tailor them based on your local realities. Next slide, please.
Again, some more core Sus Ops efforts supporting national power IT talent
implementation. Phase one of national Power IT Down, it was originally going to
launch in October, is now going to launch in December. December sixth through
ninth is the first weekend of national Power IT Down and national
communications will be coming out about this. It's another effort that we seem
to have consistently happening across the agency.
Another one would be forest and lab green team development and support and
then education and engagement. We give some examples of events that one
might do so the idea is yes, we want to organize some events to promote
behavior change and also learning about sustainable operations but you might go
in here and you might say, "Well, yes, I'd really like to do this Sus Ops orientation
for new and seasonal and ... but maybe it's not possible to participate in all Sus
Ops period webinars because I have a field based job half the year and it's just
not something I'm able to access." The idea again is to pick and chose but to
have some over arching element of consistency. Next slide, please.
These are the final set of core efforts. Next one is Sus Ops communications.
There are a lot of things that are rolling out of the collective communication
team. These are the Get Your Green On tips, G.Y.G.O. weekly tips? The Sus Ops
collective monthly e-newsletter, the green tip monthly poster, the one pager,
these are all the things that we really hope don't end with you. We hope that
they are leveraged and shared, maybe reiterated both in your offices, et cetera.
Then, the next one is to have Sus Ops collective leadership and staff report.
Under this new nationwide structure, the idea is to have consistent
representation on both the nationwide board and at the board staff level. We're
currently flushing out both the board and board staff level in each one of the
I.S.A.s. A part of this is not just having someone at the table but having an
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ongoing conversation between the board member who's likely operating at the
deputy regional forester level, for instance and the board staff member who's
more of a program manager. Next slide, please.
Okay. Now, we're shifting from core to the optional Sus Ops efforts. Our fees are
encouraged to select a subset of these for implementation and maybe even
develop ones that are not listed that meet location specific Sus Ops schools. The
guidance that we have provided is to adopt a minimum of two optional actions
and document which actions they are when you're putting together your
program and budget advance. R.S.A.s are asked to list the completion status of
each one of the selected items at each forester lab. We have some type of
tracking, not just what's happening at a regional scale but really how are we
doing at the field level. Next slide, please.
This is even harder to see, I'm realizing because of the color of the table but this
table is intended to be used as a template. What you can see here is for
instance, you might chose to do perceived sustainable operation partnership.
We're going to be hearing about a great opportunity today through the E.P.A.
Federal Green Challenge. Maybe you want to utilize the net zero guides that
were developed by the net zero team last year. Those were in energy, water and
waste and there's one forthcoming in fleet. Maybe you want to conduct a unit
level greenhouse gas inventory. The Sus Ops collective has a greenhouse gas
tracking team that's now called the Track To Zero team but we piloted the G.S.A.
carbon footprint tool at three locations, two districts, one lab last year. Maybe
you want to pick up the momentum, you want to try doing the greenhouse gas
inventory all the way at your site to daylight your various sources of emissions
and figure out what your mitigation plan might be. Next slide, please.
We're conducting energy and water audits so this is something that many
facilities, especially if you're in E.I.S.A. and that stands for Energy Independence
and Security Act. If you're an E.I.S.A. covered facility, you have to do anyway but
maybe this is something that you really want to understand, where you can get
the biggest bang for your buck essentially in terms of energy conservation
measures and water conservation measures and then using the results from your
audits.
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Maybe for climate change reporting this year, you're going to make a
commitment to using Leadership in Sustainable Operations or L.I.S.O., which is
off our report instead of using the narrative form or appendix G version of Net
10. Again, options to consider. Next slide, please.
Finally, for the final set of options, we can think about using L.I.S.O. for the other
service it provides so the first thing it can do is what we talked about before. It
can serve as a means for documenting your progress towards the subset of
sustaining operations actions. It's also a housing spot for sustainability stories.
Maybe you would submit one or more L.I.S.O. sustainability stories based on
accomplishments at one or more units throughout your region or station. Then
the final is education and engagement, so you can organize an America Recycles
Day competition. In fact, America Recycles Day is actually coming up this Friday.
Green Office Week. Participate in National Bike Month. Think about integrating
green meeting principles in whether it's a regional forest or honor awards
ceremony or a local award ceremony. Think about making that front and center.
Maybe you get the point by now. The idea is to consider this suite of options.
Pick two. Document that you're going to accomplish those two and then think
about what your performance measure is going to be. How are you going to
book back at the end of the year and say, "Yeah, we've done this." There's
throughout this, there's suggested performance measures. You don't have to
take those. If something else works better for you, please take it. We thought it
would be better to have a template to work off of as we're suggesting this new
means of going about organizing on sustainable operations and the direction and
guidance we get to our forest and our lab. Next slide, please.
With that, I'm happy to take any questions. Again, Michele Parker was a big part
of this. She couldn't be with us today. I should mention, in addition to posting
this presentation, we will also post the actual Word document with these
different tables of core and optional actions that you have access to the original
document if you chose to use that. I'm happy to take any questions, unless
Magenta, you want to save them until the end.
Magenta:
Now, if anybody has any question, this is a great time to address them directly to
Laura. Laura, you are sticking around to be on, correct?
Laura:
Yes, I will be.
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Magenta:
Okay. Remember, if you want to ask a question, you can press star one on your
phone, you can click on the Raise Hand button or you can type it directly into the
notes on the lower right of your screen. Not seeing any questions.
Guess we can move to the next slide and introduce Theresa Blaine and she is our
guest from the E.P.A. who's going to talk about the Federal Green Challenge and
how can the Forest Service join in. Theresa, are you on with us now?
Theresa:
Yes, I am. Can you hear me?
Magenta:
I can hear you clearly. I don't know if you heard of us at the beginning, if you
want the next slide, just say, "Next slide, please," and Colin will be advancing
them for us.
Theresa:
Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the information to present
today on the Federal Green Challenge. As background and to help explain why
you might just be hearing about us now, before Forest Service Region 6, who's
been a long time participant and founding participant, invited us to speak to the
Forest Service Sustainable Operations Collective back in July, just to try to give
information about the F.G.C. and talk about where the Forest Service might want
to go in the future, the Federal Green Challenge began in E.P.A. Region 10 which
is Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington back in 2008. The year after that, we've
scaled up to that to E.P.A. Region 9, which is Pacific Southwest and Hawaii and
then we went national last year in FY12.
I also wanted to introduce, I have a couple other folks online from the E.P.A. We
also have Lana Suãrez and Marlene Reddoor which are the F.G.C. program
manager from E.P.A. headquarters. I just wanted to send my thanks to them for
being able to listen in and help answer questions towards the end.
I'll go through presentations, going to last about 20-25 minutes and then we
should have some Q&A at the end. If you do have clarification questions during
the presentation, please let us know so that we address them as they come up.
Go ahead. You can advance to the next slide.
This is our presentation agenda for today. I'll give a program overview, talk about
how the F.G.C. aligns with the Forest Service environment efforts, share benefits
for our participants in the Federal Green Challenge. Talk about current
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participation from your Forest Service regiona and colleagues and answer any
questions you might have about F.G.C. Slide?
First off, what is the Federal Green Challenge? What it is, it is an initiate of E.P.A.
sustainable materials management program that challenges federal facilities to
commit to a minimum five percent annual improvement goal in at least two of
the six target areas which are listed below. Target areas are waste, purchasing,
electronics, transportation, energy and water. The F.G.C. targets are based on
federal agencies meeting their Executive Order 13514 and 13423 requirements.
As you can see here, the start note says that, "In order to participate, one of the
target areas that you participate in must be in waste, purchasing or electronics,"
so folks are invited to sign up for two target areas but if we also do have some
participants, better sign up in all six but two is a minimum. Next slide please.
We wanted to honk our own horn and share what our national results were for
the program this past year. We're really excited about our results so here you
can see some of the, I won't read through each of the different environmental
results but these efforts results in an estimated cost savings of more than
$31,000,000 to U.S. taxpayers. This past year, 2013 was only the second year of
the national effort so we looked forward to hearing what our results will be in
the spring. Next slide, please.
I want to talk a little bit about how the Forest Service's work also aligns with the
Federal Green Challenge. I know that, Ann or Lexie, if you wanted to talk about
the agreements that you had, that we talked about back in July. Do one of you
want to talk about that?
Medjen:
Hi, Theresa. This is Medjen. I know that Anna isn't on and let's see how to
indicate it but she would be willing to make comments.
Theresa:
Okay, s maybe I'll have Laura come in later. Sorry. Thanks for the clarification.
The work that we do under the Federal Green Challenge, it supports the vision
under the Forest Service's national sustainable collective arrangement
agreement. Also, there are a lot of peer learning opportunities with other green
team coordinators through D.C. network. We have a lot of partners who
participate in the F.G.C. who are also part of their Building Green team or
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perhaps part of some sort of internal team to help create their operations as
well.
Like I said before, it also supports Executive Order 13514 which is signed by
President Obama in 2009. All right. Next slide, please.
As I understand it, our Federal Green Challenge target areas is also cross walked
really well with the Forest Service print areas. I put these together so we see
where they overlap but for us, waste prevention and electrics are separate target
areas in the F.G.C. and the Forest Service separates out, excuse me. Sorry, I was
just getting over a cold. The Forest Service separates out sustainability
leadership as its own focus area but under the Federal Green Challenge awards,
which I'll talk a little bit more about later, there is an ability for a facility to selfnominate and provide narrative on any sustainability work that might not be
captured under one of these target areas of the F.G.C. Next slide, please.
This gives you an idea of how it is you can participate. We try to make this free
program easy for our federal partners. This is the basic outline but the first one is
just to register. You can register directly from our web site, www.epa.gov\fgc or
you can also spell it out, then within 90 days of registering, participants needed
identify their target areas so the two or up to six as we talked about earlier,
establish a base line of what you did in past year and set a minimum goal, five
percent improvement. It's important to note here that this is not a gotcha
program. We do ask that you set an ambitious goal and we only publicize
successes. We also only share results for the F.G.C. as a whole, not results as
individual participants. The exception to that is if you nominate yourself, your
facility and are selected for an award, then we'll share your results with part of
that potential reward. Excuse me.
The next step is to do work. This is the heart of the purpose of the Federal Green
Challenge. We ask you to select activities and work towards your goals. Then, in
early December, we asked that participants report the results and the calendar is
designed to work around a fiscal calendar year or fiscal year but if you're on a
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calendar year, the December deadline is close enough that we can work with
participants to accommodate that.
Then, lastly, your facility could be eligible for awards and so you'd receive
recognition from E.P.A., either through a national award system or through
regional awards. We'll talk a little bit more about that in more detail but if the
Forest Service is interested, you can sign up as a district or as a region. We're
pretty flexible with our sign up. Next slide, please. Excuse me.
One of the exciting perks of becoming a national effort is that we got upgraded
tools. Here's a screen shot of the Federal Green Challenge online data
management system that we have in retrap connect. As a participant, you'd have
access to this database where you can manage your baseline goals and results. If
you had questions on this system, each one of our regions has a regional
representative who can provide technical assistance, answer questions or help
out with the data portion. We try to make this as easy as possible for ... Next
slide, please. Maybe one more.
Oh, I have a different slide. Okay. The slide that we're missing was just a screen
shot of the registration slide. Anyway, we asked that you report out your
baseline year which is the most recent year so if you were to sign on today, we
ask that you use your FY13 data as a baseline in possible. If you don't have that
data available, you can always use whatever you have available.
The baseline goals are due 90 days after registration, so you sign up to do
registration and then you set your baseline and again, it's a minimum goal of five
percent reduction. Okay, Next slide, please.
Okay. This is another screen shot from our database. This is for the waste
portion. You don't have to do all the metrics that are listed here but we ask that
you do as many as you can, both in terms of applicability and feasibility. Next
slide, please.
What can we do? I just want to talk a little bit briefly about actions that you can
take in each target area and give you some ideas about what can be done. Some
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of these are pretty low cost and fairly easy to implement. I'm not going to read
through each of these but I'll just highlight a couple but we suggest that you look
for opportunities where there's a low or minimal cost, work that's already going
on, maybe a green purchasing policy, green think clean policy, for under waste,
you can look at switching a printer to double sided to reduce your paper costs or
your paper waste there. Next slide, please. Excuse me.
Under electronics, there's a few other actions you can take as well as well under
energy. I know that the Forest Service has taken on campaigns like the Power IT
Down campaign as well as N.D.M., utility bill cleanup so if you're already
participating in your own Forest Service campaigns, things like that would be
helpful towards your participation in the Federal Green Challenge. Next slide,
please.
Then just, these are just a few other ideas for transportation and water. If this
program is interesting to you at all, you can talk to your regional representative
to brainstorm other ideas to help move you forward. All right. Next slide, please.
All right. I had mentioned this earlier but the reports come into the system
annually in December. Laura, I don't know if you wanted to maybe chime in on
the reporting system and talk about how it works for you?
Laura:
Sure, I'd be happy to Theresa. Please know that at Lexie Carol is having some
technical difficulties. As you know, Anna is on the road without cell service. I am
going to speak on behalf of Anna, Lexie and anything you wanted from me.
About the reporting system. I thought that was an excellent addition on the part
of the Federal Green Challenge. We found it very easy to navigate after the short
[death row 00:34:44] training that was provided. It's a great tracking mechanism
from year to year. It's nice to have that information logged somewhere to track
goals so we found that to be quite effective. I believe that's also a mechanism
through which an individual reports their nominations. If they're going for an
award under the Federal Green Challenge, so it was nice to be able to have a one
stop shop for it all.
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Theresa:
Great. Thanks, Laura. Next slide, please. This is just a map of our E.P.A. Regions
and while the Federal Green Challenge is national, it has a very strong tie to the
E.P.A. Regions. I know that we won't quite align with the Forest Service Regions
but if you decide to sign up and participate in the F.G.C., we can figure out which
regional offices we would have you connect with.
The nice thing is about signing up through the different regions is that you get to
network with your local agencies, so that the discussions on barriers and
successes are more relevant to your geographical area so for example, for our
region, its Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Alaska and because we are able to
have the folks network internally, then we might be able to have events that
cross over with other federal agencies and we've had some successes that we'll
share in a couple of slides here. Slide, please.
This is just to give you a little bit more information about what could be in it for
you. Select certain actions to help you move towards your goals, you can set up
measurement criteria so you can see how far you've come along. You'll be able
to see reportable results from participating. Also we're able to help you with
technical support from our monthly webinars. We have monthly webinars on
different topics. In the next couple months, we have some internal webinar
talking similarly to this presentation that on a more national scale to other
federal agencies as well as sharing about how you can sign up and what benefits
it is that you to have for your agency, also to be recognized nationally and
regionally by your federal. Slide, please.
In general, our technical assistance also includes online tool kits in each of the
target areas. I mentioned the webinar series. I also mentioned peer networking
and then here's a screen out of our web site where you can access the online
tool kits as well as the upcoming webinars and archive webinars. I also just want
to emphasize, this program is free for federal partners to sign up. We also do
have a regional award ceremony to highlight our regional and national awards
that are received ... It sounds like the work that the Forest Service is doing under
the sustainable operations collective would easily line up with the F.G.C. and your
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facilities can get national recognition. Most other federal facilities for your work
in these efforts.
Laura, did you want to highlight sharing of material with other, like the Fish and
Wildlife Service or other benefits that you've gained through participating
through the F.G.C.?
Laura:
Sure. I'd be happy to and actually the story that I was going to tell about sharing
is specific to Region 6 Forest Service, based in the Portland regional office.
Sharing on behalf of Katie Newcomb, who's on maternity leave but she had to
describe to me that during one of the quarterly F.G.C. or Federal Green Challenge
meetings at the Portland Fish and Wildlife Service said their experience about
hosting an electronics recycling event for their office, in the fish and Wildlife
Service office. The presentation carried details of how they organized, they
promoted and executed the e-cycling event.
After the meeting, with others from F.G.C., it was Katie from the Forest Service
who was able to contact the Fish and Wildlife Service. The Fish and Wildlife
Service was able to help her set up the whole event for Forest Service, the
B.L.M., the Army Corps of Engineers. The great networking opportunity allowed
for that connection through the Federal Green Challenge to the common goal
and then to have an integrated and more efficient overall e-cycling event.
Theresa:
Great. Thank you, Laura. If you go to the next slide, I think we have a picture
from that event. Yes, you can have co-hosted events, waste events, recycling
events. It's a great way to work with other agencies in your area. In Alaska, we
had an event, an e-waste collection event and the bottom part of the slide here.
They collected over 25,000 towns of electronics for recycling. The top right here,
there was a Going Green Earth Day fair that was hosted by a few different federal
agencies so there's a lot of space for you to collaborate with other federal
agencies. Great. Next slide, please.
We had national and regional award winners this past year. In each of the target
areas, there's one winner collected per target area. These awards are based
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solely on the numbers so whatever you enter into retrack is what it is. It's used
for the national awards. For the regional awards, we do one winner per target
area based on numbers and also have a narrative award in innovation, outreach
and education and leadership. The Forest Service has won two regional awards,
which I'll share in a moment. The top ranking for each category nationally will
receive the national award. The region from which the national awardee is
pulled will recognize the second highest in the regional with the regional awards.
For the awards, there's one for improvement so the highest increased
percentage over the previous year for that particular award, there'll be one
award given to each target area so that means there'll be six awards per region
and six national, depending on the pool of applicants.
An award may not be given in all six areas at the regional or national level but
you certainly could be eligible. Then also for an overall level of performance,
what we'll look at is the annual cumulative percentage of improvement in two or
more target areas to determine the highest overall level of performance so if our
participant chooses to apply in a target area that are covered by their goals, they
have to have submitted current and previous year data to make sure the
calculation is appropriate. One award will be given at the regional level and one
at the national level.
Lana or Marlene, did you want to chime in on awards at all?
Magenta:
Okay, yes. This is Magenta. If anyone is having problems getting off of mute,
press star one and Colin will unmute you. I believe that ... I'm seeing a couple of
hands but if there are questions we can answer, has opportunity to ask them at
the end but if it's people wanting to be unmuted, Colin will help you with that.
Lana:
Thank you, Magenta. This is Lana Suãrez and I was successfully unmuted. Thank
you.
As Theresa mentioned, I'm the headquarters office and work more at the
national level for the Federal Green Challenge. Just another thing I can say about
the awards is I just wanted to make a note that our deadline for the award
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nominations and for annual data submission, we've moved it to January 31, so
that gives everyone a little bit more time. It's an early December date so
deadline for the award is January ... Teen. Then, we do the announcement. We
pull the data from the system and we do the awards at the national level based
on the annual percentage improvement. That evens out the playing field. It
doesn't matter how big or small your facility or area is, you're based on the
percentage improvement over the previous year activities, I just wanted to make
another note on that. We had some questions in the past few years about, "I
can't compete with other faculties. They're much larger. I'm a small office," but I
wanted to note that it doesn't matter that much because it's really based on
percentage and there's always the option of the, at the regional level, the
narrative awards which you will write out any significant effort that you think
deserves a lot more recognition. Maybe you don't have the numbers that are
there but you know that there was a really great effort put forth from your team.
Those are just the little notes I wanted to make on the awards that we've had
some great case studies and a lot of efforts and the network that was created to
share the stories in the different target areas have been really helpful to the
current participants, so thank you.
Magenta:
Great. Thank you, Lana. Next slide, please.
All right, so I wanted to just highlight a few of the participants across the U.S. We
have over 350 facilities participating. That represents over 500,000 federal
employees and we just pulled a few highlights to give you a sense of the
spectrum of the participants. From the U.S.D.A. we have eight participants. We
have 32 Department of Defense installations and 22 V.A. sites.
I wanted to talk specifically about the U.S. Postal Service. They signed on as the
entire agency, all of the facilities are signed up with the Federal Green Challenge
and what the headquarters postal service says, is they report on the rollup as
nine separate areas so we're able to work with them on the data recording piece
at the agency level and then link within their regional facilities into the local
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level. The idea is to help them with streamlining to reporting which can be a
barrier for participation when you're interested in joining at the national level.
So far, the U.S. Postal Service, I wanted to highlight that the only agency that has
signed up at the national level although we have heard of another federal agency
that is interested at joining at the national level. I know that Forest Service is
potentially interested in joining and I don't know if Laura ...
Laura, do you want to speak on that at all.
Laura:
Actually, Lexie Carroll is now off mute and I belive she's queued up to speak to
that.
Lexie:
I think I am. Can you hear me?
Laura:
Yes.
Lexie:
Hi. This is Lexie. Sorry. I was having some technical problems earlier. Yes, as Lisa
said, Theresa, Lana and Marlene and I and Anna and that, I think around
September had our conference call. We are interested in pursuing a national
account for the Federal Green Challenge. As long as [inaudible 00:47:26] we
want to continue that. I believe that [inaudible 00:47:36] further with that. I
think we're hoping that maybe by the September 15, it might be in place.
The other thing, Theresa, I think we talked about during that meeting was, if not
before, in our region set up accounts in Federal Green Challenge and once we
have a national account, we'd be able to role those accounts into that national
umbrella. That would be a good thing.
Theresa:
Great. Thank you, Lexie. If we move to the next slide, please.
These are the current Forest Service participants. We have Region 5 down in
California, Region 6 decided to sign up their whole region, Oregon, Washington.
Facilities are able to join however you'd like. We also have the Wrangell Ranger
District up in Alaska.
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Laura, do you want to add anything more about participation for your region?
Laura:
Not particularly. The only thing, it's interesting that today we're having this
webinar because it's today that Tom Hartman from DP Region Nine is visiting our
office ....
Theresa:
Wow, how fantastic!
Laura:
... and presenting us with the award in the leadership and innovation title
category that we won last year [inaudible 00:49:24] pilot, a two year pilot that
we did with what's called Power IT Down or P.I.T., while a very simple concept, on
the weekends, we shut down computers and I.T. peripherals. The employee
engagement component and the technical component, working with our chief
information office. It actually a rather complexity in the scenes and that's what
we're being recognized for today but I'll tell you, it's wonderful to have that
recognition from another federal partner. It was things like that that allowed us
to take this regional pilot and make a case for going national. .... by the way,
we're doing in December.
Again, it's nice to have the bending for information sharing. It's also great to
have the recognition component because it does add weight and validity to
individual agency programs.
Theresa:
Great. Thank you. Next slide, please.
We want to use this opportunity to give a shout out to Forest service Region 5
and 6, particularly Region 6 for their early support and long time participation in
F.G.C. When F.G.C. began in 2008, Forest Service Region 6 was a founding
member. In 2009, E.P.A. recognized them with an award in the transportation
target area for business travel. It was as a result of offering the fifth annual
sustainable operation summit virtually. They offered 90 virtual sites and several
sites had numerous participants with 225 virtual participants nationwide. This
avoided an estimated 100 metric tons of CO2 emissions.
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Then, the Forest Service Region 6 also received an award building upon Region
6's work in 2009, achieving even more saving so the leadership and innovation
award in 2012 was given to Region 5 for its innovative approach to virtual
conferencing. They were able to host the 2012 Sustainable Operations Summit
where 97% were attending virtually. It saved $52,000 in contactor fees, it saved
about $810,000 in travel costs and $150,000 in conference facilities so we're
pretty happy to see results from both participating Forest Service facilities. All
right. Next slide, please.
I know we just have a few minutes here, so let me go through the rest of the stuff
quickly. These are just to give you an idea of what we do in Region 10. We do
have a regional recognition event, half day symposium that we host here in the
E.P.A. Region 10 office. Then, we also have biannual staff partner calls., Our next
upcoming call is actually this upcoming Monday where we have our opportunity
for their federal agency to network with each other that are participating in the
Federal Green Challenge. Again, we have target areas with specific monthly
webinars. Then, on request, we can also provide technical assistance. Next slide,
please.
These are just gives you an idea of how you've been enjoying the F.G.C.. We're
pretty flexible in how it is you join. You can be joined by individual forestry, you
can join by your region or even as an agency. All right. Next slide, please.
However it is that you may join, we're flexible to meet your needs. Again, these
are just to give you an idea how the Forest Service could potentially join the
facility level, the regional or the national level. A unit that's looking to engage
must also designate an executive sponsor as well as a lead for coordination,
communication and reporting. I guess the structure is similar to the board and
board staff roles, set up in each region station area under the national
sustainable tops collective. All right. Next slide, please.
This is just again, an idea of where our offices are. Each of our regional offices
have staff dedicated to the Federal Green Challenge. The next slide will show
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you who it is that works on ... If you could scroll to the next slide, it'll will show
you what staff is available to work with you in our regions.
That's all I had. Next slide, please.
I just want to thank you all for inviting us to come to present today. I want to
thank the Forest Service for their contributions and providing leadership on this
federal sustainability. We look forward to our continued work together.
Particularly, thank you to Katie Newcomb, K.J. Silverman and Marie Heiser from
Forest Service Region 6 as well as Laura Polansky and her colleagues in Forest
Service Region 5 and Robert Dalrymple and Michele Parker in the Wrangell
Ranger District in Alaska and also to Anna Jones-Crabtree and Lexie Carroll for
your leadership through the Sustainable Ops Collective and also to Magenta for
helping to set this up.
Marlene:
Hi, this is Marlene Reddoor. I just wanted to say a couple of things. We invite
you to participate, if you want to know more information, in our webinar that are
going to be for recruitment. They're a little bit the same, however there are
other. Starting in January of February, we'll have focus area webinars on each of
the six areas. Sometimes we have an innovation, sometimes we have one of the
other leadership areas as well that highlight some of our award winners but if
there's any particular topic that you want to brag about or that you are having
particularly hard time getting some focus on, then be sure to let us know, suggest
a topic for us and we will get you some experts or technical assistants that can
possibly help you with areas. Those are our webinar starting February through
August in the focus areas. Thank you for your participation. That's all I want to
say.
Theresa:
Thanks, Marlene. Lana or Marlene, anything else that you wanted to add that I
might have missed?
Lana:
This is Lana. I could just note that we're planning our next overview webinar for
November 25th. I know it's Monday, week of a holiday and we'll have another
one in December, but I should have more information on how to register for
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those overviews, in case you know someone else that you want to point them to
the same overview that Theresa just did. Just check our website and all the
information will be up on www.epa.gov/fgc.
Theresa:
Yes. Check that next week.
Lana:
Thank you.
Theresa:
All right. I don't know if we have time for any questions, Magenta.
Magenta:
We have time for questions so I think if anyone has any now, it's a great time.
Looks like Lexie's off. She had another commitment so if anyone has any
questions for either Theresa or Laura, go ahead and click the Raise Your Hand
button or click your notes into the moderator. Colin, do you have any coming
through on your end?
Colin:
Not this moment. Just a reminder, if you give a questions you can type it to me,
the moderator, or raise your hand and I will unmute you.
Magenta:
Great. Thanks, Colin. I'd like to thank everyone for calling in and participating
and for your patience while we work through some technical difficulties at the
beginning. Thank you to Theresa and Lana and Marlene for their comments and
Theresa for your presentation, Laura for your presentation and to Lexie for her
comments also.
Seems quiet in terms of questions. Just like to offer one more opportunity here
before we all sign off.
Theresa:
If you think of questions later, definitely feel free to send us an email and we can
help answer as well.
Laura:
Great, thanks, Theresa. This is reminder to everyone who signed on. We'll be
sent a link to this so you can access the links to people's phone numbers and
emails that way if you didn't copy them down. That looks like no one has any
questions. Thank you everybody and hopefully, you'll be able to tune in next
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time to the Sus Ops webinar which is actually just to the couple of weeks, due to
our having to reschedule this one.
Theresa:
Thank you again for inviting us.
Laura:
Pleasure is all ours.
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