About the 2021 Federal Green Challenge Award Winners
The 2021 Federal Green Challenge award winners shared details and quotes about their waste prevention and diversion activities, and about their awards with EPA. Read about their accomplishments and how they achieved them.
National Award Winner
Adaptation Award: Bonneville Power Administration, Portland, Oregon
In March 2020, Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) quickly transitioned its workforce to maximum telework. This change drastically impacted norms and processes built for an in-person environment. While this posed an unprecedented challenge for the agency, it also revealed opportunities for sustainability, efficiency, and savings.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, BPA relied on paper for nearly all administrative tasks. These deeply ingrained habits changed almost immediately. The company encouraged using e-signatures and electronic filing for administrative and financial documentation. Meeting materials changed from printouts to digital links and attachments, and printed reports became online-only. These changes saved over 4 million sheets of paper and reduced paper consumption by nearly 50 percent compared to the previous year.
The pandemic also gave BPA a unique understanding of its facilities. With essential workers still on site, creating a safe environment was the top priority. This had unexpected repercussions on sustainability performance. While waste generation fell 47 percent, water use fell 15 percent, and electricity use fell 3 percent, natural gas use actually rose 13 percent. BPA’s facilities team discovered this was because of increased health measures: as the agency maximized circulation of outdoor air into occupied buildings, more heating was needed to bring the air to temperature. Fewer building occupants also meant fewer heat sources (e.g., lights, human bodies, active computers) to help maintain internal temperatures. While facilities couldn’t reverse the increased consumption, they were able to offset it by replacing HVAC filters and adjusting lighting and HVAC controls to reflect the lower number of building occupants. This data gave decision-makers valuable information for discussing post-pandemic space use.
Overall, the agency saved over $785,000 during the 2020 fiscal year due to sustainable telework practices. BPA’s focus on sustainability tracking has given the agency vital insights and a clear picture of the costs and benefits of telework as it plans for a post-pandemic work environment.
South Central (Region 6) Award Winners
Innovation Award: Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare, Little Rock, Arkansas
Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System (CAVHS) strives to reduce its environmental footprint and has been the recipient of multiple environmental awards for 2020. CAVHS focused its recycling efforts on used oil and its products, used batteries, cardboard, lead, brass casings, and electronics. Now, it has implemented single stream recycling, scrap metal recycling, solar energy, and food composting. These new targeted areas have helped improve diversion rates for the facility. CAVHS has begun to implement alternative fuel and hybrid vehicles, use more eco-friendly and biobased products (e.g., floor cleaners), and depend less on hazardous materials in laboratory and cleaning duties. CAVHS discontinued the usage of many hazardous items and removed them responsibly. It is CAVHS policy to operate in a manner that ensures compliance with relevant environmental standards; conserves energy, water, and other resources; reduces regulated air emissions; uses pollution prevention principles; incorporates environmentally preferable practices for designing, constructing, and operating buildings; and ensures that its facilities are good neighbors in the local community.
In 2020, CAVHS began collecting and composting on its two main campuses. Composting food and other organic waste dramatically reduced the amount of organic waste CAVHS sent to landfills. By diverting waste from landfills, CAVHS hopes to reduce the potential for landfills to create liquid leachate, which can pollute streams, oceans, and underground water, as well as reduce the production of methane gas. CAVHS’ trash and recycling contractor provides lockable containers for food and organic waste to be collected and removed as needed. This process provides cleaner recycling opportunities, as more food waste is composted instead of being placed in trash or contaminating a recycling bin. It also provides a means to reduce or eliminate chemical fertilizers, and to reduce the amount of food waste entering sewers via garbage disposals.
Leadership Award: Sam Rayburn Memorial Veterans Center, Bonham, Texas
The Sam Rayburn Memorial Veterans Center is continuously improving the facility by reducing its impact on the environment. Reduced patient capacity during the COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to implement process improvements throughout the facility. One area of focus was diverting prescription medication waste from landfills by training nursing staff. Pharmacy services provided a training to improve staff’s knowledge of medication waste. Nonhazardous medications are disposed of in proper bins to be incinerated.
The facility celebrated Earth Day by educating staff and veterans about sustainability efforts, such as using reusable shopping bags, converting to paperless billing, and spreading the word on how to protect the environment. The facility also hosted a recycling contest for the most unique way of repurposing items.
Veterans Affairs (VA) created the Strategic Capital Investment Planning (SCIP) process to prioritize investments that incorporate resilient design principles. According to the SCIP, the VA must address climate change, demographics, medical and information technology, health care delivery standards, and facility conditions. The Sam Rayburn Memorial Veterans Center is supporting sustainable projects that include resilient buildings and infrastructure, renewable energy, and climate change planning. All maintenance, repairs, and minor construction for the facility must be completed in a manner that improves efficient energy and water use. Renewable energy must account for at least 20 percent or more of the electricity used. New construction and major renovations must use 30 percent less energy compared to the baseline building performance rating.
Pacific Southwest (Region 9) Award Winner
Education & Outreach Award: Presidio Trust, San Francisco, California
Beginning in 2020, alongside a new contract with their waste hauler, the Presidio Trust received more detailed information about their commingled construction demolition (C&D) waste stream. This waste stream—handled exclusively by Presidio Trust staff and contractors—consists of construction materials and other bulky items related to managing residential and commercial properties within the Presidio of San Francisco. Contents can include plywood, drywall, carpet, appliances, textiles, furniture, empty paint cans, plastic sheeting, and packing material like pallets, Styrofoam and bubble wrap.
The Trust learned that 75 percent of this waste stream went to landfills. Working with their waste hauler to understand the problem, the Trust responded with several programmatic improvements to promote recovery of material. The Trust added commingled construction materials collection for recycling, which allowed landfill material to be separated from recyclable material. Source-separated Styrofoam and carpet recycling were also added to existing cardboard and metal recycling programs.
To support the new programs, the Trust provided several types of outreach and education to staff and contractors who use this site. Tools included high quality signage, a site map (produced using Google Earth and PowerPoint), a best practices cheat sheet, and ongoing on-site trainings, with over 80 participants trained to date.
Since making the changes, the Trust has recycled 56 tons of commingled C&D material, 56 tons of metal, 44 tons of carpet, 16 tons of cardboard, and 66 yards of Styrofoam. The diversion rate improved from 40 percent for the nine months preceding the trainings to 68 percent in the nine months since trainings occurred. Ongoing efforts to monitor disposal habits have helped determine new outreach efforts.