Region 6

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Taking EPA’s 'green' pulse

For some, EMS stands for Emergency Medical Services, but for Region 6 it means taking the pulse of how well we are practicing environmental stewardship within our organization. In Region 6 EMS stands for an Environmental Management Systems, a plan that we have put into place and strive to practice daily to minimize our impacts on the environment. This includes finding ways to reduce our energy consumption and promoting daily actions that everyone in our organization can take to be green. Our EMS plan is also part of a greater corporate value that we strive to work and live by.

So how are we doing? Independent auditors checked recently and here are some of the things they found we are doing to minimize our eco-footprint:

• trained 70 percent of employees about ways they can reduce their daily environmental impact here in the office
• maintained our vehicle fleet to maximize fuel efficiency and replaced old standard vehicles with hybrid or alternative fuel types
• promoted mass transit and car-pooling (The Region provides free DART mass transit passes to over 800 EPA employees.)
• offered alternative work schedules and the ability to telecommute to reduce driving (Over 40 percent of employees have a telework/flexiplace agreement.)
• installed motion sensors in offices and conference rooms to reduce our electricity use
• 100 percent of our power comes from renewable sources
• replaced many older stand-alone server computers in our data center with energy efficient, cooler-running rack mounted servers
• asked all staff to turn off their electronic equipment and cubicle lights at the end of each work day
• recycled tons of paper, aluminum cans, plastic bottles, batteries and toner cartridges
• conducted an electronic recycling event and collected almost 4 tons of personal items such as old cell phones, TVs, cables etc.
• provided video conferencing equipment as an alternative to traveling to off-site meetings
• promoted double-sided printing and storing documents electronically to reduce printing and continue our 10 percent annual reduction trend in paper use

These are just some of the things that we are doing to be green, but we won’t stop here. Our EMS calls for continually improving and enhancing our operations, and we are committed to doing just that.