Anna Jones-Crabtree, Project Leader
Samantha Lidstrom, Project Assistant
Charles Showers, Program Leader
Green Teams are working to reduce the Forest Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture's effect on the environment. Two short videos can help Forest Service employees learn how to improve sustainability in their workplaces.
The 31 Green Teams in the Forest Service range from the informal to the formal. Although the Green Teams may have begun inside the agency, they now include members of the local community and employees of State, local, or other Federal agencies.
The online Green Team Toolkit includes a link where Forest Service employees can post tips and tricks, tools, advice, and their success stories (http://www.fs.fed.us/sustainableoperations/greenteam-toolkit/).
Highlights...
- Recycling just one aluminum can saves enough energy to operate a television for 3 hours.
- More than 12 million barrels of oil are user to manufacture plastic bags every year.
- Every full bus takes roughly 40 cars off the road.
Video Presentation Addresses Environmental Challenges
The Rocky Mountain Region's Green Team developed the 6-minute video "Be Sustainable...What's Your Excuse?" The video highlights the need for sustainable operations and discusses measures that encourage sustainability and reduce environmental impact throughout the Rocky Mountain Region.
Green Improvement Project Now on DVDThe "Extreme Makeover: Ranger District Edition" DVD (figure 1) highlights green improvements made by the Deer River Ranger District on the Chippewa National Forest in Minnesota. The DVD shows the effects of these changes on the environment and on the ranger district's budget. In 2008, the ranger district agreed to try to reduce resource consumption.
The district's Green Team documented green improvements that may save the district $32,000 annually in a humorous short film fashioned after the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition television series. This DVD provides great examples of simple and innovative ways for ranger districts to significantly reduce their carbon footprint while saving money.
Figure 1—This DVD shows how the Deer River Ranger District (Chippewa National Forest)
saved $32,000 a year with green improvements transmissions.
The extreme makeover video was released on Earth Day 2009. The Deer River Ranger District received a 2009 White House Closing the Circle (CTC) Award in the category "Sowing the Seeds for Change." The 15 CTC award winners and 13 honorable mentions (http://www.fedcenter.gov/opportunities/awards/ctcawards/ctcwinners2009/) were selected from nearly 200 nominations.
For more information or to obtain a copy of the "Extreme Makeover: Ranger District Edition" DVD, contact Matt Gibbs at 303–275–5133 or mgibbs@fs.fed.us. View the DVD trailer at http://www.fs.fed.us/sustainableoperations/extreme-makeover/.
Sustainable Improvements Save Resources
If all Forest Service ranger districts took the same actions as the Deer River Ranger District, the projected savings would be:
- Water: 44,329 gallons and $386,500 per year
- Energy: 24,000 tons of CO2 emissions and $2.3 million per year
- Fleet: $13 million per year
- Recycling: 245,280 pounds of steel
- Printing: 14,016 trees and $350,000
About the Authors
Anna Jones-Crabtree is the first executive director for a Western United States collective of six Forest Service regional offices and research stations working to improve sustainable operations. She has served as the sustainable operations coordinator for the Rocky Mountain and Northern Regions of the Forest Service and was the founding cochair of the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee's Sustainable Operations Subcommittee.
She has an undergraduate and a master's degree in engineering from Purdue University and a Ph.D. in engineering with a minor in sustainable systems from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is a licensed Professional Engineer and a U.S. Green Building Council LEED Accredited Professional. She and her husband, Doug, own and operate a 1,280-acre dryland organic small grain, legume, and oilseed farm. She serves on the Climate Change Task Force for Helena, MT.
Samantha Lidstrom is a civil engineering student at Montana State University in Bozeman, MT. Lidstrom has worked part-time for MTDC as an engineering intern since the summer of 2008.
Charles Showers, professional engineer, became engineering program leader at MTDC in the spring of 2002 after serving 2 years as operations program leader. Showers came to MTDC after 9 years as assistant forest engineer on the Payette National Forest. He began his Forest Service career on the Boise National Forest after completing 8 years as a construction project engineer with the Idaho Transportation Department.
For more information about sustainable operations in the Forest Service, contact Anna Jones-Crabtree at 406–495–3744 (fax 406–449–5436) or ajonescrabtree@fs.fed.us.
Helena National Forest
2880 Skyway Dr.
Helena, MT 59602
Electronic copies of MTDC's documents are available on the Internet at:
http://www.fs.fed.us/eng/t-d.php
Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management employees can search a more complete collection of MTDC's documents, CDs, DVDs, and videos on their internal computer networks at:
http://fsweb.mtdc.wo.fs.fed.us/search/
