Diane Davie, Irene Frost, Cindy Loehr and Steve Sander brave the rain to staff BPA's e-cycle event at headquarters April 19. BPA's e-cycling events in Portland and Vancouver collected approximately 14,000 pounds of consumer electronics. Responsible disposal of used electronics is one aspect of the Federal Electronics Challenge.
Forget going for the gold. BPA just achieved platinum for its sustainability efforts in the Environmental Protection Agency's
Federal Electronics Challenge. "Congratulations to the BPA employees working on this project - it's a great accomplishment!" says Kim Leathley, executive vice president of Internal Business Services. "This is highest award given by the EPA under the challenge. It represents significant work and creativity in finding ways to make sure that BPA manages its electronics in a sustainable, cost effective and responsible way."
The challenge encourages federal agencies to purchase greener electronics, reduce impacts of electronics during use and manage used electronics in an environmentally safe way.
Presidential Executive Order 13514 requires federal agencies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and overall power consumption. This challenge is a creative way of meeting compliance requirements.
In the past, BPA's team won the FEC's silver award in 2011 and a gold award in 2004. Reaching for the platinum award this year, the agency focused on sustainability in five main areas:
- Desktop power management
- Responsible disposal of used electronics
- Printer duplex settings and power management
- Building sustainability into IT purchasing standards
- Power consumption baseline project with facilities and energy efficiency.
The FEC team - made up of Information Technology staff along with sustainability and energy efficiency minded employees - focused on meeting the challenge. The goal is simple: "making �green' the default in our daily work lives," says Loyd Towe, team lead.
"What really drove us over the top and put us in line to receive the platinum award this year was implementing desktop power management," says Towe. "While it seems like a tiny amount of power savings, when added up across all the desktops and for each day of the year, it does equal a significant reduction in power."
New desktop power management settings were applied to all eligible computers last August to save energy. These settings allow the machines to automatically go into stand by mode after specified periods of inactivity. After the first month these settings were in place, BPA saw a savings of approximately 10,000 kilowatt-hours.
The FEC awards will be given out in Washington, D.C., this fall in association with the annual GreenGov conference.