News

Robins snags White House Closing the Circle award

  • Published
  • By Holly Birchfield
  • 78th ABW/PA
Robins Air Force Base, Ga. --  Being a good steward of the environment has been an ongoing priority at Robins.

Robins recently earned the 2008 White House Closing the Circle Award in the Military Installations Category for its Environmental Management Systems Team. The team uses various programs to maintain Robins' environmental health.

Additionally, Robins' Green Procurement Program, an initiative that ensures contracted products and services include environmentally-sound materials, received an honorable mention.

Erica Orr, EMS program manager in the Environmental Quality Branch of the 78th Civil Engineer Group's Environmental Management Division, said the White House honor reflects Robins' commitment to taking care of the environment.

"The award recognizes outstanding achievements of federal employees in their facilities for making significant contributions in making a positive impact on the environment," she said.

Mrs. Orr said Robins' EMS ties all of the base's environmental programs together to ensure regulatory requirement dates are met and ensure everyone in their respective work areas understands the environmental impact of their actions.

Pollution prevention and partnering with the local community in environmental management are just two of many things the EM team did to earn recognition.

Robins is also addressing the growing concerns that rising fuel prices bring.

"Our alternative fuels program really kicked up last year," said Mark Summers, 78th CEG branch chief. "We had about 110,000 gallons of biodiesel that was used on base last year."

Mr. Summers said the award took a total team effort.

"This is a Team Robins award," he said. "We couldn't have accomplished any of these tasks if it hadn't been for the partnerships throughout different organizations doing their part by buying the recycled material. CE has done a great job working green procurement into facilities like the air recirculation unit in our new paint hangar. It has really become a team effort."

Casey Spinks, EMS contract support specialist in the 78th CEG, said EMS had the help of EM representatives in organizations base-wide to make programs successful.

Ben Torrey, a 78th CEG environmental engineer and GPP program manager, said the honorable mention of the relatively new green procurement program came as a welcomed surprise.

"The Green Procurement Program is the plan that embraces the purchasing policy delivered in Executive Order 13423, which came out in January 2007," he said.

Mr. Torrey said the program includes procurement requirements, recovered materials, bio-based products, energy and water conservation, ozone depleting substances, priority chemicals, and environmental preferable products."

Mr. Torrey said Robins' development of a comprehensive plan of training employees on GPP, its resourceful Web site, and the support of base leadership all propelled the program to great results.

Tina Meyers, a quality assurance program coordinator in Warner Robins Air Logistics Center's Contracting Directorate, said green procurement is becoming more important.

"We have a lot of waste in areas we know we can recycle and recover things," she said. "We don't want to be wasting our precious resources. We can be (better) stewards of the land and recover this material now and use it again."

Mrs. Meyers developed language to be used in contracting documents and trained requirements workers and other base workers on how to incorporate it into Robins' contracts making the base GPP compliant.

Representatives from Robins will accept the award June 10 in Washington D.C.