Awards are presented in 10 categories recognizing excellence and innovation by employees for their Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 sustainability efforts. We encourage you to take time to join us in thanking our colleagues who have made substantial contributions in the area of sustainability.
Sustainability touches many aspects of NIH operations: conserving electricity and water; reducing the use of toxic chemicals; recycling materials; preventing pollution; reducing greenhouse gas emissions; safeguarding the air we breathe and the water we drink – all contributing to enhancing the NIH mission and improving human health.
Environmental Stewardship
Land Holding Organization/Small Group
Central Utility Plant (CUP) Team (NIH)
Anjli Desilva, Daniel Ebert, Gregory Gendron, Don Guan, Ph.D., P.E., Alex Huang, Donald Mayberry, Farhad Memarzadeh, Ph.D., P.E., Joseph Nieves, Stephen O'Connor, Donna Phillips, Alamelu Ramesh, P.E., LEED AP, Kayvan Torkashvan, Andy Vergara, Daniel Wheeland,
The CUP conducted an extensive multi-year analysis of a large and very complex energy system and then applied the knowledge gained to make large scale energy savings and emissions reductions.
Burden’s Creek Site Cleanup (NIH/NIEHS)
Chris Long, Debra Del Corral, Joseph Shealey, Christopher Hunt, Valeria Shropshire, Bill Steinmetz, Clyde Hasty, Scott Merkle
The NIEHS Project Team used innovation and dedication to recycle the bulk of waste materials located at an abandoned NIEHS site. Their extensive diligence in the face of time pressures, budget constraints, and the vagaries of volatile recycling market resulted in the recycling of 65 tons of metal, 120 tons of concrete, 200 tons of construction and demolition debris, 720 fluorescent light bulbs, 12 mercury thermostats, 12 smoke detectors, and the recapture of 63 pounds of Freon.
Land Holding Organization/Small Group
Capt. Edward Pfister
Captain Edward Pfister of the US Public Health Service has been a key champion of Greening efforts at HHS for several years. As the Department's Chief Environmental Officer, Capt. Pfister was instrumental in increasing the focus on greening HHS and championed the Go Green Get Healthy HHS initiative. He developed the HHS Go Green Guide and fostered the establishment of Green Teams throughout the agency. In addition, he coordinated greening efforts in the Hubert H. Humphrey Building with the development of a robust recycling and composting program and deployment of an extensive outreach approach including Green Bag lunches, Earth Day and America Recycles Day expos, and the Green Champions Awards program. These efforts gained upper management engagement, which further promoted efforts throughout the Department.
Change Agents
Green Initiative Make Your Event Green (NIH)
Marin P. Allen, Holli Beckerman Jaffe, Lydia Polimeni, Christopher Wanjek, J.P. Kim, Lisa Strauss, Elise Rabin, Neil Thakur, PhD, Janette Van Meers, Guy White, Claudia Faigen
In May of 2015 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of the Director (OD) Green Team working group published a guide for green event planning, titled The NIH OD Green Initiative: Make Your Event Green. The guide focuses on environmentally friendly practices to implement while planning meetings, conferences and other events, including planning for producing materials, promoting the event, arranging travel, and general reduction of waste and costs. To maximize agency usefulness, the guide provides many resources that are specific to NIH employees and events. The guide was distributed to OD staff and made available on the Executive Office Sharepoint website. The workgroup issues a quarterly request for ideas, updates, and other green successes to keep the document fresh.
Sustainable Acquisitions
Land Holding Organization/Small Group
Go Green Supplies NIH (OD/OM/OALM/OLAO/DLS)
Gary Marquez, Jim Irvin, Gwendolyn Carr, Andre Charlton, John Davis, Hector Kennedy, Erinn Brown, Gilbert Scott, Josue Gonzalez-Zayas
The NIH Supply Center (NIH SC) has always been concerned about the fate of our planet and is consistently looking for methods to help extend natural resources and promote a more sustainable future. The NIH SC is working hard to promote everything from simple green slogans and campaigns to alternative products, and organic/non-toxic products such as Steriplex and Wada. To increase stakeholder engagement, we gathered a team that represents different levels from IC’s within NIH, which helped us create a message that resonates with the NIH Go Green initiatives; by replacing over 120 products involved in acquiring, obtaining, and marketing green products at the lowest available prices among competitive commercials sources. Throughout this year, the NIH SC implemented five new programs, updated our product catalog to reflect more green items for the Supply Center, which reduced the usage of non-ecological products, reduced costs, and increased customer satisfaction among NIH buying activities. We, also, continue to support the NIH Go Green events and constantly advertised the green products available from the two self-service stores on campus and the Gaithersburg Distribution Center and have successfully attracted new vendors who support the Green initiative and increase awareness throughout the NIH.
Corporate Responsibility
Land Holding Organization/Small Group
Improving Recycling with Behavioral and Program Strategies (NIH)
Ariell Lawrence, William Ketner, Thomas Pfaffman, Thomas Meredith
The NIH Division of Environmental Protection strives to every year to improve on their sustainability goals on the Bethesda Campus. This year, the Solid Waste Team and Ecology Services focused on improving behavioral and program strategies towards recycling and waste disposal. Through these efforts, the “Go Green, Go Clean” initiative was created to reduce contamination and raise awareness in proper waste disposal procedures.
Water Use Efficiency
Land Holding Organization/Small Group
Blue Water Commission (NIH)
Ronald Brown, Lem Canady, Rajiv Chainani, William Floyd, Matthew Funk, Gregory Gendron, Don guan, Le Gumapas, Kumars Haidari, Paul Hawver, Steve Jones, Malee Kaolawanich, Brian Kim, Gerald Lavin, Gre Leifer, Todd Loveless, Ryan Marshall, Mark Miller, Carlos Moreno, Daniel Moses, Joseph Musa Joseph Nieves, Angelo Parker, Donna Phillips, Daniel Roberts, Reginald Stewart, Scott Taylor, Jonathan Yoo
The NIH Chilled Water Plant, the third largest plant in the world with 60,000 tons capacity, was experiencing a large increase in the chilled water makeup system, formed a team of engineers, technicians, operators, program/project managers, and maintenance staff, to investigate the potential sources of chilled water losses on the Bethesda Campus. The Bethesda Campus has 111 buildings with over 13 million gross square feet of space and contains hundreds of air handling units, thousands of fan coil units and many other processing units that utilizes the chilled water as a cooling medium. By injecting an approved food grade dye into the chilled water system, the teams surveyed the mechanical equipment rooms, laboratories, offices, other occupied/unoccupied spaces; drainage systems within the facilities and in the manholes in the entire drainage systems on the campus site. As a result, many leaks and wasteful practices were discovered, repaired and discontinued. This resulted in an average savings of 1,472,000 gallons of water makeup per month, which also provides savings in the cost of water, chemical treatment, energy in chiller usage and sewerage and waste charges.
Energy & Fleet
Land Holding Organization/Small Group
LED Lighting and PV Array (NIH/ORF/FMB/RTP)
Kyle Hawkins, Joseph A. Shealey, Alison Karver, Victor Stancil, Brian Vannatten, Shawn O'Neal, John Barbee
The NIH Office of Research Facilities, Facilities Management Branch accomplished two significant energy savings over the past year through the installation of a 60 KW PV array and the conversion of all exterior roadway and walkway lighting from metal halide to LED on the NIEHS campus in Research Triangle Park, NC. The project resulted in a net energy savings of approximately 300,000 kwh and $18,000 annually as well as the recycling of approximately 300 tons of construction debris. These projects also led to greatly increased campus safety and security as well as reduced maintenance time.
Non Land Holding Organization/Small Group
HHS Energy and Water Group (OS)
Ted Kozak, Bruce Jue, Leila Nikkhoo, Richard Wermers, Greg Leifer, Robert High, Paul Cammaroto, Diana Hirshfeld
The HHS Energy and Water Workgroup consist of energy and water managers from each OPDIV and two headquarters personnel. The workgroup has been working diligently on reducing energy and water intensity at HHS owned facilities throughout the OPDIVs. The workgroup understands the importance of this primary task as energy use is by far the primary contributor to HHS carbon emissions. In addition, energy and water use reduction relates to a direct savings on operating budgets. In the past five years, energy use intensity has decreased by 10.7% and water use intensity by 5.7%.
More information about the HHS Green Champion Award Program and a full list of HHS Green Champion Award Winners can be viewed at: http://go.usa.gov/chVs3.