The environmental team at Tobyhanna Army Depot uses a comprehensive, systematic approach to managing the environmental programs at the installation, and that approach in return helps to drive real results in a number of critical areas. It also gained them recognition at both the Secretary of Army and Secretary of Defense Environmental awards program where they won the 2024 Environmental Quality category for an industrial installation.
Through an extensive inspection process as well as ISO 14001 internal and external audits, the team seeks continuous improvement, detects environmental deficiencies, and initiates corrective actions, using cross-functional environmental objective and target teams from across the installation to tackle environmental challenges.
“Our team deploys stringent program management that takes pride in ensuring that the environmental programs at the depot are constantly improving. It is our goal to continually to make strides in enhancing the natural environment while simultaneously supporting the Army mission,” said Col. James L. Crocker, depot commander.
Crocker pointed to four areas of success for the EB team, including a 300% increase in wood recycling efficiency, creation of an Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Justice Pilot Site, continued reduction in water usage which created savings of $11,000, and a solid waste diversion rate above 50%.
The wood recycling efforts were bolstered by the purchase of a wood auger compactor to significantly reduce the various sized pallets and boxes headed to the landfill to much smaller and easier to handle pieces of wood. The compaction process produces a single landfill load that is equivalent in size to three- to four-loads of unprocessed wood.
In other solid waste management, the installation has set a goal of recycling at least 50% of the total solid waste stream, thereby diverting it from the landfill. In fiscal year 2022 the team exceeded that goal and diverted 54% of solid waste and was projected to recycle 54% percent of this waste the following year.
In FY 2022, the depot volunteered for the Environmental Justice pilot program managed by the EPA Federal Facilities Restoration and Reuse Office that included pilot sites around the nation from Navy, Air Force, and Army installations. Each site conducted an EJ survey and discussed ways to better involve at-risk communities in remediation activities. From this ongoing work, the team has added bi-lingual warning signs for environmental hazards, published public notifications in both English and Spanish and has worked with surrounding communities to determine ways to better communicate with marginalized communities.
The water usage at the installation has also been dramatically reduced, due to the team’s efforts. In FY 2022, the installation pumped 34 million gallons of potable water. In FY 2023, the total was projected to be 28.9 million gallons, and the team reports that the average reduction in water usage is down more than 11 million gallons from FY 2019 levels.
Another important initiative at the depot is the creation of an apiary as part of their Pollinator Program. The apiary, featuring pollinator friendly plantings such as milkweed, reuses land from a closed landfill that can’t be used otherwise, and provides habitat and support to honeybees, the Eastern Monarch butterfly and other pollinators.
“This apiary does more than just benefit pollinators, but bolsters the entire ecosystem,” said Mr. Jim Wisnewski, deputy garrison commander. “For example, one honeybee colony is responsible for pollinating up to 250 million flowering plants per day – that has a big impact on the entire installation.”
The environmental team members have attended a beekeeping course at a local college environmental learning center to grow their knowledge of bees and beekeeping to help the hives thrive at the site.
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