The News Tribune

By Ian Demsky

December 21st, 2008

What would you guess is the biggest contributor to Metro Parks Tacoma’s carbon emissions? Electricity? Natural gas? Office paper?

According to a consultant’s analysis, it’s staff commuting. Employees driving to and from work accounted for about 40 percent of the 4,600 metric tons of carbon dioxide created yearly by Metro Parks activities.

Strategies for making the agency more “green” and reducing its carbon footprint were laid out in a recent report by Sustainable Business Consulting of Seattle.

The consultant recommended the agency cut its carbon footprint by 15 percent below 1990 levels by 2012 and 40 percent by 2020. Other goals include reducing water use by 50 percent of current levels by 2020 and eventually sending zero waste to the landfill.

The Metro Parks Board hopes to dig deeper into the specifics of the findings early next year, Commissioner Ryan Mello said last week.

Mello said the public expects the park district to be an environmental leader.

“It’s my expectation that we fulfill that expectation and lead – without affecting recreation and parks services,” he said.

Parks environmental educational coordinator John Garner said some of the recommendations were “quite ambitious.”

“They’ll challenge us as an organization,” he said. “But the circumstance of climate change really does require increased efforts in the stewardship and sustainability realm.”

Among the consultant’s recommendations: turning off computers at night, restricting air travel, not buying bottled water for meetings, setting all printers and copiers to automatically print double-sided, and purchasing green products such as EnergyStar-rated appliances.

Metro Parks has already been finding ways to be greener, said urban forester Kathy Sutalo, who heads up the parks district’s Green Taskforce.

Some of those items include: reducing gas and electricity use, offering car-pooling incentives, adding hybrids to its automotive fleet, and limiting use of toxic cleaning products and fertilizers.

“We don’t use synthetic fertilizers in most of our parks,” Sutalo said. “Only on the sand-based sports fields, where the organic fertilizers don’t work as well. We mainly use turkey poop.”

Green pest control methods have been used instead of pesticides at W.W. Seymour Botanical Conservatory in Wright Park since 1991, she said. They include soap sprays, rotating plants out and the occasional release of beneficial insects.

Several years ago, Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium cut its power usage for its popular Zoolights exhibit roughly in half by adding LED lights, Garner said. And the zoo purchases more “green power” – generated from renewable sources such as wind and water – yearly than is used for the entire display.

The consultants noted that the zoo and Northwest Trek have already earned the highest certification level – five stars – by the EnviroStars organization, which means they “go well beyond others in their industry in their commitment to be environmentally responsible.”

“It’s something we’re very proud of,” John Houck, the zoo’s deputy director, said in a recent interview. “We’re already doing many of the things the consultants recommended out at the zoo. As a green organization, that’s right in our wheelhouse.”