The Foreign Service Journal, April 2014

32 APRIL 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL embassy staff to utilize refillable water canteens. Are alternative fuels or electric vehicle charging facilities available in your host country? Consider this when making fleet upgrades. Beyond location awareness, baselining is a critical prepara- tion step that will help you understand your mission’s relation- ship with energy and resources and its impact on the surround- ing environment. What are the resources going into and out of the mission? How much power is used? How much water is used? How much waste is produced? Answering these questions will help quantify what resources the embassy consumes and identify the project that will have the most impact. While large, visible projects can be exciting, sometimes something as simple as an insulation upgrade can provide a better return. Finally, set clear goals for your mission. Goals should be achievable, have a timeline including key milestones, and be quantifiable. Start small and build incrementally on each success. Keep in mind that joining the League of Green Embassies does not mean that your post has to become expert in every aspect of sustainability. Member missions simply see the value in striving to make better use of resources and having a smaller impact on the environment. Raise Awareness and Educate. Lighting unoccupied spaces wastes energy and costs money. Promotion of efficient use of energy is a low-cost measure with real impact. Setting zero- waste goals challenges employees to understand their relation- ship with resources and impact on their surroundings. Simple measures, such as residential energy scorecards and other edu- cational materials, can help people understand their personal energy use. Behavior modification, whether encouraging public transit use or recycling, is a cost-free activity with huge potential results. Upgrade Lighting. A sizable component of our energy con- sumption is attributed to lighting. Incandescent and fluorescent lighting is easily replaced with high-performance, efficient light-emitting diode bulbs. An exhaustive catalog of replace- ment lighting is available from the Department of Energy’s Next Generation Luminaire competition winners. The NGL program’s rigorous testing regimen for all submitted fixtures ensures you’re Green teams select projects with the highest return through location analysis, baselining and setting clear goals. Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST) Got an interesting story to tell? Want to read one? The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training is a non-gov- ernmental, nonprofit organi- zation located at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute. Founded in 1986, ADST advances understand- ing of American diplomacy and supports training of foreign affairs personnel. We sponsor a publishing program and our collection of more than 1800 oral history interviews includes such fascinating interviewees as Prudence Bushnell, Terence Todman, and Kathleen Turner. Excerpts from the collection highlight the monumental, the horrifying, the thought-provoking, and the absurd. They reflect the reality of diplomacy, warts and all, mak- ing them a great resource for foreign affairs profession- als, scholars, journalists, and anyone else who likes a great read. Check us out at www.adst.org.