Naval Support Activity Bethesda (NSAB) celebrated Earth Week with a base-wide cleanup and an information fair showcasing NASA research and the importance of recycling.
“[It’s] so people become aware about the environment around them,” said Alexia Martinez, Naval Facilities Engineering Command Washington environmental scientist. “[These] types of activities bring people together and they see the base more as not just as where you work … but as its own community.”
Twenty-five people gathered to collect trash around the 245-acre campus April 20, where they collected 212 pounds of trash, picking up items such as PVC pipes, safety glasses and other litter.
“I just wanted to help out, I hadn’t volunteered in a while and I thought this was a good case,” said Hospitalman Ariel Janifer.
NSAB Commanding Officer Capt. Marvin L. Jones said people should remember to take care of the Earth not just one day of the year, but every day.
“If you see something that could be picked up, it’s easy to walk around past it,” Jones said. “It takes much more thought, focus and conviction to stop and pick up that trash.”
Culinary Specialist 2nd Class Oprah Nin said she participated because she wanted a clean workplace.
“It’s already pretty clean, but we can always do something extra to help out the environment in some type of way,” Nin said.
Culinary Specialist 2nd Class Heather Hoban liked how the activity brought people together.
“This is our home, our environment,” she said. “It’s nice to be able to keep it clean.”
On April 19, those who stopped by the Warrior Café were greeted by a giant globe of the Earth onto which NASA scientists projected planetary data the organization has been collecting from space for the past 40 years.
Some of the data included was changes in ocean chemistry, such as water temperature differences, groundwater depletion, space weather and the path of an upcoming solar eclipse visible in North America Aug. 21, 2017.
“[Space Weather division] provides daily weather forecasts to the military, to the aviation community, pipeline community, because the currents that are produced by these storms on the surface of the sun create very high levels of charged ion particles that hit the poles of the earth and create these ground currents,” explained NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Engineer Maurice Henderson. “We’re always concerned about knowing when that happens.”
He said the “Science on the Sphere” exhibit travels the world to connect people with the Earth and the solar system.
“We want to make people sense that we live on this little blue marble that’s precious and we have to protect it,” he said.
Wendy Qassis with Montgomery County Environmental Protection handed out information about recycling as well as coffee tumblers and other items made from recycled materials to remind people of the county’s goal to recycle 70 percent of its solid waste by 2020.
“We want to make sure people know how to recycle and why it’s important to recycle,” she said.
| Date Taken: | 04.27.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 04.27.2017 14:25 |
| Story ID: | 231795 |
| Location: | BETHESDA, MD, US |
| Web Views: | 17 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, NSAB Celebrates Earth Day with Base Cleanup and Fair, by Andrew Damstedt, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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