• Encourage sustainable practices
• Identify and share success stories, best practices, and other tools to make sustainable practices easier to adopt and maintain
• Provide training, awareness, and outreach
• Assist in coordinating and advancing sustainability policies across agencies
• Publicly advocate and support sustainable practices and policies
• Measure and report on agencies' progress

• Environmental Management Systems
• Waste Prevention and Recycling
• Green Purchasing
• Electronics Stewardship
• Sustainable Buildings
• Industrial Ecology

On April 30, 2002, President George W. Bush appointed John L. Howard, Jr. as the Federal Environmental Executive. Previously, Mr. Howard was the Senior Associate Director for the White House Council on Environmental Quality; the Environment and Natural Resources Policy Director for then-Governor Bush; and an environmental attorney in Washington, D.C., and Austin, Texas. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Baylor University and received his law degree from the University of Texas, where he was the administrative editor of the Texas Law Review.

Edwin Pinero was appointed by the White House to serve as the Deputy Federal Environmental Executive in the Office of the Federal Environmental Executive. Previously, Mr. Pinero was owner of Pinero Consulting, an environmental management consulting firm in Pennsylvania. He worked for then-Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge as Director of the Bureau of Environmental Sustainability in the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, as well as the State Energy Director. Over his 22-year career, Mr. Pinero has worked for various environmental consulting firms, taught graduate courses in environmental management for Duquesne University, and was a geologist with Mobil Oil Corporation. He has a Bachelors Degree in Geology from the State University of New York, and a Masters Degree in Geology from Texas A&M; University.

The Task Force advises and assists the Steering Committee and the Federal agencies, makes recommendations concerning policy, facilitates implementation, provides a centralized focal point for assistance and direction, and helps educate and train people in the requirements of the Executive Order. The Steering Committee members are among the President's chief advisors on environmental and acquisition issues, underscoring that successful integration of environmental and energy considerations into an agency's daily operations requires close coordination by environmental, acquisition, and facilities staff.

The Office of the Federal Environmental Executive has its genesis in the issue of resource conservation. The Federal government has a long history of promoting conservation by recycling, extending at least as far back as World War II with the War Production Board's call to Americans to save scrap metal. The last three decades, however, have seen an increased attention to promoting energy conservation and recycling across America, as well as within the Federal government.

In 1976, Congress passed and President Gerald Ford signed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Section 6002 requires agencies to develop affirmative procurement programs to purchase EPA-designated recycled content products. The Federal buy-recycled program is intended to create and sustain markets for materials recycled in our home and office recycling programs, as well as industrial by-products that otherwise would be landfilled.

In 1991, President George Bush issued Executive Order 12780, Federal Agency Recycling and the Council on Federal Recycling and Procurement Policy. This order created the Federal Recycling Coordinator (designated by the EPA Administrator), the Council on Federal Recycling and Procurement Policy, and agency recycling coordinators within each of the major agencies, all in order to increase the level of recycling and purchase of recycled-content products.

President Bill Clinton's 1993 Executive Order 12873, Federal Acquisition, Waste Prevention, and Recycling, created the position of the Federal Environmental Executive (designated by the President), as well as Agency Environmental Executives. These positions were specifically intended to bolster support for recycling and the procurement of recycled-content products. This order also set the standard that all federal office paper is to contain at least 30 percent post-consumer recycled content. President Clinton named Fran McPoland as the first Federal Environmental Executive.

In 1998, President Clinton issued Executive Order 13101, Greening the Government Through Waste Prevention, Recycling and Federal Acquisition, which built on the prior orders and also created the White House Task Force on Waste Prevention and Recycling.

OFEE's new mission statement is "Promoting sustainable environmental stewardship throughout the federal government." OFEE is devote its time, talents, and resources to six priorities that expand its historical core waste prevention and recycling priorities into the related areas of green buildings and electronics stewardship. OFEE is helping Federal agencies to provide a strategic framework for sustainability through the use of environmental management systems. OFEE also is exploring coordination of government funding programs to support industrial ecology.