With spring in the air and Earth Day fast approaching, Malene McElroy, sustainability coordinator in the Environmental Engineering & Occupational Health Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, says it doesn’t take a green thumb to promote environmental awareness in the workplace and at home.
“You just need a green heart,” she said.
This Earth Day, McElroy is challenging colleagues to answer the call, “Restore Our Earth: What Can YOU Do?” – and NASA is gearing up to do more than ever before. In February, NASA named Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, to the new post of acting senior climate advisor and will work closely with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Office of Management and Budget. In March the agency officially joined the newly formed White House National Climate Task Force.
As spring blooms and COVID-19 quarantine restrictions tentatively begin to ease, McElroy and her “green team” – environmental engineers, scientists, and other specialists from across Marshall – are encouraging team members and their families to spend more time outside, while continuing to practice social distancing and other safety tactics.
“Earth Day offers a perfect opportunity to briefly step away from our technology-driven lives and reconnect with our favorite green places, to reflect on the world we share and what we need to do to better care for it, and for one another, in light of our changing climate,” she said. “This is a pivotal moment for NASA, for the nation, and for the world.”
As sustainability coordinator, McElroy works closely with Bill Marks, Marshall’s acting sustainability officer, and Rhonda Truitt, Marshall’s energy and water conservation manager, to implement federal guidelines on cost-saving energy and water conservation efforts. She also serves as coordinator for Marshall’s Environmental Management System, working to boost the center’s environmental program by educating the workforce on environmental requirements and emerging sustainability opportunities.
Marks and McElroy work closely with Denise Thaller, director of NASA’s Environmental Management Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, with their U.S. Army counterparts and civilian contractors across Redstone Arsenal and at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, and with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.
Under McElroy’s leadership, the green team produces a quarterly newsletter to keep the Marshall workforce updated on new federal regulations and NASA green campaigns, and to promote water, power, and fuel conservation in creative and engaging ways.
“There’s been a dramatic, positive culture shift in our approach to environmental management over the past 20 years,” she said. “From turning off lights and computers in our offices and practicing more thoughtful water conservation tactics, to adopting new, fuel-efficient vehicles and more environmentally friendly building materials and manufacturing techniques, we’ve made a lot of progress.”
But that was the easy part, she said. “Now it’s time to tackle the big projects, reducing our carbon footprint and eliminating hazardous and solid wastes altogether, if we can, fundamentally changing the way we live and work on the planet in order to sustain it for generations to come,” she said.
Originally hailing from the San Jose, California, area, McElroy earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 2000 and a master’s degree in environmental engineering from Rice University in Houston in 2002. Before she joined NASA full-time in 2013, she was a CH2M HILL contractor supporting Marshall’s Environmental Engineering and Occupational Health Office for nearly a decade.
She spent much of her early career at Marshall refining her expertise in stormwater and wastewater management – which involved a lot of splashing through streams and marshes, scrutinizing the health of nearby plant and aquatic animal life. Over the years, she enthusiastically pursued a broader green reach: helping launch Marshall’s single-stream recycling program, reviewing facility designs and leading building inspections, and managing the center’s chemical bar-coding program to safeguard chemical supplies for research and testing purposes. She even led site cleanup actions at Michoud from 2016-2019, shuttling back and forth to Louisiana.
“I’m a city girl, at heart, but I never minded getting my hands dirty,” she said. “And I’ve always enjoyed having a chance to positively affect the environment, to restore or maintain natural places and improve a piece of the physical world.”
From 2013-2016, she took that role a step further, teaching environmental regulations at the University of North Alabama in Florence. There, she acquainted engineering and industrial hygienist students with U.S. environmental laws, including the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and more.
“Teaching was a great experience – not just reviewing the law, but actively discussing it with students, debating how laws are passed and applied in real life,” she said. She wouldn’t mind returning to teaching when she retires from federal service, she said – wading back into the learning stream, still doing her part to make the world better.
McElroy and her husband, Sam, who founded and runs a Huntsville-area engineering firm, live in Harvest, Alabama, with their three daughters. They’re active in their church and do regular volunteer work in the community.