Small Steps, Big Impact: Sustainability Efforts at WCCLS

Over the years, WCCLS has made continuous improvements to save time, money, and energy. These savings can be felt by everyone, from WCCLS employees to staff at member libraries and even patrons! 

WCCLS provides delivery service between 16 member libraries so that patrons can pick up and return items at the location nearest them. Courier service saved patrons an estimated $1,452,961 in gas money last year, according to the WCCLS data team. Fewer cars on the road also means less emissions; without courier services, an estimated 8.2 million pounds of carbon dioxide would have been released into the air if patrons had to drive to and from the owning library to pick up and return materials.   

“In a nutshell, we pick up books, drop them off, and repeat,” says Lee Evans, the Materials Movement Supervisor. “How we do that really matters,” Lee, along with his team of 6, are responsible for moving 2.5 million library items around Washington County each year.

An instrumental tool in this process is the central sorter. The machine was first introduced to WCCLS in 2018 and allowed us to automate the sorting process rather than doing it by hand. Then in 2020, the sorter was expanded in size to double the amount of sorting capacity. “What used to take us 6 hours, now takes us 2.5 hours. It’s tremendously more efficient,” says Lee. The central sorter also saves 24.5 hours of staff time daily countywide. 

A more recent improvement was made to the delivery routes. The team drives a fleet of trucks to and from all libraries daily. The previous routes required 4 vehicles to be on the road every day, 2 vehicles in the morning and 2 vehicles in the afternoon. When summer rolled around, the drivers on the afternoon routes had a greater chance of encountering high temperatures. County follows heat index regulations to ensure employees’ safety during warmer months. With those regulations in mind, Lee conducted an experiment.

“I got the idea last summer when I put a thermometer in the back of a truck during an afternoon route,” Lee says “The temperature was 125 degrees!” As a result, he was able to optimize the routes so that all deliveries started in the early morning and finished by 11:30 am, before the hottest time of day. The new routes now require only 3 vehicles, which reduced the amount of fuel by 25%.

“We’re all in this together,” says Sarah Erskine, a Management Analyst at WCCLS. “The more efficient we are with our time and energy, the more efforts we can take to help everyone.” One efficiency that Sarah mentions is the documentation archiving process. By digitizing documents, the Business Operations team can quickly find historical data that will help them with current and future projects.

“As a contracts person, I can simply search our secure database and find the exact directive I need in a fraction of the time it would have taken me to physically shuffle through a 50-pound box of paperwork!” she says.

Sarah also mentions that since the majority of WCCLS staff have a hybrid work schedule, the WCCLS office can operate at a smaller physical footprint that is reserved for teams who need the space to conduct in-person work that involves physical library materials. “From my personal experience as a hybrid employee, I have saved so much time, money, and gas,” she says “These savings also contribute to a good work/life balance.”

Sarah also spoke about the countywide sustainability effort to surplus items. When WCCLS no longer needs an item, the Business Operations team takes it to the county’s Procurement department. Other county departments can “shop” the surplus items. “We always consider the lifecycle of the items that we buy – from the day that we procure it to the day that we no longer need it,” says Sarah. “The surplus process helps us find items new homes.”

You can see some of the sustainability efforts in action in our Booked and Busy video series on YouTube. WCCLS is committed to continuously improving our sustainability efforts to ensure that we are able to connect people with life-changing library services for many years to come.