The Muslim world, representing one-fifth of the world’s population, is also among the hardest hit by the impacts of climate change. A March 2016 NASA study, for example, found that a drought hitting the eastern Mediterranean countries of Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey since 1998 was likely the worst to hit the region in the past 900 years. The NASA team behind the study found that the drought was caused, at least in part, by climate change.

Many Muslim countries also rely on their rich oil reserves to propel their economies, and all, like the US, burn climate-warming fossil fuels for energy. But if a growing movement of green-minded Muslims around the world has anything to say about it, that reliance on fossil fuels in the Muslim world could be in for a major shift.

In 2015, leading Muslim scholars from around the globe gathered at the International Islamic Climate Change Symposium to hammer out the Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change (IslamicClimateDeclaration.org).

“We call on Muslims, wherever they may be … to tackle habits, mindsets, and the root causes of climate change, environmental degradation, and the loss of biodiversity in their particular sphere of influence, following the example of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), and bring about a resolution to the challenges that now face us,” the declaration states.

In April 2016—on the same day representatives from more than 150 nations signed the Paris Agreement on climate change—the Declaration authors presented their document to the United Nations General Assembly, where they also announced the launch of the Global Muslim Climate Network (GMCN). GMCN is a coalition of scholars, philanthropists, experts, and Muslim non-governmental organizations, including Islamic Relief Worldwide and the interfaith organization GreenFaith, who are working across the Muslim world on solutions to curb the climate crisis.

Many Muslim countries rely on their rich oil reserves....But if a growing movement of green-minded Muslims around the world has anything to say about it, that reliance on fossil fuels in the Muslim world could be in for a major shift.

At GMCN’s launch, the group called for all Muslim nations to increase the amount of renewable energy to 20 percent or more of their total energy mix. The group also called for Muslim investors to employ environmental, social, and governance criteria in their investment portfolios.

Meaningful action has already begun. The Moroccan government has been publicizing its program, launched in 2014, to retrofit all of the 15,000 mosques it owns across the country—some nearly 900 years old—with solar panels and energy- efficient technologies.

As Muslim activists spread their ecological message across the Islamic world, they’re also joining together with environmentalists from other faiths, finding common ground and forming cross-cultural bonds that are helping to break the stereotypes that lead to hate—all while caring for the Earth.

Connecting the Qur’an and Climate

Nana Firman is one of the leaders behind the Islamic Declaration and a co-founder of the GMCN. Today, she hopes the Muslim world can lead the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, spurred on by teachings in the Qur’an.

She first started noticing the interconnections between religion and environmentalism while working abroad for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). After the 2004 tsunami, which caused mass destruction in countries bordering the Indian Ocean, Firman joined WWF’s rebuilding efforts in Indonesia with her background in urban and industrial design. But she found herself having a tough time persuading local people to take sustainability into consideration in their rebuilding efforts.

Some colleagues noted that the area where she worked, the Indonesian province of Aceh, was predominantly Muslim and deeply religious, and they suggested using religion as a way to find common ground. Firman ended up going back to her own Islamic faith to look for environmental messages.

She found plenty. For example, the Qur’an states: “Eat and drink from the provision of Allah, and do not commit abuse on the Earth, spreading corruption.”

So she started connecting the dots between the environmental stewardship she wanted to catalyze and the faith she shared with the community.

“The people understood better when I actually used religious teachings to emphasize my points,” she says. “I got involved with the religious leader, and then people started to get involved in my programs. From then on, whether I worked on sustainable cities or climate- change issues, I tried to incorporate my own faith also.”

When Firman moved to the US in 2012, she found that American Muslims she met “didn’t have the connection between the Islamic teaching and the protection of the environment. Somehow, they thought those were two different things, like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s cool to be a green activist, but I’m a Muslim.’” When she visited a mosque in Southern California in 2013 for the breaking of that year’s Ramadan fast, she was surprised at the waste she saw there.

After the prayer service, Firman spoke to the Imam, the mosque’s leader, about how to reduce waste— and what doing so had to do with the teachings of the Qur’an. He was so impressed, he welcomed her to speak to worshipers on the issue.

That speaking engagement led to many others, and today, Firman often travels nationally and abroad to talk to Muslims about sustainability practices. In 2015, she was named a White House Champion of Change.

“As Muslims, we have a responsibility to take care of our world and this planet as the khalifa [steward] of this Earth,” she said in an interview at the 2016 UN climate conference in Marrakesh, which she attended on behalf of GCMN.

A Common Care For People

Muslim environmentalists like Firman are also reaching out to people from other faith traditions—and vice versa—to join together in spreading their message of caring for Creation.

In 2013, Firman joined GreenFaith, where she now works part-time as the Muslim outreach director. GreenFaith (greenfaith.org) is an interfaith organization that has organizers from many religions reach out to worshippers around the country. It provides educational resources linking religion and environment, and it brings people of different beliefs together for environmental stewardship events. The organization is one of several behind the GMCN.

Founded in 1992 in New Jersey, GreenFaith is an interfaith environmental organization that works with a diverse range of faith groups globally. With Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist partners, in the last four years alone, GreenFaith has helped lead the faith-based fossil-fuel divestment movement; led organizing that brought over 15,000 people of faith to the 2014 People’s Climate March in New York; coordinated an international, multifaith campaign in support of the Paris Climate Agreement; and led a march into St. Peter’s Square in Rome to celebrate the release of Pope Francis’s environmental encyclical. The organization has trained hundreds of faith leaders for environmental action and facilitated financing for over a megawatt of solar installations on faith facilities.

"It doesn’t mean that we worship the Earth. It does mean that there is a belief that we have a moral accountability for the way in which we treat the Earth, along with how we treat other people.” - The Reverend Fletcher Harper

The Reverend Fletcher Harper is an Episcopal priest and the executive director of GreenFaith. Harper says what brought him to GreenFaith was a recognition that he had many of his connections with God while outdoors in nature, which he thinks is common with people across religions.

“There are real, legitimate, and genuine differences between religions, culturally and theologically. Within that diversity though, there’s a clear sense, with religious groups, that we have a responsibility to care for the Earth, that the Earth is a remarkable gift for which we are to be grateful,” Harper says. “It doesn’t mean that we worship the Earth. It does mean that there is a belief that we have a moral accountability for the way in which we treat the Earth, along with how we treat other people.”

Indeed, Harper, Firman, and others, including Pope Francis, see pollution mitigation as part of their respective religious mandates to care for the poor.

“A theme that is really powerful and shared among religions is the priority we need to place on looking out for those who are the most vulnerable,” Harper says. “While it’s very clear the pollution hurts everybody, it hurts the poor the worst, and it hurts racial minorities the worst. And that’s wrong.”

Harper stresses that particularly in today’s divisive political climate, “it’s beyond vital that people of faith register their belief, publicly, that we must protect the environment and act on climate change.”

He suggests finding members of your congregation who are interested in sustainability and environmental topics and meeting regularly, as well as going to faith leaders with a request for a sermon on the topic.

Growing Solidarity

Divisive language ignited voters last year—Trump’s election was a clear loss for environmentalists, and also for Muslims, as peaceful people were lumped in with terrorist groups. But Nana Firman is full of hope as she talks about the months and years to come. She says since the election, there has been a huge outpouring of support for the Muslim communities where she lives, support people in those groups didn’t know existed before.

She also is quick to acknowledge her identity is not the only one that has come under fire; she talks about her mosques making new ties to other minority groups. In 2015, she connected with a group called Islam in Spanish, which has been trying to build bridges between Muslims and Spanish speakers. In at least a few cities where there are large communities of both groups, including Los Angeles, Houston, and New York, hate speech and governmental threats directed at Latin-Americans and Muslims have inspired both communities to reach out to each other in solidarity.

Firman says that the two communities have found things in common when discussing the environment, due to both having strong agriculture background and a culture of sharing communal goods. She says these few cultural nuances connect many.

“Even though a lot of us are not happy with the [political] situation, groups that did not even have any communication before are starting to communicate because of it,” she says. “There’s been this outpouring of support that we didn’t even think about before.”

On January 28th, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance declared a one-hour strike: From six to seven p.m., they would not pick up or drop off passengers at JFK Airport, to protest a Trump executive order banning refugees, as well as travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries, from entering the US.

“We stand in solidarity with all of our peace-loving neighbors against this inhumane, cruel, and unconstitutional pure act of bigotry,” the union declared in a statement.

Uber, the popular ride-sharing service, crossed the virtual picket line, drawing fire from angry users. Though the company disabled “surge” pricing, or a rise in rates during busy periods, for that hour, critics still perceived that Uber was profiting from the strike. The hashtag #DeleteUber started trending like wildfire. Further exacerbating Uber’s poor optics was the fact that CEO Travis Kalanick was a member of Trump’s economic advisory group.

Meanwhile, Lyft, Uber’s chief competitor, swooped in to pick up the pieces—in the form of disgruntled former Uber users. Lyft executives remain mum on whether or not their drivers picked up passengers from JFK or not during the taxi strike, and though its executives may not regularly break bread with the president, Trump advisor Carl Icahn did make a $100 million investment in Lyft in 2015, according to Fortune. But when Lyft quickly released a statement condemning the Muslim and refugee ban and promised a $1 million donation to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as #DeleteUber swept across the nation, ride-sharers across the country swooned. For the first time in its history, the number of customers downloading the Lyft app beat Uber the day after the strike.

With all of this consumer pressure bearing down on him, Kalanick quickly buckled. Just a day later, he publicly condemned the “wrong and unjust immigration ban” and pledged a $3 million fund for Uber drivers affected by the ban. By February 2nd, Kalanick had quit Trump’s advisory council.

“The Uber-Lyft incident illustrates just how much power individuals have when we band together to demand corporate accountability,” says Todd Larsen, Green America’s executive co-director. “We can demand that companies stand up to hate, and they have to listen, because we’re their customers.”

Whether driven by their CEO’s moral compass or an eye for their bottom lines, corporations are standing up for immigrants, Muslims, and other targeted populations. Green businesses are also leading the way, without any prompting from outraged customers.

Standing Up To The White House

Lyft isn’t the only representative from Corporate America speaking out against Trump’s Muslim and refugee ban. In the aftermath of the ban, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky released a statement on Twitter, stressing that “not allowing countries [sic] or refugees into America is not right.” The company pledged to match donations up to $100,000 to the National Immigration Law Center, the International Refugee Assistance Project, and the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Furthermore, it offered free housing to refugees and others who were left stranded by the travel bans, asking Airbnb hosts to volunteer their home or apartment and subsidizing other host facilities.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg publicly shared the story of his wife Priscilla’s parents, who were refugees from China and Vietnam. “Had we turned away refugees a few decades ago, Priscilla’s family wouldn’t be here today,” he wrote.

Google created a $4 million crisis fund to support four immigrant rights organizations, the ACLU, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the IRC, and the UN Refugee Agency. Starbucks pledged to hire 10,000 refugees in 75 countries over the next five years. Instacart donated $100,000 to the ACLU and announced the creation of office hours with immigration attorneys for employees. LinkedIn pledged to expand its existing Welcome Talent program, in partnership with the IRC, “to help newly settled refugees more quickly find jobs that leverage the skills they are bringing into the US economy.”

Even the billionaire Koch brothers, who have provided millions in campaign funds for many Republican politicians and for vice-president Mike Pence, announced that they would fight Trump’s refugee and Muslim ban.

Late in February, 97 companies, including Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Levi Strauss, and others, filed an amicus brief to the Ninth Circuit Court stressing the importance of immigrants to the economy and society.

“Immigrants or their children founded more than 200 of the companies on the Fortune 500 list, including Apple, Kraft, Ford, General Electric, AT&T, Google, McDonald’s, Boeing, and Disney,” the brief read. “... Long-term, this instability [caused by the executive order] will make it far more difficult and expensive for US companies to hire the world’s best talent—and impede them from competing in the global marketplace.”

Inclusive Before Inclusive Was Cool

Green businesses have a long history of taking risks in the name of doing what’s right. Many were standing up for marginalized communities and saying no to hate long before the Uber- Lyft drama took place. And, unlike the corporations mentioned above, they take great care to ensure sustainability throughout their supply chains and across their entire business models, so you can feel good all around about being their customer.

Troubled by the rise in hate crimes, particularly against the US Muslim and Arab communities, the Main Street Alliance launched its Hate Has No Business Here campaign in 2015. The Alliance is an organization of independent companies advocating for public policies that promote vibrant small businesses, healthy communities, and social responsibility.

The Main Street Alliance is urging businesses nationwide to print out and display its anti-hate posters in their offices and shop-fronts. Community Forklift turned theirs into a huge banner, seen here hanging in front of their Maryland warehouse store with several employees. Photo courtesy of Community Forklift.

The Alliance created a “Hate Has No Business Here” poster and put a high-resolution PDF on its website for businesses to download for free and post in their stores and offices. The poster, pictured on p. 16, makes a point to emphasize that Black lives matter and to welcome women, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, refugees, and people of all faiths.

After Trump signed his Muslim and refugee bans, the Alliance’s national director, Amanda Ballantyne, came out swinging: “Today’s executive orders will not make America safer, stronger, or more prosperous. ... Research and experience show that the vast majority of refugees are working and paying taxes within a few short months. Refugees start businesses, create jobs, buy homes and cars, and renew neighborhoods. That means a stronger, more inclusive and thriving Main Street. ... Together, [our members] celebrate diversity, create safe spaces, and send a clear message of inclusion and opposition to this xenophobic policy.”

The Alliance also launched a petition in late January against Trump’s executive actions. The petition had received 1,400 signatures as of mid-April.

In a similar action, Green America’s Green Business Network® (GBN) and the American Sustainable Business (ASBC) Council are working with our green business members to sign on to a letter against the executive orders.

“As American business leaders and employers, we stand in opposition to the recent executive order on immigration,” the letter reads. “We believe the climate of fear and uncertainty that it fosters in our customers, our employees, and our communities will be damaging to business. The ban undermines the interconnections and workforce mobility upon which we depend. The Executive Order also runs counter to basic constitutional due process, which is essential to a well-functioning economy.”

Less than a week after the letter was launched, more than 300 businesses had signed on.

Power In Compassion

Individual businesses are also taking steps to address hate. Community Forklift(m*), a building-materials reuse warehouse in Edmonston, MD, put up the Main Street Alliance’s poster back in December 2015—and took things a step farther.

“It fit our ethos, and our staff loved it, so we put the sign on our door right away,” says Ruthie Mundell, Community Forklift’s director of outreach and education.

“One year later, and hate crimes are on the rise—the polarization has only gotten worse. In response, we decided to turn the little sign into a HUGE banner and now, no one can miss it! When you come to the warehouse, you’ll know that we aim to treat everyone with respect and expect others to do the same.”

The sign meant so much to the Community Forklift team, in part, because the warehouse boasts a culturally diverse clientele and staff, which Mundell stresses is “not just a feel-good thing.” “It gives us an advantage,” she says. “It has helped us survive serious challenges and economic downturns, take advantage of opportunities, and grow to a 40-person operation. Because it is so important to our success, every new employee learns that it is part of their job to create a welcoming environment at Community Forklift. This is a very strong part of the Community Forklift ethos: we lift and build people and communities.”

South-African-owned restaurant chain Nando’s PERi-PERi celebrated inauguration week by displaying its own inclusivity signs in its DC restaurants.

The signs read: “Nando’s PERi- PERi is an Immigrant Employing, Gay Loving, Muslim Respecting, Racism Opposing, Equal Paying, Multi Cultural chicken restaurant where #Everyone Is Welcome.”

Nando’s distributed 60,000 free posters in Washington, DC, and it printed the poster in the free Express newspapers distributed at Metro stations across DC. Individuals can also download the poster at everyoneiswelcome.us. The company donated half of its DC proceeds from inauguration weekend to its “long-standing partner” DC Central Kitchen, which addresses hunger in the District of Columbia.

“Even if you’ve never sat at one of our tables, you’re welcome to stand with us,” said Burton Heiss, CEO of Nando’s PERi- PERi, in a statement. “This is a statement of who we are, and the values that our company and employees hold dear.”

Wildlife photographer Steve Kaye, owner of Steve Kaye Photom in Placentia, CA, doesn’t have a sign in front of his business. In fact, he barely has a sign at all, since he largely works outdoors. But what he does have is a statement on his website supporting the Charter for Compassion.

The Charter, the flagship document of the nonprofit Charter for Compassion International, affirms the need “to make compassion a clear, luminous, and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. ... It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensable to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.”

“There’s a concept here [with the Charter] that I really like, and that’s the concept of cooperative partnerships,” says Kaye. “We’re working in harmony toward something in common. We need more of this type of activity, because through combined efforts, we become stronger.”

Last July, Steve Kaye Photo officially became a partner of the Charter. Partners pledge to “bring an awareness of compassion and compassionate action to everything we do.”

“If someone can scare you with lies and make you hate, they own you,” says Kaye. “If the whole progressive, green community tries to make a run as individuals, we’ll be decimated, because individuals are easy to pick off. If everyone shows up en masse as a unified effort, then it’s overwhelming. There needs to be a unified effort of kindness.”

m* denotes Certified Green Business Member

1. Reduce and Reuse

The less you throw away, the better off the planet will be.

2. Don’t “Wish-cycle”

Get a list of the items your local recycler accepts and put only those into your recycling bins.

3. Use recycling best practices

Fend off recycling contamination with our tips to Rescue Your Recycling.

4. Don’t landfill your food waste

Food waste is the single largest component of waste headed into US landfills, at 18 percent. Instead, it could be turned into rich compost to make the soil healthier and able to sequester more carbon. Check out Green America’s best composting tips.

5. Be mindful about E-Waste

Many “recyclers” send electronic waste to developing countries, where it’s dismantled by hand, harming workers and the environment. Certified E-Stewards recyclers ensure that your electronics are recycled responsibly. Find one near you at e-stewards.org.

6. Recycle your “weird” things

Check out Green America’s list of 21 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Recycle.

7. Support extended producer responsibility

Pressure corporations to use less packaging, make their packaging easily recyclable, and take back hard-to-recycle packaging and products. See p. 10 for ways shareholders are using their power, and encourage your members of Congress to support extended producer responsibility laws at the state and federal level.

8. Network with zero-waste communities

Eco-cycle’s “Zero-Waste Map” allows you to find zero-waste policies and programs working today in communities just like yours across the US. If you’re fighting off an incinerator, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives is a worldwide alliance of more than 800 groups working toward zero waste, environmental justice, and an end to incinerators.

9. Find expert assistance for your community

The Institute for Local Self- Reliance’s Waste to Wealth program helps communities across the US fight incinerators and landfills, and research, demonstrate, and plan recycling, composting, and zero-waste community programs.

For most people, recycling is a good thing. But for some, the impacts of recycling aren’t all positive. In fact, those 94 percent of Americans who recycle have devastating impacts on people of color.

“For those who make environmental and industrial decisions, communities of color — regardless of their class status — have been considered to be throw-away communities; therefore, their land [is most often] used for garbage dumps, waste transfer stations, incinerators, dirty materials recovery facilities, and other waste disposal infrastructure,” says Dr. Robert D. Bullard at Texas Southern University, who has conducted pioneering research and leadership on environmental justice.

In other words, recycling has environmental benefits and also raises some serious issues that all communities must consider to ensure that no one is bearing too much of the trash burden.

Dirty Recycling Does Exist

Community recycling systems come in two main types — and one inherently brings more environmental-justice problems than the other.

When garbage trucks come to collect your curbside recycling bins, their destination is usually a waste transfer station. At the transfer station, waste is sorted:

• Recyclables go to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF)
• Organic waste goes to a municipal composter
• Everything else is taken to a lanfill or incinerator

Rural areas may have some combination of these in one or two locations.

At a MRF (rhymes with “smurf”), recyclables are sorted by type (paper, glass, plastic, etc.), then sent out to facilities that specialize in doing the actual recycling.

Here’s where the key differences lie. MRFs come in two types: clean or dirty.

In a clean MRF, recyclable materials arrive at the facility already separated from regular trash — generally by individuals who sorted them at home. Either all recyclables will arrive commingled, which is called single-stream recycling, or further sorted by separating fiber (paper and cardboard) from containers (metal, plastic, and glass), known as dual-stream recycling. Any additional pre-sorting is known as multi-stream recycling.

Along with the environmental benefits recycling brings come deep concerns that all communities must consider to ensure that no one is bearing too much of the trash burden.

Generally speaking, the more pre-sorting that occurs before the recyclables arrive at the MRF, the cleaner the MRF is. However, single-stream MRFs using best practices to recover as many recyclables as possible can still be top-notch.

A dirty MRF is one where trash and recyclables arrive mixed together, no at-home separation required. It’s the easiest for households because it requires no thinking whatsoever. Just toss everything into the garbage with the knowledge that it will all be sorted right at the end.

Or will it?

The city of Houston is currently fighting off plans for a dirty MRF. The proposed “One Bin for All” initiative would get rid of all recycling programs in the city and build one giant dirty MRF that would accept recyclables mingled with trash for sorting.

The problem with this plan is twofold, says Melanie Scruggs, Houston program director with the Texas Campaign for the Environment (TCE). First, she says, “recyclers are looking for materials that are clean and dry. The biggest problem when you combine trash and recycling is that it contaminates the recyclables and diminishes their value.”

Since China and other major buyers of US recyclables no longer want dirty materials that aren’t cost-effective to recycle, US waste management companies have become much more careful about what they send to recyclers. More often than not, they’ll divert dirty recyclables to landfills or incinerators as a precaution.

Dirty MRFs automatically cause excessive recycling contamination. Therefore, it’s very appealing for operators to pair them with incinerators, says Scruggs.

She points to a dirty MRF in Indianapolis that was trying to get a municipal contract last year. Representatives claimed the facility would recycle 100 percent of what went in, but it actually ended up incinerating 80 percent and recycling only 20.

“Dirty MRFs don’t have to set a particularly high recycling target and can still call themselves a recycling facility,” even with an incinerator on site, Scruggs says.

Incinerators spew a variety of toxins into the air, including carcinogenic dioxin, according to the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA). In addition, they create toxic “bottom ash” containing heavy metals, dioxin, and other pollutants that must then be landfilled.

And while many incineration projects tout their “waste-to-energy” benefits, these are more than offset by the fact that incinerators emit more carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour than any fossil- fuel-based power source, including coal plants, according to GAIA.

Dirty MRFs also often tend to be located in communities of color. Houston’s proposed dirty MRF is no exception.

“The city was originally going to build [the dirty MRF] at an existing landfill or transfer station, which are all located in predominantly minority communities,” says Scruggs. “Houston’s trash is distributed to nine landfills and three recycling facilities right now. We don’t need to consolidate it into one neighborhood.”

But when Dr. Bullard, TCE, and their allies raised this issue with the city, “local officials were quick to respond that Houston would not be burdening one community like that,” says Scruggs. “They changed their tune very quickly.”

Trucks Bring Trash and Air Pollution In

New York City residents and visitors produce over 20,000 tons of solid waste every single day, according to the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA), a network of local environmental- justice organizations.

“About 75 percent of that solid waste is processed in just a handful of communities: specifically in Southeast Queens, South Bronx, and North Brooklyn,” says Priya Mulgaonkar, a policy organizer with NYC-EJA. The population in these areas is primarily African-American and Latino.

The resulting concentration of waste transfer stations and MRFs has been making people in those neighborhoods sick — literally.

“Especially in the summertime, when these facilities aren’t being closed properly, then people live and breathe garbage,” she says. “Some of the [waste-hauling] trucks aren’t sealed, so trash flies off during transport. It’s right in people’s backyards.”

Further exacerbating the pollution in these areas are the trucks that carry trash and recyclables to and from the facilities.

Mulgaonkar notes that the commercial waste haulers, in particular, tend to be very inefficient about their routes: “These huge diesel trucks chug pollution into the streets, traveling an unnecessary amount of miles in these three main communities.”

It’s not a matter of luxury for us. It’s about, ‘Can my kid breathe? Can I breathe? Can we have a healthy and happy family here in the places we have to live?’

Due in part to the number of garbage and recycling trucks that rumble in and out of the South Bronx, a 2013 University of New York study found the area to have one of the highest asthma rates in the US.

Mulgaonkar notes that this extra truck traffic also contributes to safety concerns.

“With over 250 carters competing to pick up enough waste to make a profit, drivers are often pressured by their bosses to speed, cut corners, and to ignore traffic signals,” she says. “This puts pedestrians at risk on the roads, and is also really unfair to the workers themselves, who are largely people of color, undocumented, and formerly incarcerated folks, and who often work 12–14 hour shifts.”

Fighting for Breath

Thanks to activist-led initiatives, municipalities across the country are waking up to the fact that there are ways to recycle that don’t put an undue burden on one neighborhood over another.

The Texas Campaign for the Environment is pushing for the state to embrace true zero waste — no dirty MRFs or incinerators. Austin and Dallas now aim to divert 90 percent of their trash from landfills and incinerators by 2020, and San Antonio aims to divert 60 percent by 2025. San Antonio and Austin have mandatory recycling and municipal curbside composting already in place, and Dallas is working toward both. TCE is pushing for Houston to adopt a zero-waste plan as well.

For those who make environmental and industrial decisions, communities of color — regardless of their class status — have been considered to be throw-away communities; therefore, their land [is most often] used for garbage dumps, waste transfer stations, incinerators, dirty materials recovery facilities, and other waste disposal infrastructure.

Dr. Bullard, TCE, and their allies have fought off One Bin for All — so far. Though the plan could come back, the city just signed a two-year curbside recycling contract that has stalled the dirty MRF.

NYC-EJA and its allies have been uniting their efforts around the Transform Don’t Trash NYC campaign, advocating for a cleaner, healthier waste system in New York City. In particular, they are calling for the city to award commercial waste-hauling contracts to companies that have the highest environmental standards, worker-safety and health standards, and worker salaries.

In 2006, NYC-EJA and other organizations worked closely with then-Mayor Bloomberg’s office to develop a 20-year city-wide waste-disposal policy that, for the first time, relied on environmental- justice principles. The plan called for a reduction in waste facilities and truck traffic in overburdened communities, and a reduction in overall waste processing.

Unfortunately, Mulgaonkar says that the plan has yet to be fully implemented. The groups continue to pressure city leaders to fulfill the promises they made in 2006.

Because, as Kellie Terrie, a resident of the South Bronx, told Transform Don’t Trash, environmental justice around recycling and waste hauling is critical.

“It’s not a matter of luxury for us. We don’t have a choice,” Terrie said. “It’s about, ‘Can my kid breathe? Can I breathe? Can we have a healthy and happy family here in the places we have to live?’ Environmental justice is not an option for us. It’s a life-or-death issue.”

Kamikatsu, Japan, a small mountain town of 1,700 on southern Japan’s Shikoku island, is going zero waste by 2020.

So are a lot of communities in the US. But when local political leaders make this pledge, they sometimes state their city will send “zero waste to landfill” — a phrase meaning that in addition to recycling and perhaps composting trash, the city will still incinerate some of its garbage. Incineration causes air pollution and, ironically, leaves toxic ash behind that must be landfilled.

In Kamikatsu, they mean it: zero waste, no incineration by 2020. Already, the town recycles 80 percent of its trash through a significant commitment and communal effort.

Prior to 2003, this small community used to dispose of its trash through open incineration, according to a short documentary from Discovery Network’s “Seeker Stories.” But burning their trash made residents sick and and the town smell, so in 2003, they adopted the zero-waste plan.

Today, Kamikatsu residents separate recyclables into 34 categories: various types of paper products; tin, steel, aluminum, and other types of containers; plastic bottles; plastic caps; and more.

The townspeople wash each container at home to ensure it’s free from food or liquid residue that can contaminate the recycling process. Then they haul it to the town recycling center, where employees make sure they are sorting items the right way. There’s no municipal trash pickup.

“Classifying the recycling can be difficult,” resident Hatsue Katayama told Seeker Stories. “To wash the containers thoroughly so there are no remains is hard work. It can be a pain, and at first, we were opposed to the idea.”

However, residents soon got used to the benefits of recycling: cleaner air, for one. And more jobs — in addition to the recycling center, the town boasts a factory that turns discarded clothing and more into new items. There’s also a free store, where residents can leave and take still-usable cast-off items for free.

Compared to incinerating Kamikatsu’s trash, the recycling effort has cut waste-management costs by a third. Katayama says that recycling has now become second nature: “Now I don’t think about it. It becomes natural to separate the trash correctly.”

The only difference I see [between high-recycling communities and low-recycling communities] is that the cities moving toward 90 percent have a very active grassroots network that consistently pushes for increased recycling and, in recent years, zero waste.

Dr. Neil Seldman, Institute for Local Self-Reliance

While few cities around the world have made the commitment to recycling and zero waste that Kamikatsu has, more are stepping up to lessen their burdens on landfills, recycle more, and recycle better. The US, quite simply, is lagging behind. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that 75 percent of the US waste stream can be recycled or composted, but we’re only doing so for just over 34 percent of it.

In comparison, the entire country of South Korea’s waste diversion rate is moving closer to Kamikatsu’s. After enacting legislation to get to zero waste by 2020, South Korea started having residents pay for trash by weight, in addition to making composting food waste mandatory by law — which has raised the country’s recycling and composting rate to over 83 percent and climbing, according to the Korea Herald.

Germany and Austria are recycling or composting 62 and 63 percent of their waste, respectively, states the European Environment Agency. And the European Union aims to lift all member-countries’ recycling/composting rates from an average of 43 percent to 50 percent by 2020.

The success of these places shows that Americans can raise our recycling rates. But it will take a combination of government policy, corporate responsibility, community will, and individual effort.

Fortunately, green-minded individuals have the power to push US recycling to the next level, says Dr. Neil Seldman. Seldman is director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s (ILSR) Waste-to- Wealth Initiative, which helps communities across the US create policies and practices to get to zero waste.

Activists Lead The Way

While many US cities are struggling at or below the 34 percent national recycling average, Seldman says there are dozens of cities with “high, unprecedented” recycling rates, including Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and smaller cities on the East Coast and in the Midwest. So what accounts for the discrepancy?

“The only difference I see is that the cities moving toward 90 percent have a very active grassroots network that consistently pushes for increased recycling and, in recent years, for zero waste,” says Seldman.

These cities are showing that diverting 50 to 80 percent or more from landfills to recyclers and municipal composters is doable — using existing technology. Seldman notes that for most, their robust recycling programs started with citizens fighting off an incinerator.

Los Angeles, for example, originally balked at instituting recycling back in the 1960s. But when regional landfills became overcrowded, the city entertained a proposal to build five incinerators — all located within communities of color, an all-too-familiar pattern in the US when it comes to toxic facilities .

Environmentalism has to be broadened to incorporate organizations and groups that may not necessarily have “environment” in their name.

Dr. Robert Bullard

Residents started forming coalitions to work against the incinerator plan, troubled by the potential for toxic air pollution and carcinogenic bottom ash. They brought in ILSR as a technical consultant to help fight the incinerators and formulate a sustainable alternative plan. Los Angeles eventually said no to the incinerators and yes to recycling — it now recycles or composts 76 percent of its waste — mainly because many of the grassroots activists involved in the incinerator fight got involved in local politics.

In fact, says Seldman, the phenomenon of activists-turned-city-leaders is another thing most US cities with high recycling rates have in common.

“Garbage decisions are made at the local level, where citizens can organize and take control,” Seldman says. “And that’s exactly what they did. People actually became mayors and county commissioners as a result of their resistance to an incinerator.”

SF Sets an Example

Once a city decides to go zero waste, the next thing that needs to happen is a series of public-policy and education decisions to ramp up recycling and ramp down incinerators and landfill use.

“To get to zero waste, you must have four things: First, mandatory recycling,” says Seldman. “People need to know it’s the law and become educated to be recycling-literate. You also have to have municipal composting and a pay-as-youthrow program, where you pay for your garbage based on how much you throw out. And the other thing you need is a reuse program.”

San Francisco boasts an 80 percent recycling and composting rate — the highest in the country — and aims to get to zero waste by 2020. To achieve its ongoing success, the city has embraced all of these policies and more.

In 2009, San Francisco passed an ordinance making recycling and composting mandatory by law for businesses and residences. With the help of Recology, a West Coast waste hauler committed to waste reduction, San Francisco implemented its “Fantastic Three” three-bin system to help residents easily sort their trash. Recyclables go into a blue bin, organic waste goes into a green bin, and anything destined for the landfill gets put in a black bin.

The system operates on the pay-as-you- throw model that Seldman asserts is the key to zero-waste success.

“The more material you send [to the landfill in the black bin], the more expensive your garbage bill is. The more material you send to the organic bin, the more your bill goes down,” says Guillermo Rodriguez of the San Francisco Department of the Environment (SF Environment).

He notes that while the pay-as-you throw plan does influence residents, it sends a particularly powerful price signal to larger entities: “If you’re the property manager for a 100-unit building, that’s huge savings.” The city has adopted other initiatives to further drive local behavior toward zero waste. It passed a ban on polystyrene food-service products, since polystyrene is not as easily recyclable as other plastics. And it enacted a city-wide single-use plastic bag ban, as well as a ban on bottled water sales on public property.

Americans can raise our recycling rates, but it will take a combination of government policy, corporate responsibility, community will, and individual effort.

San Francisco also has a robust community education program to help people separate their trash correctly. It has conducted public-education campaigns, and it has an easy-to-use online database with Recology to help residents find out which bin different types of trash go into.

The city even offers free trash audits at businesses and homes.

“Our auditors will [examine the bins] and provide owners with a report card to show where they can make improvements,” says Rodriguez.

For example, auditors helped US Postal Service outlets in the Bay Area cut down their garbage bill costs. Because the Post Office is run by the federal government, it doesn’t have to follow city waste-management rules — although it does have to pay the city to haul its trash. Auditors pointed out that simply by implementing the three-bin system at each location, the agency could save big. Area Postmasters and mail-center managers did just that — and shaved $200,000 off the agency’s annual trash bill.

Now that San Franciscans have embraced the three-bin system and gotten their recycling and composting up to 80 percent, SF Environment is working on ways to capture that last 20 percent.

“Nearly half of the material in the black bin can still be separated out,” says Rodriguez. “Most San Franciscans know exactly what to do with food scraps when preparing a meal. But that takeout food container or bag of salad that you have sitting in crisper that is now a weird science experiment? That’s what we’re seeing end up in landfill. So our latest campaign aims to convince San Franciscans to ‘free their food.’”

In addition, he says, the city is working with manufacturers to take responsibility for their packaging.

“Municipalities shouldn’t have to take responsibility for some things,” he says. “Juice boxes, for example. Outside, they’re made of cardboard, but inside, they’re lined with mylar. So you have to open up the box and peel off the mylar [to make them recyclable]. No one is going to do that! We need manufacturers to take responsibility for these complex end-of-life problems.”

Also with the goal of keeping that last 20 percent of the city’s trash out of landfills, San Francisco has a reuse program. First, when Recology employees spot anything coming through that still may be usable, they pull it out for donation.

The city government itself also runs an online database where government employees can post used furniture, office supplies, and other equipment in good condition. Schools, nonprofits, and other city departments can request items they can use. Since 2004, this “Virtual Warehouse” has redistributed over 900 tons of goods worth more than $6 million.

Is Recycling Doomed?

Even as cities like Los Angeles, Portland, and San Francisco make big investments in recycling, headlines have been dominating the news that the recycling industry is “collapsing” in the US.

Recycling is tied to commodity prices, which tend to fluctuate. Currently low oil prices mean it’s cheaper right now to manufacture new plastic than recycle used plastic, for example. And China — which purchased $10.8 million of our scrap metal and paper in 2011 and about $5 million of our cast-off plastic in 2014 for recycling — has started rejecting shipments of US recyclables in recent years.

Basically, the system once worked like this: China exported manufactured goods to the US. The US would fill Chinese shipping containers with recyclables, some of it packaging from those Chinese goods, before returning them. Then, China would recycle those materials and turn them into new products. As a result, US domestic recycling isn’t as robust as it could be, since we rely so much on China.

However, in 2013, China implemented Operation Green Fence, because the materials the US was sending back were too dirty to recycle cost-effectively. The new policy had China refusing contaminated shipments of recyclables — after US companies had already paid to send them to Chinese ports.

[Since China and other major buyers of US recyclables no longer want dirty materials], US recyclers are now extra cautious about what they [send out for recycling]. When they receive dirty materials, they’re more likely to just landfill or incinerate them.

According to Waste360.com, China turned away 22,000 shipping containers filled with US recyclables during the first year of the new policy due to contamination.

As a result, US recyclers are now extra cautious about what they ship to China. When they receive dirty materials, they’re more likely to just landfill or incinerate them, says Seldman.

Recycling contamination issues cause other problems, as well. Aimee Lee from the nonprofit Recycle Across America (RAA) says a lot of contamination problems could be headed off with proper sorting.

“[Better sorting] would save the billions of dollars currently spent to remove contaminants contaminants from the recycling stream,” says Lee. “There would be fewer plastic bags and other contaminants jamming the processing equipment. There would be significantly less wasted time and money spent while equipment is shut down for repairs, and far fewer injuries to employees at recycling plants. If we eliminate confusion at the bin, these costly inefficiencies would be remedied, and the demand for the materials would be strong. Recycling profit margins would be so far improved that they would then be able to weather any occasional fluctuations in virgin commodity pricing.”

Municipal education programs like San Francisco’s can help keep the wrong items out of the recycling stream. And RAA is advocating for a nationwide labeling system to provide uniform, easily recognizable labels on recycling, compost, and trash bins to minimize confusion about sorting. Lee notes that “standardized labels improve recycling rates 50–100 percent, while dramatically reducing contamination.”

ILSR’s Seldman says that using waste haulers committed to recycling right can help the industry turn more of a profit as well. Sixty percent of the country’s waste hauling is handled by two companies: Allied and Waste Management — and both, he says, have a vested interest in keeping recycling rates low and landfill and incineration rates high.

“They control billions of dollars in recyclable materials, but they say they can’t make a profit. It’s because they don’t want to,” he asserts. “They make an 80 percent return on putting things in landfills and incinerators.”

Other companies are passionate about landfilling and incineration. We are passionate about recycling and composting. If you’re really passionate about it, you can make it work. --Robert Reed, Recology

Recycling can’t compete, since the waste haulers have to share profits with the companies that recycle the materials, so “naturally they want to downgrade recycling and increase disposal,” says Seldman.

Even though Recology — which manages waste for San Francisco and 112 other communities on the West Coast — does take some waste to landfill, this independent, employee-owned company specializes in recycling and composting.

“We have a different business model: Our model is recycling, composting, helping communities we serve make progress toward zero waste,” says Recology spokesperson Robert Reed. “Other companies are passionate about landfilling and incineration. We’re passionate about recycling and composting. If you’re really passionate about it, you can make it work.”

So if you don’t want your recyclables to end up in a landfill, and your waste is picked up by a hauler that doesn’t prioritize recycling, it’s up to individuals and businesses to fend off contamination to ensure that as many recyclables make it to actual recyclers as possible.

Even better, says Porter, also help your community take control of its garbage: “Bypass the trash behemoths and find local haulers that will work with your community to get to zero waste.”

In an effort to boost recycling participation, cities and towns across the country have introduced single-stream recycling, where people simply dump all of their recyclables into one bin, and the waste management company collects and sorts them, sending them off to other facilities for recycling.

Public participation has increased due to the ease of single-stream bins, but the chances for contamination have skyrocketed. Reducing contamination is critical to making our recycling system effective and sustainable.

Unfortunately, contamination can occur anywhere in the recycling journey: Broken glass and food or liquid residues can ruin paper bales. Likewise, the wrong types of plastic and food/liquid residues can spoil plastic bales. These items then become non-recyclable and likely to end up in landfills or incinerators, or they may be sold to countries with lower contamination standards.

Follow the journey of your recyclables in a single-stream system to see how and where they might be contaminated and rendered unfit to recycle.

Your curbside bin is where you have the most control over reducing contamination (click the image to see our 9 steps for how to help). Toss in a coated paper receipt or #5 plastic bottle, a dirty aluminum can, or a handful of broken glass, and you can contaminate entire batches of recycling.

Waste management trucks scoop up your recyclables, where they remain commingled and are tossed in with all your neighbor’s bin contents. Glass may break, posing risk to recycling workers, and food and liquid residue can ruin batches of recyclables.

The materials then arrive at a waste transfer station if you live in a larger city, which is like a pit stop for waste to be sorted into what goes to a landfill and what can be taken to a composting or recycling facility (depending on what your community offers.) Transfer stations offer another opportunity for glass to break or food and liquid to contaminate paper.

At last, the recyclables arrive at a materials recovery facility (MRF), where they are pre-sorted by hand. Mechanized screens separate items by weight and shape, and powerful magnets sort aluminum out. Each type of recyclable is packaged into bales, which are sent on to facilities specializing in recycling those particular materials. These facilities are where the contamination occurring at any point on the recycling journey takes effect. Broken glass may make its way into paper or plastic bales, making them unfit to recycle. And food or liquid can spoil entire bales of paper.

Mainstream waste-management companies will often landfill or incinerate dirty glass or plastic, as well as contaminated bales of recycling.

It’s up to us to maximize recycling. Wash and dry your recyclables and don’t “wish-cycle”!

The Problem with Industrial Agriculture: Energy Intensive and Damaging to Social and Environmental Health 

The mass industrialization of the US agricultural system can be traced back to policies promoted during the Nixon administration by USDA Secretary Earl Butz, encouraging farmers to “get big or get out.” Support shifted from small family farms to large, highly mechanized mega farms dependent on vast monocrops and costly inputs. This system is proving to be unsustainable for farmers and highly damaging to the environment, polluting local ecosystems and contributing to global climate change.

Industrialization of the US agricultural system has resulted in increased chemical use, degradation of soils, poor animal welfare, and the death of the small family farm. 

Mechanization Leads to Monocropping and an Increased Use of Chemicals 

Our current agricultural system is highly dependent on monocropping. This system encourages farmers to grow one crop at a time, allowing for increased mechanization and distribution of pesticides and fertilizers. In fact, monocropping requires increased chemical use because vast swaths of the same plant are more susceptible to pests, and a lack of crop diversity deteriorates soil health. The use of genetically engineered (GE) crops or GMOs in industrial agriculture further promotes this unsustainable system of monocropping and overuse of synthetic pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers.

The overuse of pesticides has led to a rise in resistant superweeds, requiring increased use of chemicals and dependency on more toxic varieties, such as 2,4-D and dicamba. This puts the health of farm workers, farm communities, wildlife, and waterways at risk. Microorganisms in the soil are also affected, leading to soil depletion and decreasing the soil’s ability to pull excess carbon from the atmosphere. In this negative feedback loop, poor soil health requires farmers to use additional energy-intensive synthetic fertilizers to make up for soil deficiencies.

Intensive Animal Agriculture: Too Big for its Own Good 

Industrial agriculture includes the raising of millions of farm animals in unnatural conditions. Most GE crops are used as animal feed, allowing for intensive animal farming operations to take place indoors. Factory farms, or concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), are one of the main reasons agriculture is a top contributor to climate change. CAFOs house hundreds or even thousands of animals per facility in crowded and unnatural conditions with little to no access to the outdoors. This system of agriculture focuses on efficiency and economy with little to no regard for the well-being of animals, the environment, or consumers. CAFOs are linked to numerous animal welfare and public and environmental health concerns.

Due to the mass quantity of animals in one area, animal waste builds up and releases high levels of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is one of the leading contributors to climate change, causing more short-term damage to the environment than carbon dioxide. Animal waste also poses a contamination threat to soil and waterways, impacting communities downstream from CAFOs.

To make up for the crowded and unsanitary conditions, animals raised in CAFOs are regularly given sub-therapeutic (non-medical, daily low dosage) doses of antibiotics. In addition, antibiotics are often used to aid in growth promotion, a usage discouraged by the FDA. The continued sub-therapeutic usage of antibiotics is contributing to the rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria, an epidemic that claims over 23,000 lives a year in the US alone.

The Solution: Adoption of Organic, Regenerative Agriculture 

Green America works with consumers, farmers, companies, and allies across the US to reduce the use of toxic chemicals, GE crops, and monocropping. We partner with stakeholders dedicated to improving the lives of farm animals and the health of farm workers and consumers. We advocate for regenerative agriculture that replenishes the soil, sequesters carbon, provides healthful food, and makes a place for small and mid-sized family farms.

Here are the most Frequently Asked Questions about shareholder activism.

I get proxy ballots in the mail (or e-mail). What do I do with them?

Your proxy ballot will arrive before a company's annual meeting, which usually happen in the spring, so look carefully at any correspondence from the companies in which you hold stock, or from your financial adviser. If you invest in mutual funds, you automatically delegate your proxy voting rights to the fund managers, so it is important to invest in funds that share your values.

Vote your proxy by filling out the form you receive and mailing it back before the due date; phoning your results in, if there is a call-in option listed on your ballot; or voting online using a link on your ballot. Mark all votes on your ballot, even if the instructions don't specifically tell you to do so, because ballots returned unmarked count as votes for management's position. For a look at a sample ballot, click here.

Some organizations such as As You Sow are now using a proxy voting app. Votes are recommended for board elections and shareholder resolutions in hundreds of companies; you can follow all the recommended votes, or review them individually to decide how to vote. Learn more

I heard that some shareholder resolutions get less than 10 percent of the vote. How could such a small proportion make a difference?

Historically, very few resolutions achieve majority votes at annual meetings. Many votes come in at the 5 percent to 25 percent range. Even those low numbers represent a significant number of unhappy shareholders. Since shareholder action campaigns are often accompanied by coordinated consumer and media campaigns, resolutions can damage a company's reputation and branding, and a potential loss of revenue through negative publicity, consumer boycotts, and loss of investor confidence.

Some companies have amended policies after a proposal is filed and before a vote, to avoid the conflict. When a resolution succeeds like this even before it comes to a vote, whomever filed it will usually withdraw it from the ballot.

If a resolution comes to a vote and the company doesn't respond, shareholder activists will often keep the pressure on by re-filing the proposal the following year. According to the newest rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), approved in 2020, a resolution must receive 5 percent of the vote the first year it is filed, 15 percent the second year, and 25 percent every year thereafter to continue to be included on the proxy ballot.

I own stocks, but I’ve never seen a proxy ballot. Why?

Your financial adviser may be receiving your proxy ballots and voting on your behalf. When you hired your financial adviser, you may have signed paperwork saying you didn't want to receive these materials. Ask your financial adviser if you can get the proxy ballots so you can vote—or if you can give him/her instructions on how you want the votes cast and let him/her do the paperwork.

Warning: Many money managers or advisory groups have policies dictating that they automatically vote on the side of the management of the company in which the stock is owned. If this is the case, ask your adviser for a guarantee that s/he will follow your instructions. Otherwise, take voting into your own hands, since company management almost always recommend voting against social and environmental concerns.

If you invest in mutual funds, you automatically delegate your voting rights to fund managers. To find out how your mutual fund is voting on proxy resolutions, call the fund's investor relations department, request this information, and express your views on the position you want the fund to take. Mutual funds have been required to disclose how they vote their proxies since 2004.

Why does my socially responsible mutual fund invest in companies I don’t agree with, or that have questionable practices? How do I know if it is engaging in shareholder activism?

If you already have a socially responsible mutual fund, it could be investing in questionable companies and engaging in shareholder activism. Socially responsible mutual funds promote corporate responsibility by:

• targeting exceptional companies for investment,
• avoiding the most irresponsible companies, and
• putting their investment clout behind shareholder campaigns targeting companies that need to do better but aren’t the worst of the lot.  

All mutual funds are required to provide investors with information about how they are voting all their proxy ballots. If you have a concern about a company included in your mutual fund, call the fund's investor relations department and ask for its proxy voting information.

Can I introduce a shareholder resolution?

In 2020, the SEC increased the shares that investors must own if they wish to file shareholder resolutions. Currently, if shares are owned for one year, $25,000 worth of shares must be owned in order for the investor to be able to file a shareholder resolution; if shares have been owned for two years, then $15,000 worth of stock are needed; shareholders must wait three years before they can file if they own at least $2,000 worth of shares (and below $15,000). Institutional investors tend to dominate the resolution filing process because they have resources for multi-year follow up and time to spend pressuring companies.

There are individuals who file resolutions, but it's less common than those filed by institutional investors. It is most helpful for individuals to vote their proxies, as many never return their ballots. But if an individual is intent on filing a resolution, it can be advisable to do that in conjunction with institutions that have likely been working on the issue for many years.

Often, the first thing a company will do upon receiving a resolution is to present it to the SEC and ask that it be thrown out; institutional investors or existing coalitions with experience introducing shareholder resolutions have the resources and legal backing to ensure that their proposals are written correctly and make it onto the ballot. An easier way to get involved in filing a proposal is to join an existing group of filers and be a co-filer, lending your shares to the coalition, being updated on its progress, and providing input when asked. 

Individuals interested in co-filing or lending their shares to can contact an organization that works on an issue to ask if it is engaged in shareholder action and if they are interested in having co-filers, or in need of someone to attend a shareholder meeting.

Green America is not an investment adviser, nor do we provide financial planning, legal, or tax advice. Nothing in our communications or materials shall constitute or be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or investment recommendations. 

When plastic manufacturing took off in the early 20th century, plastic was heralded as a miraculous material—lightweight, flexible, and sturdy. Eventually, though, plastic’s downsides started to emerge: toxic chemicals such as benzene and dioxin are released into surrounding communities during the manufacture of certain types of plastic, and some types leach chemicals as we use them. A plastic bottle tossed into a landfill will take hundreds of years to break down. Plastic bags that litter the landscape will kill animals that try to eat them, and they’ll harm aquatic life when dropped into bodies of water. Several studies have uncovered health risks associated with exposure to fumes from its incineration.

Plastic recycling has lightened some of the environmental burden of disposal, but the majority of plastics are landfilled or incinerated after a single use; the US plastic-bottle recycling rate is less than 25 percent, according to the American Plastics Council. Even if we raised that percentage, recycling plastic isn’t an ideal solution; the plastic we recycle doesn’t turn into more of the same kind plastic we tossed into the bin, but has to become lower-quality plastic that has limited applications, such as plastic lumber.

By reducing your use of plastic, choosing plastic products carefully, and using them safely, you can reduce the risks that plastics pose to the Earth and your family’s health.

Problem Plastics and Better Options

• #1, PETE or PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) — Used for clear beverage bottles. Widely recyclable; generaly considered safe, with some precautions.
• #2, HDPE (High-Density Polyethylene) — Used for colored or cloudy bottles and jugs, yogurt containers, and other tubs. Widely recyclable, but consumers need to verify with local recyclers whether tubs and bottles (which are made differently and can’t be recycled together) need to be separated. Generally considered safe, with some precautions.
• #3, PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride) — Used in some cling wrap and bottles, as well as pipes and other construction materials. Not widely recyclable; recommended to avoid because it can leach toxins into food and is an environmental problem throughout its lifecycle.
• #4, LDPE (Low-Density Polyethylene) — Used for garbage bags, food storage bags, and some cling wrap and bottles. Not widely recyclable; generally considered safe, with some precautions.
• #5, PP (Polypropylene) — Used in butter tubs, some baby bottles, and other rigid containers. Not widely recycled; generally considered safe.
• #6, PS (Polystyrene) — Used in foam trays, takeout containers, coolers, egg cartons, and packing peanuts. Not widely recyclable, although many packing and shipping stores accept packing peanuts for reuse. Recommended to avoid because styrene may leach into food and beverages.
• #7, Other (Includes Polycarbonate and mixed materials) — Used in five-gallon water bottles, some baby bottles, and some liners of metal cans. Not widely recyclable; recommended to avoid because bisphenol-A(BPA) can leach from polycarbonate into food and beverages.

Be a Smart Plastic User

Here are ways to make your plastic use healthier and more environmentally friendly.

Reduce and Reuse: There are a few cases—such as that of medical supplies—in which it’s necessary to use plastic once and then discard it, but it’s often possible to find a better alternative. Avoid single-use items such as disposable bottles, plates, and cutlery. Carry a refillable bottle or mug for beverages on the go, and bring reusable cloth bags to stores. For leftovers and takeout food, reusable containers are better than foam boxes or plastic wrap and bags. If you regularly buy products that are only available in plastic packaging, buy the largest container available, rather than the multiple smaller ones, to cut down on the total amount of plastic used.

Take precautions: When you do use plastic, it’s best to choose those labeled #1, #2, #4, and #5 and avoid those labeled #3, #6, and #7. Even if you’re choosing the best plastic, though, there are still chemical leaching concerns associated with long storage or heat. The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy has issued a “Smart Plastics Guide” that includes the following recommendations for using any type of plastic:

• Avoid using plastic containers in the microwave. Instead, use glass or ceramic containers free of metallic paint.
• Beware of cling wraps, especially for microwave use.
• Avoid plastic bottled water, if possible.
• If you do use plastic water bottles, take precautions. If you use a polycarbonate water bottle, to reduce leaching of BPA, do not use for warm or hot liquids, and discard old or scratched water bottles. Water bottles from #1 or #2 plastics are recommended for single use only. For all types of plastic, you can reduce bacterial contamination by thoroughly washing daily. However, avoid using harsh detergents that can break down the plastic and increase chemical leaching.

Take Care With Kids: The rapid development and immature immune systems of fetuses and children make them particularly susceptible to damage from toxins, so pregnant women and parents should exercise extra caution with plastics. The Children’s Health Environmental Coalition (CHEC) advises choosing cloth and wooden toys and avoiding plastic toys, which are often made of PVC and can leach harmful chemicals when chewed on. Or, consult Greenpeace’s Toy Report Card to learn which toy manufacturers have eliminated PVC from their products.

Plastic baby bottles are of particular concern to parents. Breastfeeding can eliminate the need for a lot of plastic, but parents may still want to use bottles for pumped breast milk or juice. CHEC recommends avoiding polycarbonate bottles, which are generally clear and rigid and bear the #7 symbol, and choosing bottles made of tempered glass or polyethylene and polypropylene (#1, #2, or #5); they note that Medela and Evenflo make bottles from safer plastics. CHEC also recommends using bottle nipples made of clear silicone rather than yellow rubber, because the silicone hides less bacteria and is heat resistant.

Recycle Plastics Responsibly: Recycle your plastics following the instructions given by your local recycling program. If you have a curbside program that doesn’t accept certain plastics, consult Earth911 to find an alternative drop-off site near you. Advocate for more extensive plastic recycling collections, and purchase items made from or packaged in post-consumer content.

Bioplastics

Concerns about the rising price and supply limits of petroleum, as well as environmental factors, have spurred the use and development of bioplastics synthesized from corn, soy, sugar cane, and other crops. Toyota has started using bioplastics in some of its cars; Wild Oats, Newman’s Own, and Del Monte have adopted them for deli and food packages; and even Wal-Mart has begun using a corn based packaging for cut fruit and vegetables. Most of the bioplastic packaging used in the US is polymerized lactic acid (PLA) made by NatureWorks LLC, a company owned by Cargill.

Bioplastic's Benefits: Unlike conventional plastics, bioplastics biodegrade relatively quickly under the right conditions, and they’re made from annually renewable crops rather than petroleum. PLA can also be recycled into more of the same product repeatedly, while plastic can’t.

Bioplastic may be an effective substitute for petroleum-based plastic. In 2005, the Los Angeles Times published an article about Cargill’s Nebraska facility that manufactures PLA from corn. “The end products—which include T-shirts, forks and coffins—look, feel and perform like traditional polyester and plastic made from a petroleum base,” the article reports. “But the manufacturing process consumes 50 percent less fossil fuel, even after accounting for the fuel needed to plant and harvest the corn.”

Concerns: Since relatively few people in the US have access to commercial or industrial composters, which help bioplastics degrade, lots of bioplastic is ending up in landfills or recycling bins. In landfills, PLA will lack the light and heat it needs to degrade. Plastic recycling is unlikely to be adversely affected by PLA, which can’t currently be processed by mainstream recyclers, until it makes up a far greater percentage of plastic than it does now. The best option would be to develop a separate recycling stream for PLA.

The Sustainable Energy & Environmental Demand (SEED) Initiative of the organization Future 500 brings together NGOs, corporations, and governments to develop markets for emerging technologies that will reduce petroleum dependence. SEED is helping NatureWorks and environmental groups work together to make PLA as eco-friendly as possible. Issues include the large amounts of energy and chemicals used to grow and process the corn, the use of GMO corn, and waste disposal. NatureWorks has already taken positive steps in these areas by purchasing green-power offsets, offering customers options to buy non-GMO-corn offsets or GMO-free PLA, and buying baled PLA back from recyclers. They continue to work with stakeholders through SEED.

One danger of increased bioplastic use is that people might end up buying a lot of it if they think it’s less problematic than petroleum-based alternatives. A shift to bioplastics still needs to be accompanied by waste reduction.

Best Uses: When reuse isn’t feasible, bioplastics can be the best alternative. For instance, Green Festival® events, are held in venues where vendors can’t wash and reuse food service items. Instead, we use compostable plates, cups, and utensils from Biocorp and serve BIOTA water, which comes in compostable bottles. Hundreds of volunteers help attendees sort their waste into the appropriate bins, and we send the composting to a municipal composter afterwards.

Bioplastic is also a good option for collecting kitchen compost and yard trimmings destined for commercial composting, because the bags can be composted along with their contents. With a little forethought, we can all reduce our use of plastics and make the healthiest choices for our families and the planet.

If you've read our spring 2016 Green American issue "Climate Justice for All," it might have brought up a number of questions and ideas. In the issue, we included this list of questions intended for community or reading groups who’d like to use the climate-justice articles in this issue as the basis for a discussion. Green America invites you to make extra copies of this issue for your group or share the digital issue.

1. What surprised you the most in reading these articles?

2. How is the climate justice movement connected to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, (see People of Color are on the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis) and other environmental-justice battles?

3. Environmental- and climate-justice fights have been going on for years. (See Green America’s 2007 article on an egregious Flint-like case in Dickson, TN), but they usually don’t get the national media coverage Flint has gotten. Is the Flint coverage a positive sign that change might be slowly happening? Or just random chance?

4. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has taken heat from those who mistakenly think its name means that non-Black lives do not matter, who then respond with “all lives matter.” BLM activists have said that what their name means is that “Black Lives Also Matter.” Discuss how “all lives matter” distorts the conversation.

5. What do the stories in this issue of the Green American about different communities have in common? How are they different? What do the similarities and differences say about how environmental injustice manifests?

6. Environmental justice pioneers like Dr. Robert Bullard and Dr. Beverly Wright have been working on these issues for more than a quarter century. What do you think it would be like to confront environmental racism and inequities on a daily basis? What would you do if you had to live with it, like the residents of Miami Beach? Or if you are living with it, how are you coping?

7. If you belong to a community group, how can you make sure that all voices in your home city are represented? How might your group go the extra mile to make every- one feel invited?

8. Dr. Robert Bullard says, “People of color may not belong to an environmental organization but are members of churches, civic groups, civil rights or faith- based organizations that do work in areas of environmental and climate justice. Environmentalism has to be broadened to incorporate organizations and groups that may not necessarily have ‘environment’ in their name.” In light of that statement, if you belong to an environmental group, how might it be encouraged to broaden its outreach to more people from different backgrounds?

9. What other climate-justice stories do you know about that weren’t included in this issue?

For the past several years, scientists had established the threshold of danger as two degrees Celcius, or about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. World temperatures could rise 2℃ above pre-industrial levels, they said, and after that point, coastal flooding, extreme weather patterns, widespread droughts and heat waves, and other climate-crisis impacts would become severe.

Island nations around the world begged to differ. Two degrees, they said, was suicide for them.

Because many lie only a few feet above sea level, they are already experiencing the most negative impacts of the climate crisis, and they will be the first to go underwater and lose their homes as sea levels rise higher. In 2003, in fact, Papua New Guinea’s Carteret islanders became the world’s first climate-change refugees as they began evacuating their islands when encroaching saltwater began to make them uninhabitable.

Prominent among those sounding the call for immediate, critical action on climate is Mohamed Nasheed, a political dissident who became the first democratically elected president of the Maldives in 2008. The Maldives is a country made up of 2,000 islands and atolls in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Like many small island nations, such as Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, or Tuvalu, rising ocean waters have washed away hundreds of feet of coastline, contaminated soil and drinking water, destroyed fisheries, and eaten away at sea walls that are supposed to protect the islands from flooding.

[I]t’s not something in the future. It’s something we are facing right now.

Mohamed Nasheed

With the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicting that the oceans will rise between .85 to 2.5 feet by 2100 if the world continues business as usual when it comes to the climate, experts say that 77 percent of the Maldives will be underwater by 2100. (Incidentally, that’s enough to swamp several east coast cities in the US as well.)

“The Maldives is just 1.5 meters above sea level,” he said in the 2011 documentary film The Island President. “And, because of climate change and sea-level rise, a number of islands are eroding. And it’s not something in the future. It’s something we are facing right now.”

Even once he was ousted from office in a 2012 coup led by a political ally of former Maldives dictator Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, Nasheed continued to tell the world that climate change posed an imminent threat to the islands’ 400,000 residents and others from island nations.

Nasheed is currently serving a 13-year prison sentence on what his lawyer Jared Genser says are “trumped-up charges”. As his legal team and activists around the world work for his release, he still soldiers on—both for the health of democracy in his country and for the health of the planet.

Mohamed Nasheed, The Climate Hero of Copenhagen

Nasheed rose to worldwide fame after the 2009 United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen, where attendees were attempting to hammer out an international agreement to take action on the climate crisis. Throughout the 11-day conference, media reports had leaked that the talks were in disarray, and no one expected any sort of climate agreement to result from the talks.

With a warm smile and a talented politician’s natural gift for crafting powerful soundbites, Nasheed worked the halls of the conference, as well as the international media, pressing for some kind of action, particularly from power players China, the US, Brazil, and India.

“Ultimately, we’re talking about New York. Manhattan is as low as [Maldives capital city] Malé,” he savvily told US reporters during the conference.

Well aware that he had to make his time in the international spotlight count, he took the stage at the People’s Climate Summit with a barn-stormer of a speech that succeeded in captivating reporters and activists alike.

“There are those who tell us that solving climate change is impossible,” he told attendees at the Summit, an “alternative climate conference” taking place in Copenhagen concurrently with the UN talks. “There are those who tell us taking radical action is too difficult. There are those who tell us to give up hope. Well, I am here to tell you that we refuse to give up hope. We refuse to be quiet. We refuse to believe that a better world isn’t possible.”

A Planet-Saving Step Forward

Nasheed’s goal going into the Copenhagen talks had been for a legally binding agreement that would require countries to take action to limit carbon to 350 parts per million and world temperature rise to 1.5℃. What he got was a voluntary agreement in which countries recognized the need to keep temperatures below 2℃ and pledged several billion US dollars to help developing countries adapt.

But even that was considered a miracle considering the gridlock the talks had become—a gridlock that Nasheed is widely credited with loosening.

“I understand this is not a legally binding document, but it has features that can migrate to become a very good, planet-saving document,” Nasheed told The Island President filmmakers at the time.

Fast-forward to the 2015 UN climate conference in Paris, and Nasheed’s small victory in Copenhagen laid the groundwork for a major step forward in France. In December, 195 attending countries agreed to adopt the Paris Accord, pledging to hold the increase in global temperature “well below” 2℃ and to “pursue efforts” to limit it to 1.5℃. The agreement will enter into force if 55 countries ratify it.

Though global leaders lacked the political and moral will to include legally binding protections for human rights, particularly Indigenous rights, the Paris Accord is widely considered a positive gain for climate activists.

“This didn’t save the planet,” Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, said of the agreement. “But it may have saved the chance of saving the planet.”

Sadly, Nasheed was not in Paris to enjoy the fruits of his labor. He was arrested in February 2015 and sentenced to 13 years in prison by the current Maldives government.

A Leader Falls … and Returns

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention reviewed the current case against Nasheed, who was convicted for allegedly ordering the illegal arrest of a senior judge when he was in office. The working group concluded last October that there was no legal basis for his conviction, and that he’d been targeted for political reasons.

Allies of former dictator Gayoom initially levied the charge against Nasheed in 2012 while he was still president, which spurred them to launch the coup against him. Once they succeeded in unseating him, they initially didn’t detain Nasheed. Things changed in 2013, when he ran for president once more.

Nasheed won that election, at which point “the Supreme Court inexplicably and unfairly annulled the results,” says Nasheed’s lawyer Jared Genser. “They rescheduled the election two more times in a two-week period to confuse the hell out of voters.”

Gayoom’s half-brother Abdulla Yameen won that second election. Well aware of the political threat Nasheed posed, Yameen’s administration upgraded the dormant illegal arrest charge to a terrorism charge.

“From there, the trial was egregious and outrageous,” says Genser. “[Nasheed] wasn’t allowed to call a single witness in his defense.”

As the Green American went to press, international pressure had resulted in Nasheed being granted a temporary 30-day release from prison to get treatment for a back injury in the UK. The question now, Nasheed told reporters at a London press conference shortly after his release, is when and how he will return to the Maldives.

Nasheed and his lawyers are currently calling on political leaders worldwide, including President Obama, to impose “targeted financial sanctions and travel bans on senior [Maldivian] officials and financiers who are implicated in undermining democracy and committing gross human rights abuses,” Genser says.

The sanctions would put pressure on the Maldivian government to free the 1,700 people currently facing charges for peaceful political activity and speech, as well as Nasheed. (See the Resources Page to take supportive action.)

Even though Nasheed couldn’t attend the Paris talks, Genser says, “He’s just thrilled, completely thrilled with where it’s gone. He’s concerned these are voluntary and not binding commitments, but this is a dramatic step forward.”

[W]e refuse to give up hope. We refuse to be quiet. We refuse to believe that a better world isn’t possible.

Mohamed Nasheed

Sadly, the Maldives are no longer leading the world in taking meaningful action on climate change. Where Nasheed had pledged that the Maldives would be carbon-neutral within ten years of his taking office, the current administration is moving toward increasing climate emissions in the Maldives by 300 percent.

In addition, says Genser, they’ve entered into a deal with Shell to start exploring offshore oil drilling in the Maldives, and they’ve removed a number of environmental protections Nasheed’s administration put in place.

But even though he’s fighting to secure his freedom and bring democracy back to his embattled country, Nasheed’s example shines on for the rest of the world.

“Although he wouldn’t say it, I’ll say it,” says Genser. “If he hadn’t pulled off the minor miracle in Copenhagen that he did, they wouldn’t have had the basis to achieve what was achieved in Paris.”

Bernard Yu, Green America’s content strategist and information architect, has experience facilitating dialogue among participants from different backgrounds. Bernard offers this advice to groups working on climate justice who would like to become more diverse and inclusive.

The modern environmental movement‚ which has done much good‚ was started by White people. As such, historically, the movement’s focus has tended to be in preserving open space.

But as this issue demonstrates, this doesn’t serve all communities, so we need to take a hard look at the movement and discover whose voices are left out when we decide what issues deserve our focus. Privileged communities cannot define sustainability purely on what reaches their consciousness. Because communities of color‚ which are often the most vulnerable to climate change‚ have needs and considerations that those outside of them may not know or understand.

And so…

The first duty of those with additional privileges is to listen.

The second is to try to truly understand what others are saying before responding.

We all have privileges, and we all have disadvantages. Our unique set of each shapes our particular worldview. But this is not a ladder of privilege. Rather, it is best to think of privilege as a set of lenses through which the world sees us and through which we see the world. And having one lens does not preclude or prevent having another. So we must use our disadvantages to understand and empathize with the disadvantages of others, and redirect our privileges to amplify the voices of those without.

Those of us with the most privileges have a duty to work harder to raise others up because we are the ones with the resources to do so. Our role is not to co- opt their voices, but to hear them, understand them, amplify them, and find ways to work together to create the change in the world we all seek. Only then, when everyone’s voice is heard and understood, will we be able to create a society that sustains and nourishes all.

People of color are on the front lines of the climate crisis, and are leading the call for equitable protection and meaningful action. Green American published its issue, Climate Justice for All, as part of our mission to amplify the voices of those on the front lines of the climate crisis, working to protect the most vulnerable areas around the world. These resources represent those interviewed and featured in our issue-- when you interact with them, you might just find ways you can make a difference adding climate justice to your life and community.

Organizations

Black Lives Matter (BLM)

A national civil rights organization founded to fight racism and spark dialogue, particularly among Black people. Though several unofficial groups using the BLM name exist, the official BLM organization has and is forming local chapters nationwide.

California Latino Water Coalition

A nonprofit dedicated to crafting solutions to California’s water crisis, in ways that include and benefit all Californians, particularly Latinos.

Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment

A national environmental justice organization providing legal, technical, and organiz- ing assistance to low-income communities and communities of color. Currently focusing efforts in fracking communities in California and in the Native village of Kivalina, Alaska.

Climate Justice Alliance (CJA)

A collaborative of over 35 organizations uniting front-line communities to forge a scalable and socio-economically just transition away from unsustainable energy towards local living economies to address the root causes of climate change. (Green America is an endorsing organization of CJA.)

Cooperation Jackson

Addresses climate, environ- mental, and economic justice issues in Jackson, MS, anchored by a network of worker- owned enterprises.

Deep South Center for Environmental Justice

Based at Dillard University in New Orleans, the center works to address environmental/climate justice in the South, and provide training to develop leadership in communities of color.

Indigenous Environmental Network

A nonprofit formed by Indigenous peoples and individuals that organizes direct-action and public aware- ness campaigns and builds tribal capacity to address environmental, climate, and economic justice issues.

NAACP’s Environmental and Climate Justice Program

Educates and mobilizes people nationwide to address envi ronmental and climate justice.

Northwest Indian Applied Research Institute (NIARI)

Located at Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, NIARI assists local tribes in meeting their economic, governance, and resource goals.

Union of Concerned Scientists

A nationwide organization of scientists and engineers working to develop practical solutions to our planet’s most pressing problems, including climate change.

Experts

Kali Akuno

Twitter: @CooperationJXN

Dr. Robert Bullard

DrRobertDBullard.com

Twitter: @DrBobBullard

Facebook: Robert.D.Bullard

Dallas Goldtooth

Twitter: @g0ldtooth

Nicole Hernandez Hammer

Twitter: @NHH_Climate

Mohammed Nasheed

raeesnasheed.com

Twitter: @MohamedNasheed

Jacqui Patterson

Twitter: @JacquePatt

Sarra Tekola

Twitter: @Sarra Tekola

Dr. Beverly Wright

DrBeverlyWright.com

Legislation to Support

Clean Energy Victory Bonds

This amendment to the energy bill that is currently in the Senate would establish Treasury Bonds to fund the clean-energy future.

Targeted Sanctions Against Maldives Officials

Contact the White House and ask the President to issue an executive order calling for targed financial sanctions and travel bans against senior Maldives officials who have imprisoned 1,200 political dissidents, including former President Mohamed Nasheed. Then call your Congressional representatives and ask them to support the bipartisan Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (already passed in the Senate), which gives the President to impose financial sancations and travel bans on major human rights abusers around the world.

Social Investments

Green America’s Divest/Invest Campaign

Information and resources on divesting from the top fossil-fuel companies and reinvesting sustainably. Find fossil-free mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, reitrement investments, financial planners, and asset-management firms on the website.

Green America’s Break Up With Your Megabank Campaign

Mega-banks are often the biggest financers of projects like coal plants that exacerbate climate change and disproportionately affect communities of color. Our campaign can help you move your money away from mega-banks and into community development banks and credit unions that lift up low- and middle-income areas and vulnerable communities of color. (Find a bank or credit union certified by Green America on the Green Pages)

Hope Community Credit Union

This community development credit union has African-American leadership and works to lift up low- and middle-income communities in the mid-South, particularly communities of color. Hope’s post-Katrina work has helped people many hit hardest by Katrina recover and rebuild their homes, workplaces, and lives. Offers online banking services nationwide.

New Resource Bank Impact CD

Issued by a gree bank in San Francisco committed to sustainability, this fossil-free Certificate of Deposit (CD) includes investments in solar, biogas, and energy-efficiency projects and products

Self-Help Credit Union CD

This fossil-free CD includes invetment in renewable-energy projects and businesses as well as energy-efficient affordable homes. Issued by a community development bank in Durham, NC, with branches in IL, CA, and FL, that works to life up low- and middle-income areas.

Films

The Island President

A flim about Mohamed Nasheed, leading up to the Copenhagen climate conference.

Sun Come Up

Nominated for an Oscar, this documentary details the beginnings of the evacuation of Papua New Guinea’s Carteret Islands, due to climate change.

This Changes Everything

Based on the book by Naomi Klein, this film looks at how unfettered capitalism is exacerbating the climate crisis around the world.

Trouble the Water

Oscar-nominated film about Hurricane Katrina, climate justiec, and resilience.

If you've already read our Climate Justice for All issue, check out Communities on the Frontlines of Climate Crisis. Plus, take part in Green America's social justice campaigns to make the Earth healthy and safe for all people, for generations to come.

Early in 2015, a national poll revealed that 54 percent of Latinos in the US say that global warming is extremely or very important to them personally, compared with 37 percent of white Americans. The poll was conducted by Stanford University, The New York Times, and a polling group called Resources for the Future, and its results made national headlines for a short time because many found them surprising.

Nicole Hernandez Hammer did not.

“I wasn’t surprised,” she says. “Another poll by EarthJustice and GreenLatinos found that 78 percent of Latinos feel that climate change is impacting our lives now.”

Hernandez Hammer realized that Latinos across the country were bearing the brunt of climate-change effects when she was the assistant director of the Florida Center for Environmental Studies at Florida Atlantic University. There, she made a career of studying sea-level rise, its impacts on the planet, and its links to global warming.

“I’ve seen the worst-case projections, and it’s a scary world out there if we don’t do something,” she says. “I looked at maps of the areas in the US most vulnerable to climate change — Florida, the Carolinas, New York, Texas, California — and I realized I had a lot of family in these areas. So then I pulled up maps showing the areas with the fastest-growing Latino populations. They were almost identical.”

If we are able to prevent the worst effects of climate change, I want my son to know that I was a part of it. And if not, I want him to know we tried really hard.

From Academia to Activism

After 15 years in academia, Hernandez Hammer decided to shift her work to environmental justice, particularly in the Latino community. Her work has garnered enough attention that First Lady Michelle Obama invited her to be her personal guest at the 2015 State of the Union Address.

Part of what drove her career switch was the fact that her family’s home was “completely destroyed” when Hurricane Andrew hit Miami Beach in 1992. She says they thought they were safe, because they’d heard Andrew was going to hit east of where they lived.

“I wanted to give people a heads-up so they could make informed decisions” about how to respond to increasingly severe weather and other climate-change impacts, she says. “Projections of sea-level rise and global-warming impacts exist in academia and in government, but they’re not getting out as quickly as they need to the public. I’m a scientist, and I speak Spanish, so I was in a position to do really good work and help my community.”

Hernandez Hammer joined the staff of the Moms Clean Air Force, a national organization made up of mothers united against air pollution and climate change. There, she knocked on doors and held educational events to talk to other mothers in south Florida about climate change and what they could do about it.

While she still volunteers for the Moms Clean Air Force, Hernandez Hammer is now the southeast climate advocate for the Union of Concerned Scientists. While her focus is still informing and organizing people, particularly Latinos, about climate change, she works with a broader spectrum of those who live across the entire southeastern United States.

Fighting for Environmental Justice

A big focus of her work is environmental justice, she says, because while Latinos are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis, they’re not always receiving the same level of protection from it as Anglo communities.

As an example, she points to her home city of Miami Beach, which sees its highest tides of the year in the fall — a phenomenon locals refer to as the “king tides.” In the last 50 years or so, she says, people in Miami have been experiencing more and more flooding during the king tides.

“People think it’s because the pipes are breaking, but the infrastructure is working,” she says. “Florida is a very low-lying state, and that infrastructure was built 50 to 70 years ago based on the highest tides at the time. The problem is that the current degree of sea-level rise wasn’t factored in. We’ve had eight or nine inches of sea level rise since then.”

The city’s drainage systems can’t cope with these higher seas, so salt water corrodes pipes and seeps over roads and into homes and buildings each year, contaminating soil and drinking water wells.

In flood waters, there is bacteria and all sorts of toxins floating around. Kids were walking in that water to get to their school buses.

Hernandez Hammer and volunteers from local community groups go into Latino neighborhoods to tell people that the flooding they’re seeing is due to the climate crisis, not busted plumbing.

During a recent king tide flooding cycle, she went into the affluent neighborhoods of Miami Beach.

“There were pumps, sandbags, construction to raise the roads. Millions of dollars were being spent to protect the high-end areas,” she notes.

In contrast, when she went over to the lower-income neighborhoods populated mainly by Latinos, the situation there was a stark contrast. “There was nothing being done,” she says. “There were no pumps, no sandbags. People were wearing trash bags to take out the garbage. And the trucks didn’t even come get the garbage for months [in those areas] during the flooding. Power lines had fallen into the water.”

She and other scientists tested the water standing in those under-served areas, confirming it was indeed salt water. “In flood waters, there is bacteria and all sorts of toxins floating around. Kids were walking in that water to get to their school buses.”

Residents called their elected officials for help, but she says the response they received was always, “Oh, it’s the king tide. It’s part of living in Florida.”

Latinos: A Force for Change

When Hernandez Hammer knocks on doors, she finds that her Latino neighbors are only too willing to join her — to protect their homes and to protect the environment.

A lot of the information they get is from international news sources like Telemundo and Univision that are pulling data from scientists, so their information is accurate.… They have no doubt that climate change exists and is a major issue.

Consequently, once given the opportunity to join the national conversation on climate by leaders like Hernandez Hammer, Latinos in Florida and elsewhere have been turning out in droves to push for climate justice and renewable energy.

“We’re looking for solutions,” she says. “There’s been a lot of work letting people know what climate change is and what might happen, but we’re living now with climate change.

At this point, we’re asking, “How do we address impacts and take clean, renewable energy into account?’”

Currently, the Latino community and others across the state are collecting signatures for Florida’s Solar Choice ballot initiative, which would allow Floridians the option of choosing solar power. (The “Sunshine State” is currently one of four states that prohibits residents from buying electricity from any entity that is not a utility, in effect making putting up rooftop solar panels largely illegal.) They’re adding their voices and efforts to local initiatives like the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, an agreement among four counties to “coordinate mitigation and adaptation activities across county lines,” in particular to call for the use of renewables. And they’re getting out their word about the growing power of the Latino vote in the 2016 elections.

Organizations like Voto Latino and Mi Familia Vota are urging Latinos across the country to upgrade their immigration status if needed to become naturalized citizens, so they can flex their voting might during this election year. While both organizations say Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s words about Mexican immigrants being largely “rapists and murderers” last June have been a huge driver for that effort, Hernandez Hammer believes that Latinos’ care for the environment will be a major catalyst as well.

One thing is certain: Hernandez Hammer is passionate about the role Latinos can play in mitigating climate change, and she won’t be hanging up her activist hat anytime soon.

“I want to do everything I can to educate, so kids of this generation know we’re working hard to give them a better future,” she says. “If we are able to prevent the worst effects of climate change, I want my son to know that I was a part of it. And if not, I want him to know we tried really hard.”

Longtime activist on environmental issues and how they affect Native communities, Tom Goldtooth (Mdewakanton Dakota and Diné) became passionate about climate justice in 1991, when he was appointed spokesperson of the Native Peoples Caucus at the first annual National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in Washington, DC. Goldtooth is the executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), which works with tribal communities at a local and global level to protect sacred sites and the environment through direct action.

The conference drove home for Goldtooth the reality that, because of the lack of jurisdiction and federal support, tribal territories are often targeted by companies with climate-changing infrastructure such as pipelines, oil extraction through fracking, and the extraction of oil in the Canadian Tar Sands.

“It was the grandmothers, sisters, and brothers who were there that really got my heart,” he says. “They were talking about life and death issues, … and people from the coal power plant regions were dying from respiratory illness. I also heard testimony from … African-American people from the southeast who had been around the chemical-polluting industries along the Mississippi River corridor from Baton Rouge to New Orleans.”

Since then, Tom and his son Dallas Goldtooth have continued to take action on climate justice, working in collaboration with tribes across North America. Though they’d be hard-pressed to admit it, the Goldtooths and IEN have played a key role in spearheading national Native activism on this issue, most notably in raising awareness of human rights issues at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris and providing critical support in pulling off what many thought was an impossible feat: stopping the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline.

The Case Against the Pipeline

The battle to stop the KXL pipeline from being constructed is a prime example of the direct effect climate-changing fossil-fuels have on Indigenous communities.

Proposed in 2008, the 1,700-mile-long, $8 billion KXL pipeline was to bring 800,000 barrels per day of bituminous crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to the Texas coast.

The KXL pipeline’s projected path across the country involved the entire central portion of the United States from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, and many tribal populations were gravely concerned about the pipeline crossing over tribal territories and the massive water sources supplying them. If the pipeline were ever to leak, the pollution could have potentially destroyed the water supply to millions of Native and non-Native people.

If the people do not understand the sacredness of Mother Earth, I do not see how we can develop any global plan to stop the climate crisis.

— Tom Goldtooth

The tar sands are located approximately 250 miles north of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and cover 10 million acres of boreal forest. Underneath these lands lies bitumen, a tar-like form of petroleum that can be converted to fuel. To access the bitumen, the trees must be cut and cleared, and the bitumen must be converted to liquid fuel through an extraction process that creates up to four times the amount of greenhouse gases as standard oil drilling.

The bitumen also contains toxic substances known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), which can cause cancer, and which are reported in substantially higher numbers by surrounding First Nations communities than most other communities because their lands are closer to the tar sands.

Alberta’s First Nations communities, particularly women, had been fighting against the effects of tar sands extraction on their lands when plans for KXL started to emerge in the public eye around 2010. It was then that IEN launched one of the first anti-KXL campaigns to gain national attention in the US and Canada.

The Battle to Stop KXL

Knowing full well the potential impact of the KXL, activists from all over Indian Country joined IEN in the fight to stop the pipeline.

As Dallas Goldtooth told UK’s The Guardian “Our resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline and other tar-sand infrastructure is grounded in our inherent right to self-determination as Indigenous peoples. As the original caretakers, we know what it will take to ensure these lands are available for generations to come. This pipeline will leak; it will contaminate the water. It will encourage greater tar sands development, which, in turn, will increase carbon emissions.”

They took to the media, pointing out that Indigenous people in the US and Canada have treaties in place obligating the governments to care for tribes in exchange for natural resources from their lands. However, they said, these treaties have been unheeded throughout history, including when it comes to the Alberta tar sands. While Canada claims there are 1.7 trillion barrels of oil trapped in the tar sands, First Nations do not benefit from the financial gains of the oil, though they experience many of the negative impacts.

Indigenous people in many parts of the world are trying to maintain their subsistence lifestyle. They attempt to live off the land, and they continue to struggle to maintain these original instructions that we have maintained from time immemorial. Sadly, some of these extreme places are the same places where we are seeing these impacts of climate change happening. Because these places are targeted by industries, this ability to maintain a reconnection to the lands and animals is now limited.

— Dallas Goldtooth

The Goldtooths helped launch an Earth Day action in April of 2014 in which thousands of protesters, including the Cowboy and Indian Alliance and Winona LaDuke’s Honor the Earth Foundation, arrived in Washington, DC, to protest KXL. They started getting tribal councils across North America to pass resolutions against KXL, and they sent a declaration opposing KXL, signed by thousands of Native people, directly to President Obama. They also helped lead the People’s Climate March on September 21, 2014, in New York City.

A few weeks later, President Obama rejected the KXL pipeline proposal, citing its negative environmental repercussions. According to many, the world would not have seen such a victory if it hadn’t been for the organization and solidarity of Indigenous people.

Disappointment in Paris

Native leaders, including the Goldtooths, didn’t stop after KXL’s defeat. Many attended the COP21 in Paris, held November 30 through December 11, 2015, to push for a climate agreement that would include legally binding protections for Indigenous rights.

The Goldtooths participated in panels and events organized by the Committee in Solidarity With the Indigenous People of the Americas. During his time in Paris, Tom Goldtooth was awarded the Gandhi Peace Prize for his efforts in Native climate justice at a global level.

While the Paris climate agreement was lauded by many as a step forward in the fight against climate change, it tragically left out protections for human rights, including Indigenous rights. Native activists from around the world had called for such protections, particularly because Indigenous communities around the world are often forcibly relocated by governments colluding with corporations to raze rain forests or construct pipelines.

Dallas Goldtooth told Green America the rights of the Indigenous being slighted in Paris is admittedly old hat. “A lot of non-native allies asked us, “Why are you even going?’” he says. “I tell them, “We still need to acknowledge the message that needs to be told in terms of Indigenous people. We are still here.’”

While the Paris climate agreement was lauded by many as a step forward in the fight against climate change, it tragically left out protections for human rights, including Indigenous rights.

The Need for Native Values

Both Tom and Dallas say they will continue to deliver that message, primarily because they believe a profound respect for Native values is critical in the fight against climate change.

“If the people do not understand the sacredness of Mother Earth, I do not see how we can develop any global plan to stop the climate crisis,” Tom Goldtooth told Indian Country Media Today shortly after the Paris talks. “That is why Elders continue to encourage campaigns for the spiritual awareness of Mother Earth.”

“We need to connect to our original ways. It is more than just me,” says Dallas. “It is more than just my family and you. It is our future and the seven generations and the seven beyond that. This is something that deserves that passion.”

Written by:

Vincent Schilling (Akwesasne Mohawk) is vice-president of Schilling Media, Inc. and an editor at Indian Country Media Today. Follow him @VinceSchilling.

On December 10th, 2015, a delegation of 50 members, most from 15 historically Black colleges and universities held a rally. The familiar, and frequently polarizing, chant of “Black Lives Matter” echoed in the hallways of the Le Bourget Conference Centre. This was Paris, France; this was the United Nations’ 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21). The movement/delegation was there on behalf of minority communities calling for “climate justice.” “Dirty Air = The Silent Killer of the Black Community,” read one sign, “Don’t Frack Up My Neighborhood,” read another.

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is perhaps best known for attempting to open a national conversation in the US around police brutality. But some BLM activists are now connecting the dots between the inequities in how police interact with communities of color versus White neighborhoods, and inequities in how communities of color are protected from the effects of climate change — as they are often hardest hit by them.

Black Lives Matter in Paris

Sarra Tekola, a climate justice and Black Lives Matter campaign activist, was one of those speaking about these connections in Paris. “When you think about a cop shooting you, it’s an immediate death,” she explains. “But climate change — with [related] pollution that’s mostly in our backyard — is still killing us. Respiratory diseases, asthma, and various cancers are slower killers, but connecting them to Black Lives Matter is really important.”

These issues are all connected, so you can’t solve climate change if we do not also solve other inequities.

— Sarra Tekola, Black Lives Matter campaign activist

According to a 2012 study by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP), Black and Latino families are more likely than White households to live near coal-fired power plants, for example. And African Americans and other communities of color are often more vulnerable to drought, heat islands, and extreme weather events, due to a legacy of socioeconomic inequalities or unequal protection from local and national government officials.

The delegation staged various actions such as protests, speeches, and workshops to educate anyone interested on the plight of low-income communities and people of color.

“At the end of the speeches, we put breathing masks on to represent the air quality in our neighborhoods and walked out into the green space of the COP21, where the public is allowed to be, [to stage a die-in] and chant “We Can’t Breathe!’” recalls Tekola. Afterwards, the delegation rose to their feet and started to chant “Black Lives Matter.” “It was really dope because there were Africans and Indians and people from around the world who joined in.”

While some may have been initially confused, thinking the climate change discussions were being co-opted to amplify concerns of stateside police brutality, Tekola and the delegation soon explained why Black and Brown lives also matter when it comes to the climate crisis.

“These issues are all connected, so you can’t solve climate change if we do not also solve other inequities,” says Tekola. “Eric Garner died because he couldn’t breathe [after being put in a banned chokehold by New York City police], and there are so many kids in communities of color who are dying because they can’t breathe [from coal pollution]. In the end, I think everyone who heard us realized that, and it was a very powerful moment.”

Bringing in Diverse Voices

Part of the reason people of color haven’t been as able to contribute to the larger conversation around climate change — the one that includes inequities in race, class, and other socioeconomic factors — is that mainstream environmental groups have largely failed to reach out to them and hear their stories, says Dr. Robert Bullard, Dean of the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University. Dr. Bullard was one of the organizers of the delegation.

“People of color may not belong to an environmental organization but are members of churches, civic groups, civil rights or faith-based organizations that do work in areas of environmental and climate justice,” he says. “Environmentalism has to be broadened to incorporate organizations and groups that may not necessarily have ‘environment’ in their name.”

Environmentalism has to be broadened to incorporate organizations and groups that may not necessarily have “environment” in their name. — Dr. Robert Bullard, “Father of Environmental Justice”

Jacqui Patterson, director of the NAACP’s Environmental and Climate Justice Program, was also well aware of that need. The NAACP sent its own delegation of youth and front-line community leaders to Paris, led by Patterson.

“People are really being starved for conversations around race and climate change,” she says. Back in 2009, when the program first launched, she started by going out in communities of color to obtain the firsthand accounts of experiences dealing with impacts of climate change that would shape the program’s strategic objectives.

She was flooded with responses.

“We got stories like, ‘Yeah, as a matter of fact, my wife or husband or brother or sister died of lung cancer, and they’ve never smoked a day in their life,’” recalls Patterson. “Time and again, you heard people like teachers talk about all the kids in their school with inhalers, and others talk about having people in their church needing respirators.”

The stories had a striking repetitiveness, but looking at the numbers — including that 68 percent of African Americans live near coal-fired power plants despite making up only 13 percent of the US population — things became obvious and, to an extent, uglier.

“It was really a listening time,” explains Patterson, “but at the same time, we started drawing connections between what our communities are experiencing and climate change. Then we started working on solutions.”

Cooperation Jackson Leads the Way

It isn’t just climate change that’s affecting communities of color; it’s also the greening process that’s largely excluding them. But African-American communities are taking action where governments are stalling.

Much of the Gulf Coast region is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina, the superstorm that hit the Gulf Coast in 2005. Kali Akuno, co-founder of Cooperation Jackson, a cooperative network in Jackson, Mississippi, points out that there are several climate-change impacts in the region that were, and are, having pervasive adverse effects.

We are the product of a resilient community, and a resilient people who have had to make a way out of no way. — Kali Akuno, co-founder of Cooperation Jackson

“The swamp and marsh lands of the Mississippi Delta are disappearing at a rapid rate before our eyes due to rising sea levels,” he says. “And over the past 20 years, our growing zones have shifted rapidly, as the overall climate is becoming more tropical in certain places and more arid in others.”

The changing of these zones, which were once well-suited for agricultural crops, is gutting the state’s economy, which is still heavily dependent on food production.

So organizations like Cooperation Jackson have sprung up to address these deficiencies related to climate change, as well as the region’s history of discrimination and economic inequality. Cooperation Jackson aims to transform Jackson into the green capital of the South in such a way that benefits everyone and can be replicated in other resource-strapped and low-income communities. The overall goal is to create a network of worker-owned cooperatives and enterprises in Jackson to keep a greater concentration of earned income circulating locally.

Cooperation Jackson’s community Housing Co-op has purchased a number of vacant lots and abandoned homes to develop sustainable low-income housing, with an eye for energy-efficiency. It also plans to develop a zero-waste, highly energy-efficient “EcoVillage” co-housing community. Much of this work will be completed by other Cooperation Jackson co-ops, including the green Construction Co-op and the Waste Management/Recycling Co-op.

“We live in an extremely poor community,” says Akuno. “Energy-efficient houses, powered by solar and thermal energy will radically change the quality of life in our community by reducing energy costs by at least half.”

The group has already established and is expanding a network of cooperative urban farming plots around the city, to supply Jackson with affordable, high-quality food to fight against food deserts, which have only become more prevalent since Katrina.

Cooperation Jackson also plans to launch a child care co-op, to provide affordable child care and a “multicultural education” to the city’s children. And soon, the Nubia Lumumba Arts and Culture Co-op will expand the arts, entertainment, and hospitality industries in the city.

From Akuno’s perspective, sustainability and resilience isn’t a new concept people of color have turned to in an effort to fight climate change. “We are the product of a resilient community, and a resilient people who have had to make a way out of no way,” he says. “So we draw our inspiration and lessons from this rich history to add to its legacy. In Jackson, we can be an example for other oppressed and exploited communities throughout the US and the world.”

Taking it to the Streets

Both communities of color and White communities are looking at solving the climate crisis, but for a different set of reasons, says Akuno. Communities of color often start from the pragmatic viewpoint of having access to the worst food, and of not having jobs or sustainable farming. White communities, on the other hand, are more likely to already have their basic survival needs met and come more from a standpoint of environmental conservation, he says.

Wherever there is an injustice and wherever people are exploited, the ecosystem as a whole will collapse. — Sarra Tekola

“The challenge that we’ve had is to get these two points to converge and see the need each has for the other,” says Akuno. “[It’s not about] trying to shame people or exclude them or make them feel bad. The point is to call this out so we can address it and come up with a practical, concrete, and strategic solutions that’ll help us all go forward.’”

Most importantly, he says, decision makers in all communities need to be representative of the changing demographics of the world, to ensure everyone can afford sustainability.

It’s to everyone’s benefit that we make both happen sooner rather than later, says Sarra Tekola.

“Our economy is measured by growth, but it’s a finite planet,” she says. “Those inequalities [that currently exist] will eventually affect all of us because we all share the same atmosphere. Wherever there is an injustice and wherever people are exploited, the ecosystem as a whole will collapse. These things are very much connected.”

The best way for all people to help is by spreading awareness, through conversation and activism, says Tekola.

“I’ve worked in nonprofits and government agencies, and the ecology side and also in academia,” she says, “but what I’ve seen get the ball rolling more than anything is when people get out in the streets and push for change.”

People of color are on the front lines of the climate crisis, and are leading the call for equitable protection and meaningful action.

Green American published this dedicated to amplifying the voices of those on the front lines of the climate crisis, working to protect the most vulnerable areas around the world. No matter what your background is, it’s vital to join the climate-justice conversation where you live — and work to ensure that everyone is included.

The average American throws away 4.4 pounds of trash in a single day. We use less and recycle more to treat the planet better. Here are some ways how.

Supporting the green economy is more than being informed—it’s about following through and “voting with your dollar” as we call it. Where you shop and what you buy when you do sends a message to business owners. And it helps sustainable businesses stay afloat in a deal-driven market. Here are our favorite sustainable shopping tips.

Individual action can make a difference on climate change. Here are easy tips for lowering your carbon footprint significantly.

Throughout our lives we're likely to spend $1 million or more.  We each have a lot of economic power to move the economy in a greener direction.  

First, we can choose not to purchase items we don't really need.  On average, the American home has over 300,000 items in it.  Many of those are never used.  Before making a purchase, it's a great idea to really think about whether we need it.  Many times the answer is no.

Second, we can shift our purchases in a greener direction.  Look to purchase organic and local foods.  Purchase clothing and furniture used.  Shop at local stores that are owned by women or people of color.  When we need to buy items new, check to make sure that they are truly green.  Green America's Green Pages is a great place to find the greenest businesses in America.

Third, with the money we save from buying used and buying less, we have more money to invest in better banks and credit unions that invest in communities nationwide and in mutual funds that are divested from fossil fuels, private prisons, and sweatshops.  That way we're saving for our retirement while creating a better world.

Climate change is threatening the whole world, but communities of color and lower incomes are experiencing the effects at a disproportionate rate. Exposure to toxic pollutants also typically hits low-income communities and communities of color the hardest. Green America strives to expose these disparities and share what these communities are doing to combat the potentially deadly threats their neighborhoods face. 

Environmental and climate justice calls for new policies on the climate crisis and emphasizes the need for action within the communities that are affected most by the changing climate. According to the NAACP, race is the number one indicator for the placement of polluting facilities in this country – a clear example of how change is needed on a country-wide scale.  

From environmental activism, like growing community gardens, to pushing for policy change, people across the country are standing up for clean water, clean food, and clean air. By participating in efforts to decrease global warming and its effects on human health, we can do our part to fight the climate crisis.  

Be inspired by what these communities are doing to make a difference, and find out what you can do to help.  

People all over the country are standing up for justice. Leading the charge are marginalized communities, people of color, and advocates of underrepresented groups speaking out on the issues they face. These voices are crucial leaders we must listen to in order to create a more equitable and just world. Together, we can build a society where the planet and all its people are able to live healthy and safe lives.

But first comes hearing, amplifying, and helping these voices for justice. Read about these leaders making big changes in their communities and for the world, highlighted in our quarterly magazine, Green American.

Green America is active in fighting pipelines nationwide.  Pipelines for fossil fuels provide the infrastructure to keep America addicted to fossil fuels. That addiction to fossil fuels is, in turn, fueling climate change.  The US is the number two contributor to climate change in the world (second only to China, which has a far larger population), and the energy and transportation sectors drive most of that climate change.

Pipelines don’t only fuel climate change.  They also cause massive amounts damage on a local level: 

• Building pipelines results in deforestation and the destruction of habitats for multiple species
• There have been approximately 9,000 significant pipeline spills over the past 30 years. Over 500 people have died because of these spills, in addition to 2,576 people injured, and over $8.5 billion in financial damages [1]
• Property owners around the country have had their land seized under eminent domain to build pipelines. Lower income people and people of color are disproportionately affected by this, including Native Americans.

Fighting Back Against Pipelines and Fossil Fuel Infrastructure

Local people impacted by pipelines are the leaders in fighting these deadly fossil fuel projects. Several of the largest pipeline projects in the US directly impact American Indian communities, including the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, and it is these communities are on the front lines of fighting back. Green America has joined with allies nationwide to support impacted communities in opposing the following:

• The Keystone XL Pipeline, which would bring 830,000 barrels of tar sands oil to the US each day
• The Dakota Access Pipeline, which would bring over 570,000 barrels of fracked crude oil from the Bakken Shale each day.  The pipeline threatens the lands of the Standing Rock Sioux and the water supply of millions of people
• Cove Point, a natural gas pipeline and liquefied natural gas export facility in Maryland, that would export fracked natural gas oversees
• The Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas terminal in Oregon, which would have exported fracked gas oversees.  In 2016, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission denied a permit to Jordan Cove, making it one of the rare fossil fuel projects rejected.
• The Atlantic Sunrise pipeline, which would bring fracked natural gas through Pennsylvania

Fighting the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)

FERC is the federal agency that is charged with reviewing and approving natural gas pipelines and infrastructure in the US.  FERC approves almost every pipeline that it reviews.  Green America has joined with dozens of allies nationwide to call for Congressional hearings regarding FERC’s rubber stamping of fossil fuel industry projects.

Specifically, Green America is working with allies to call attention to:

• FERC’s bias in support of the industry it is supposed to regulate. Since FERC is 100% funded by the industries it regulates is has no incentive to deny any project that comes before it. FERC has denied only one natural gas pipeline project in the 30 years since it has been funded this way
• The revolving door between FERC and the industry it regulates
• FERC’s process discourages public comment, and the agency does not allow people impacted by proposed pipelines to speak at all at FERC’s public hearings
• FERC’s use of consultants who work for the pipeline industry and clearly have a conflict of interests

Fighting Funding of Pipelines

We must put pressure on the Wall Street banks that finance the fossil fuel industry. Several banks that claim to have strong climate commitments, but simultaneously finance pipelines, fracking, and oil exploration in the US.

We urge individuals and institutions to divest from fossil fuels and the banks that support the industry. Green America is at the forefront of the movement to encourage individual investors divest from fossil fuels, and our Break Up With Your Megabank program has helped thousands of Americans move their money from megabanks to community banks and credit unions.

Back to the Vote With Your Dollar Toolkit

Like many, you probably shop online. Amazon.com is the world’s largest retailer and is synonymous with online shopping. 55% of shoppers in the U.S. turn to Amazon as their first stop. In 2014, we dug into the company’s record on environmental and social responsibility and found Amazon performing poorly across the board–from dirty energy to worker exploitation. While Amazon has responded to consumer pressure by adopting more renewable energy, it is still a laggard on environmental and labor issues.

Choosing to spend money wisely, in ways that support our value, can have a major impact. This year, if you are shopping online, consider one of these green alternatives to Amazon.

See our expanded Amazon alternatives list here! 

Green Alternatives to Amazon

Company	Products	How They’re Green
	Books, Audio Books, DVDs	Operates a fleet of biodiesel-powered trucks, purchases wind power, and generates electricity from solar panels on their roof.
	Books, Audiobooks, eBooks, Textbooks, DVDs, CDs	By offering previously-owned merchandise BWB has recycled and re-used over 250k tons of books and offset 44k tons of carbon emissions.
	Home Décor, Accessories, Artisan Goods	Offers a wide range of organic, fair trade, recycled, and chemical-free products, made by artisans in more than 20 countries, including the U.S.
	Crafts, Jewelry, Art	By sorting for “handmade” consumers can connect directly with artisans around the world to purchase their products.
	Fair trade Arts and Crafts, Jewelry, Music, Food	Handmade jewelry and textiles provide equitable returns to artisans in developing countries.
	Used Goods — hundreds of categories	Largest online engine for reuse on the planet; allows people to sell items they own and are not using, reducing demand for new manufactured goods and landfill space.
	Fair Trade Arts and Crafts	Supports environmental education in Mayan communities, uses post-consumer recycled paper, hybrid vehicles, and website hosted by 100% wind power.
	Fair Trade Gifts & Textiles	All products are handmade from repurposed materials and empower women in India through fair trade. Plus, items are shipped using eco-friendly packaging materials.
	Fair Trade/Eco Clothing	Makes high-quality clothing from natural and organic fibers such as cotton, silk, wool, and alpaca; committed to using environmentally-friendly dyes.
	Fair Trade, Organic Clothing	Uses certified organic fibers, purchased directly from growers. Fair labor practices are in place through all stages of production, and manufacturing is limited to North & South America to reduce carbon usage.
	Fair Trade Coffee, Tea, Chocolate, Gifts	Sources from over 40 small farmer organizations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the United States.
	Fair trade jewelry, gifts	Fair trade jewelry made from new and recycled materials, made using fair trade practices in Guatemala.
Designates a certified member of Green America’s Green Business Network®

Amazon’s Sustainability Record:

Environment

Amazon uses huge amounts of electricity and most of the company’s energy comes from coal-fired power plants. In 2015, in response to mounting public pressure, including our Build A Cleaner Cloud campaign, Amazon’s hosting company, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced it would invest in both solar and wind energy projects. As these projects came online, AWS is now using 50% renewable energy to power its massive network of data centers. The company has committed to move to 100% renewable energy by 2030, but is still behind competitors like Apple and Google. 

However, Amazon’s commitment to a cleaner cloud is being called into question due to its overtures to the fossil fuel sector. Online tech news site Gizmodo published an explosive exposé showing that Amazon is actively courting business from the largest oil and gas companies to put the power of Amazon’s giant servers to work to make it easier to drill for fossil fuels. Amazon aims to make millions or billions of dollars. The resulting climate impacts will exact a huge cost on all the rest of us, in the form of extreme weather, failing crops, and social instability.

In addition, Greenpeace has called into question Amazon's commitment to clean energy in Virginia, where many of Amazon's servers are located, and found that those servers are powered by 12% renewable energy.

Amazon is also still stalling in terms of transparency, refusing to report its energy usage and climate impacts to the Carbon Disclosure Project.

Workers

Amazon got a lot of positive press when it increased the minimum wage in its warehouses to $15 per hour, but that move came in response to intense public pressure and hides the reality of working conditions throughout the company's supply chain.

First, while Amazon raised the minimum wage, it cut benefits at the same time. It is difficult to determine if workers are better off overall after the benefits cut and the minimum wage increase, as one of the benefits that was cut was giving workers stock in the company. 

Second, Amazon warehouse workers labor under brutal conditions. Workers in Amazon’s “Fulfillment Centers” (warehouses) have been found to work non-stop on their feet in non-air conditioned buildings. These same workers are forced to sign 18-month non-compete agreements, which prevent them from finding other similar work, should they be let go. The author Simon Head concluded when it comes to labor practices, “Amazon is worse than Walmart.”

Just recently, a warehouse worker died while working in Amazon’s warehouse. Amazon waited 20 minutes before calling for help and demanded other workers immediately go back to work, granting workers no time to process the loss of their co-worker, and this is not the first time this type of incident has occurred. NYCOSH recently published a great report on the negative health effects of Amazon’s high daily quotas for warehouse workers.

Third, Amazon uses many contract workers to deliver its packages, and these workers are paid by the number of packages delivered, which creates incentives for overwork and unsafe driving. This summer, an Amazon contract driver killed a woman.

Fourth, concerns have been raised regarding the overseas labor that manufactures Amazon's devices.  Workers are not being protected from toxins, and reports have found underage workers in Amazon factories. 

Finally, even white collar workers are not protected. The New York Times’ explosive expose on Amazon’s white-collar workers revealed that while employees at Amazon’s Headquarters may earn a great deal, they are often subjected to a ruthless working environment. Current and former employees conveyed tales of working for four days without sleeping, developing ulcers from stress, never seeing their families, even being fired for having cancer or a miscarriage and needing time to recover. 

Corporate Citizenship

Like many corporate behemoths, Amazon has a history of shielding profits overseas, and for years, it fought against charging sales tax on its products. In 2018, Amazon paid $0 in taxes on $11 billion in profits. 

Amazon has also been spending money to influence local politics.  The company has spent money to defeat a tax on large companies in Seattle where the proceeds would help address the homeless crisis.

Back to the Vote With Your Dollar Toolkit

Energy efficiency refers to ways of improving products or systems so that they require less energy to do the same amount of work. Increasing energy efficiency is one of the fastest, easiest, and most cost-effective technological solutions for cutting carbon dioxide emissions and mitigating climate change.

Energy efficiency also makes economic sense: people and businesses can save money by reducing the amount of electricity, heating, and cooling that they use. Energy efficient appliances, like those rated by Energy Star®, the EPA’s energy efficiency program, can save a lot of money. Home appliances like refrigerators and washing machines account for about 13% of all household energy costs. Even replacing just your washing machine with an Energy Star® rated machine can save $360 over the lifetime of the product.

Here are some ways Green America recommends to increase your efficiency:

Optimize heating and air conditioning

The air conditioning and heating unit in your house uses an estimated 40-50% of all energy costs. Cutting your energy use here, therefore, is one of the most effective ways to reduce your home’s ecological footprint.

• Get an energy audit and shave 5-30% percent off your energy bill. Simple fixes like caulk and weatherstrip doors and windows, cover your air conditioner, shrink-wrap window glass, and install insulating shades to keep icy drafts out of your home in winter.
• Turn the thermostat or air conditioner down when you're away from the house. Programmable thermostats can store as many as six temperature settings per day, returning to pre-set schedules automatically.
• Open south-facing shades during the day, and close the curtains at night to make the most out of the sun's energy during winter. During the summer, close these shades during the day.
• Read our article: Buying Energy Efficient Appliances to discover the best options for efficient home appliances.

Take the five lightbulb challenge!

In 2021, 4% of electricity use in the US went to lighting our homes. Commercial buildings, like retail, institutions, and public street lighting used about 11% of the US electricity budget that same year. Many of those bulbs are incandescent, which are energy inefficient.

In contrast, light emitting diodes (LEDs) use 90% less energy and last 25 times longer. On top of saving energy, since they're so long-lasting, you'll save resources and landfill space. Challenge yourself to replace at least five of your incandescent bulbs in your home with energy efficient bulbs. You won't just be doing the environment a service—you'll save $225 a year in energy costs.

Control “vampire” loads

Vampire loads is the term used for when appliances and electronics continue to draw electricity when they are turned off or on in standby mode. One way to reduce vampire loads is to unplug your electronics while they are not in use.

TVs pull the most energy when turned off. Try a smart or advanced power strip, which stops energy flow to plugged in appliances when not in use. It can cut your electric use 20-48%, saving you money in the long run.

Turn down (or replace!) your refrigerator

The refrigerator is the biggest energy consumer in most households—adding up to a quarter of an average home's energy use.

You can save energy by ensuring that you don't keep your refrigerator below the recommended temperature setting of 35°-38°F for refrigerators and 0°-5° F for the freezer section. To test the temperature, place an appliance thermometer in a glass of water inside your refrigerator or freezer and take a reading after 24 hours.

Also, make sure your seals are airtight, cover liquids foods stored in the refrigerator (uncovered foods release moisture and make the compressor work harder), and regularly defrost manual-defrost freezers and refrigerators.

Maximize your dishwasher’s efficiency

Some dishwashers will allow you to turn down the internal temperature. Other recommendations include: use cold water only to rinse dishes before loading them if necessary; be sure your dishwasher is full, but not overloaded when you run it; and let your dishes air dry instead of running the drying cycle.

Reduce the cost of cleaning your clothes

Despite popular misconception, washing your clothes with cold water will still get them clean, as well as create less wear and tear. Switching to cold water also reduces your carbon footprint by 10%. Most of the energy in the washing machine goes to heating the water!

Dryers use an egregious amount of electricity, and they're not even necessary household appliances when the sun is right there. While it's not always perfect for all times of year, air drying can go a long way in electricity savings as well as extending the life of your clothes. You can set up more efficient ways to dry clothes, such as using an outdoor clothesline or an indoor drying rack.

OurFuture.Org: OpEd byTodd Larsen, Green America, April 19, 2017

At the end of April, hundreds of thousands of people will take part in the People’s Climate March in Washington, D.C. and around the country. The march will send a clear message that the majority of Americans understand that climate change is all too real — and they’ll continue to raise their voices until the government takes action.

The march is also a great way to inspire people to take action for climate solutions in their own communities — whether by calling their elected officials or speaking up at town halls, pushing their local and state governments to act, or working with schools and houses of worship to address the climate crisis without waiting for Washington.

If all that’s not for you, there may be an even simpler option: Move your money.

Many people might not realize that their savings may be working directly against efforts to address climate change. If you bank with any of the largest American banks — including Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo — then every dollar you put in to your checking and savings accounts is funding fossil fuel development across the country.

The Dakota Access Pipeline? Funded by megabanks. Keystone XL Pipeline? Same story.

Megabanks are expanding fracking, oil drilling, pipelines, compressor stations, and export terminals from coast to coast. They’re underwriting decades of reliance on fossil fuels, and directly undermining the important work of cutting climate emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

Many big banks claim that they understand the risks of climate change and promise to increase their investments in the clean energy economy. Over the next 10 years, Citibank pledges to invest $100 billion in clean energy. Bank of America says it’ll spend $125 billion by 2025.

But these are pledges, not actual investments. They can’t undo all the harm that these two behemoths are causing through past and current investments in fossil fuels.

Between 2013 and 2015, Citibank bankrolled coal-fired power plants alone to the tune of $24 billion. Over the same period, Bank of America invested at least $10 billion in coal power, $24 billion in liquid gas terminals, and over $29 billion in underwater, tar sands, and Arctic oil extraction.

And, while megabanks have started moving away from financing coal in wealthy nations like ours, they still bankroll coal in poor nations, where environmental regulations are weaker.

Ceres, a national nonprofit organization that mobilizes investors and business leaders to build a green economy, estimates that in order to keep global temperatures below catastrophic levels, we need to be investing $1 trillion additional dollars per year in clean energy. Against that, even the big banks’ multi-billion-dollar pledges are insufficient.

It’s not like the banks don’t know this. Citigroup itself estimates that the climate change impacts will cost us $44 trillion globally over the next 50 years.

So what can we do as average Americans? One thing we can all do is not let Wall Street destroy the planet with our money. There’s a growing movement of Americans moving their money away from megabanks and into community banks and credit unions.

These local institutions invest in their communities, creating jobs and housing — not dirty energy projects. Community-based banks and credit unions are helping to put solar panels on roofs, end food deserts, and help people start thriving local businesses.

And you can shift your other investments, like your retirement savings, to fossil-free mutual funds that invest in clean energy. You’ll get competitive returns, and you’ll know that your money is working for a cleaner world.

Community investing is using your investments to create resources and opportunities for disadvantaged people who are under-served by traditional financial institutions. Your participation in this kind of impact investing could help people attain home ownership, start small businesses, or address other community needs. If you open an account at a community development bank or credit union, you’re already doing community investing!

High-impact community investments are not necessarily the best way to grow your wealth, but rather to better the world and also diversify one's portfolio. High impact options are generally one to five-year investments that offer market or below-market returns (0 percent to 4 percent) depending on how the market is performing, and may not be insured. Community development banks and credit unions can be FDIC or NCUA-insured. Community investments have high impact because investor money can reach borrowers who are most in need of funds to strengthen their communities.

If you're trying to grow your wealth while also changing the world, there are other ways to engage in socially responsible investing.

As a reminder, always do your research before investing.

Main types of high-impact investing:

• Community development banks or credit unions support job creation, affordable housing, small business, and healthy communities. They area a great alternative to conventional mega-banks that finance fossil fuel infrastructure, sweatshops, factory farms and other destructive industries.

• Community Development Loan Funds provide affordable financing for housing and economic development projects, cooperatives, and community-based nonprofit organizations. These loan funds are not insured, although they use grant money and loss reserves to help protect individual investors.

• Micro-enterprise Loan Funds provide small loans and training to entrepreneurs in the US and overseas to create economic development and jobs.

• Community Development Venture Capital Funds provide loans to businesses that are creating jobs in low-income communities.

• Pooled Investment Portfolios are a great option if you want to diversify your community investments. You invest through one large facility, which spreads the money out within a pool of institutions that serve many low-income areas in a variety of ways.

• Mutual Funds are collections of stocks and bonds that are managed by professional money managers, meaning that expert investors are doing the research to pick investments. Anyone can invest in mutual funds. Some socially responsible funds devote up to ten percent of their assets to community investing, and several even put 100 percent of their assets into underserved communities. With these funds, you can use your investment dollars to promote corporate responsibility and contribute to improving disadvantaged communities, while saving for your own retirement. These funds are not federally insured.

How much will my investment returns be affected?

It depends on what type of community investing product you choose.

• If you choose to open accounts at a community development bank or credit union, you'll find the interest rates to be comparable to those at traditional banks and credit unions.
• With community development loan and microenterprise funds, you will often find the returns to be in the 0 percent to 4 percent range.
• The interest on venture capital funds varies.

No matter what the market is doing overall, experts agree that every investor should have a diversified portfolio to minimize risk and achieve a variety of investment objectives. Community investing can be an important part of a diversified portfolio.

How safe is my money when I do community investing?

Accounts at community development banks and credit unions that are federally insured are just as safe in these institutions as they are in traditional banks or credit unions.

Community development loan funds, microenterprise funds, and venture capital funds are not insured—and the same holds true for mutual funds with community investment components—so the risk is higher. Be sure you're fully educated about these options before you decide to invest.

How much of my money should I use for community investing?

Even one percent can make a big difference for communities. If every socially responsible investor put one percent of their portfolios into community investments, it would triple the funding put into rebuilding disadvantaged communities. That money could build more day care centers and schools. It could provide micro-loans to single parents or former welfare recipients wanting to start small businesses. It can help a low-income family build a home, save for their children’s education, or pay debts.

Green America's Mission is to harness economic power- the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace - to create a socially just and sustainable society.

Hours: 32 hours/week, 4 days/week (full time)

Salary: $60,000 -66,000 contingent on experience; (This position is grant tracked)

Benefits: Excellent benefits package, including health insurance, dental & vision coverage, sick days, holidays, and vacation

Supervisor: Director, Center for Sustainability Solutions

Deadline: May 15, 2017

Green America is a non-profit organization dedicated to creating a just and sustainable society by harnessing economic power for positive change. Our unique approach involves working with consumers, investors and businesses. Our workplace reflects our goal of creating a more cooperative, environmentally sound economy. We have a participatory decision-making process, which aims to build consensus within the departments and teams.

The Center for Sustainability Solutions at Green America supports several innovation networks, focused groups of stakeholders with the objective of making significant, industry-wide system change. The program team of the Center for Sustainability Solutions provides the strategic direction, stakeholder engagement program, facilitation and coordination services, and program management for participating individuals and companies in each working group.

577. seek an experienced senior level position as a Development Officer who can hit the ground running to play a major role in raising major donor and foundation support for Green America’s Center for Sustainability Solutions. This includes cultivation of new major donors, grant support and the launch of a new initiative - the Thought Leader Network. We expect the Development Officer to manage a portfolio of 20-30 major donors, build the major donor pipeline with increased and new gifts, oversee the Center’s foundation fundraising, and effectively coordinate with the Center Director, CEO and the Director of Development Green America.

The position may involve occasional domestic travel (5-8 times per year). The position would be based in Washington, DC at the Green America offices.

Duties and responsibilities

Design and Implementation of an effective development strategy. Create and execute a comprehensive plan to expand our base of support and achieve fundraising targets for the Center for Sustainability Solutions. Proactively identify and pursue foundations and prospective major funders with potential to support the Center and/or specific programs and initiatives. Expand the breadth and depth of major donor and foundation support and continually grow the funding pipeline across time.

Coordinate with Innovation Networks within Center to identify intersection of funder priorities and key program areas. Support Center team to identify new programs/initiatives based on the existing and emerging priority areas of foundations and existing/prospective major funders. Liaise with funders and program staff to provide insight and resources for Center program development strategy.

Take active role in launch of Thought Leader Network. Take leadership role in strategy and recruiting members who will play both and advisory and funding role. Support Center Director and team with launch of a President Council-like network to grow Center and Green America.

Play a direct, lead role in forging productive long-term relationships – yielding significant sustained support – with existing/prospective major donors and foundation executives. Achieve personal fundraising targets for major donors and foundations. Build relationships based on credibility, trust and knowledge/understanding of prospective supporters’ values and priorities.

Effectively articulate Green America’s mission, objectives, programs, impacts and asks. Participate in creating compelling, effective fundraising messages and collateral. Effectively convey the organization’s mission, objectives, programs, impacts and asks in one-on-one conversations and with larger groups. Play a significant role in helping to increase Green America’s profile as a green thought/action leader within funding networks.

Effectively leverage the Executive Director, Development team and others in fundraising efforts. Proactively identify when it will be effective to strategically involve the President/CEO, Center Director and other leadership staff, in fundraising efforts and manage/coordinate their targeted participation. Track, manage and pursue leads, prospects and follow-ups passed on by others in the organization.

Skills/Experience

• Bachelor’s degree and at least 6 -10 years of proven high-level major gift fundraising experience.
• Demonstrated experience working with foundation programs including conducting research, meeting with program officers, producing successful proposals and reports.
• Certified Fundraising Executive (CFRE) certification (or working toward certification) preferred.
• Good relationship building experience
• Demonstrated ability to utilize technology and donor databases to manage fundraising efforts.
• Donor research skills and the ability to effectively identify, segment, and prioritize prospective major donors and foundations.
• Proven ability to effectively work in coordination with other team leaders.
• Strong project management and organizational skills with ability to meet tight deadlines.
• Exemplary communications skills, interpersonal skills, professionalism, and ability to build long-term relationships with key stakeholders.
• Excellent written skills with demonstrated ability to craft compelling, effective messaging and collateral for fundraising purposes.
• Strong intrinsic interest in issues directly related to Green America’s mission.
• Ability to obtain a deep understanding of Green America’s main program areas (safe food, clean energy, fair labor, and responsible finance) and communicate this understanding to donors.

How to Apply:

Send cover letter and resume to Center for Sustainability Solutions, Green America, 1612 K Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20006, or email centerjobs@greenamerica.org.

No calls, please.

Green America is an equal opportunity employer.

A burst of over 1,000 hate crimes and incidents have occurred since Election Day, and the President’s words and actions are only making perpetrators bolder. With White supremacists in the cabinet and anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric coming out of the White House, we need green, people-centered solutions that bring people together—and don’t depend on Washington.

We believe in using the power of our wallets to create change in the world. And with the White House either unleashing hateful policies or hateful speech, it’s clear that government isn’t going to be leading the way on solutions for equality any time soon.

Hate has no place in the world Green Americans are working for: a world where everyone has enough, where all communities are healthy and safe, and where the abundance of the Earth is preserved for all the generations to come.

At a time when political leadership sets a tone of hate and division, we need solutions that don’t rely on Washington to create the world we want to see. So we invite in the light through our economic activism—hitting hate with our wallets. Together, we can use our economic power against hate and work to build bridges across the divides that split our country.

•  Push for corporate responsibility—through your purchasing and banking choices, your investor voice, and direct communication with companies. Demand that corporate leaders stand against hate and use their power to push Washington in a better direction (p. 14). Encourage market forces to keep going and do more.


• Stand against hate though your workplace. Businesses are making a point to welcome immigrants, people of color, and the LBGTQ community into their stores and onto their employee rosters (see p. 20). Local businesses have a huge voice—use it!


• Break down stereotypes. Reach out to communities that are outside your normal path, particularly groups that are common targets of hate. For example, Muslim groups are collaborating with other faith groups on climate solutions (see p. 17). • Stand up for Black and Brown lives. A truly sustainable economy and movement is inclusive and diverse, makes space for all—and makes room for exploring how class, race, gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation affect our interactions.


• Be creative. Check out our “30 Ways to Say No to Hate” (p. 26). Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

We’re at a challenging time in our history where we may just have to reach up together and bend it a bit ourselves. We’ve done it before. —Tracy Fernandez Rysavy, editor-in-chief

The sound of the rain pattering on your roof during a summer storm may also be the sound of a missed opportunity—for you and for the planet. Increasingly, homeowners are discovering the benefits of “green roofing”—or covering a flat section of their rooftops with an expanse of small plants growing in a few inches of engineered soil.

In addition to reducing household cooling and heating costs and extending the life of the roof, green roofs also assist with a host of urban environmental problems—they filter stormwater, help to cool and clean city air, and help prevent flooding. And, they add a cheerful touch of greenery that can be appreciated by those who look down on the roof from taller homes and buildings.

Green roofs defined

The design of green roofs are much more than meets the eye—from above, you might see an expanse of growing media or pebbles dotted with patches of small plants. But the real action takes place in the layers between the leafy surface and the roof.

An extensive green roof is placed like a rug over a swath of roof on which people don’t walk much. Moving from bottom to top through a slice of green roof, you’d find a special membrane covering the roof itself. This bottom layer is either a hot-applied rubberized asphalt or a cold-applied layer of synthetic rubber, which, in combination with a root-repellant material, is designed to block moisture and roots from damaging the roof. A drainage layer of pebbles or a geo-composite drain mat lies on top of the membrane; a filter cloth lies atop the drainage layer. The top, visible layer of a green roof is the several inches of a growing medium, which hosts a crop of hardy low-lying plants, like sedum, chives, talinum, and delosperma. These sandwiched materials provide a natural sponge and filter for rainwater, and protection for the rooftop itself.

An extensive green roof is super low-maintenance. The drought-resistant plants used on these green roofs do fine with rainwater and don’t need supplemental watering after establishment, except in extreme conditions. They usually require weeding once or twice a year.

An “intensive” green roof, which has several feet of growing media and much larger plants.

Benefits of green roofing

Green roofs can save homeowners on cooling and heating costs. The leafy cover of a green roof helps cool the air through evaporation, by providing shade, and by forming a more lightly colored surface than the dark roof underneath. In the summer, a house wearing a green roof can keep cooler than a house with heat-absorbing black roof tiles—thereby using less energy on air conditioning. During winter, the insulation provided by the green roof can also help lower heating costs.

A green roof can help to reduce noise in your home, and the protection offered by a green roof may more than double the life of your home’s existing roof. Some homeowners with new roofs topped with green roofing have been able to negotiate especially long 20-year warranties for this reason, says Linda Velazquez, editor of Greenroofs.com.

Benefits for the planet

Green roofs are also a great solution for the environment. Urban waterways become polluted in part because falling stormwater runs off nonporous sidewalks, roofs, and parking lots and directly into area waterways. Green roofs can absorb up to 90 percent of the rain that falls onto them. Their layers filter that water, removing pollutants before the water continues on its way to streams and rivers. By delaying the rush of stormwater into sewers after a rainfall, widespread green roofs can also help prevent flooding. The plantings on green roofs help absorb airborne toxins and carbon dioxide as they photosynthesize, and can provide welcome habitat for birds.

In the summer, a home with a green roof can keep city air cooler. The expanse of dark surfaces in heavily-developed areas are to blame for the “urban heat island effect,” in which many cities are two to ten degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the surrounding countryside, exacerbating smog (which forms more readily at higher temperatures) and driving up air conditioning costs and energy use.

The City of Chicago has undertaken a massive investment in greenroofing, beginning with a 20,000 square foot rooftop garden on Chicago City Hall, with the goal of reducing the heat island effect in America’s third largest city. An energy study estimated peak demand would be cut by the equivalent of a small nuclear power plant if all of Chicago’s roofs were greened, according to Weston Design Consultants, because more Chicagoans could give their air conditioners a rest.

Is a green roof right for you?

Would your home or building be a good candidate for a green roof? If your roof is flat or no more than 30 degrees sloped, and in a sunny location relatively unshaded by trees, then you might be able to greenroof your home. Because green roofs weigh more than conventional roofing, you will also need to ensure that your home can support the added weight of the soil after a rainstorm—about 20 pounds per square foot. (Check out the rebate offered by DC's Department of Energy and the Environment, to explore whether your home is “green roof ready.”) The cost of residential greenroofing generally ranges from $12–$35 per square foot, and should be installed by a professional. Look for an installer who brings both green roof experience and training from Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, which is has a Green Roof Professional accreditation.

If you’ve been thinking about going solar at home, you may be wondering which is better—greenroofing or solar panels? Well, homeowners may not have to choose as studies have shown that photovoltaic (PV) panels can be integrated with greenroofs with results showing reciprocal benefits for both. The cooling effect of the plants are thought to increase the electricity production of solar panels, which are temperature-sensitive and in turn, the shade the panels provide cools plants and soil.

One thing that might drive a decision would be cost, as solar systems can cost from $25,000 to $45,000 and green roofs generally cost around $2,000. But, most solar installations are leased nowadays, meaning that a company will pay for panels and install them, and will charge you per month for the array, generally less than what you already pay for your electric bill (that's why people put in solar, to save money). So if you have a green roof, you may also be able to find a company that would be willing to put an installation on a roof with a green element already, since large, flat roofs are ideal for both.

Next time the summer rain is drumming on your rooftop, decide to put those raindrops—and that space—to better use: cool the air, clean the water, and support plant life with a living green roof.

• Compensation: $50 travel stipend per week
• Supervisor: Scott Kitson, Membership & Marketing Manager
• Dates: Starting ASAP, 12 weeks, with possibility for extension
• Hours: At least 20 hours/week (Monday – Thursday)

Green America's Green Business Network® is the first, largest, and most diverse network of socially and environmentally responsible businesses in the country. This internship works with some of the most cutting-edge, social enterprise businesses in the county. Comprised of 3,000 businesses, the Green Business Network is home to both rising social and eco enterprises and the most established green businesses around. We provide the tools, the information, and the consumer base to help businesses thrive in today's competitive green marketplace.

Working alongside our Digital Products Director and Membership Marketing Manager, this internship will primarily focus on migrating our Green Business Network “daughter website” and member database into a new content management system (Drupal). The end result will improve internal processes and provide an enhanced user experience for our business members. In addition, this internship provides an inside look at how a nonprofit, green business association operates.

Qualifications:

• Available at least 20 hours a week in Downtown Washington, DC office.
• Experience with Drupal content management system (preferred, but not required).
• Experience with HTML/CSS (preferred, but not required).
• Strong eye for effective and eye-catching design.
• Detail oriented and effective problem-solver.
• Comfortable with multiple tasks and competing deadlines; ability to prioritize.
• Proficiency in Microsoft programs (Word, Excel, SharePoint, Outlook).

Visit our website to learn more about the Green Business Network.

HOW TO APPLY:

If interested please send cover letter and resume to Scott Kitson at businessintern@greenamerica.org. No calls please.

Green America is an equal opportunity employer.

Green America is a national, 501(c)(3) not-for-profit, membership organization founded in 1982. We went by the name "Co-op America" until January 1, 2009.

Green America's Mission

Green America harnesses economic power—the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace—to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society.

Green America's Vision

We work for a world where all people have enough, where all communities are healthy and safe, and where the abundance of the Earth is preserved for all the generations to come.

Our Focus

We focus on these four areas for system transformation, insisting on social justice and environmental health across all sectors. We believe if we can get these right, the rest of the economy will follow:

• Climate and clean energy
• Sustainable food and agriculture
• Responsible investing
• Fair labor

Our Powerful Strategic Areas

Consumer Education and Mobilization

• Theory of Change: Consumers are the pressure point for economic change-- it always starts with the customer demanding change

Green Business Network

• Theory of Change: Small businesses are the innovators and job creations-- a green economy requires a vibrant small green business sector. Learn more about the Green Business Network.

Center for Sustainability Solutions

• Theory of Change: Direct engagement with major supply chain players for solutions at scale-- consumers demand the change, green businesses prove it can be done, and major players bring it to scale for system transformation. Learn more about the Center for Sustainability Solutions.

What Makes Green America Unique

• We mobilize people in their economic roles—as consumers, investors, workers, business leaders—to address issues of social justice and environmental sustainability.
• We empower individuals to make purchasing and investing choices to build a just and sustainable world.
• We empower people to take personal and collective action.
• We work on issues of social justice and environmental responsibility. We see these issues as completely linked in the quest for a sustainable world. It’s what we mean when we say “green.”
• We work to stop abusive practices and to create healthy, just, and sustainable practices.
• We demand an end to corporate irresponsibility through collective economic action.
• We promote green and fair trade business principles while building the market for businesses adhering to these principles.
• Our democratically-constituted board is elected by our members from our consumer, business, and staff stakeholders.
• Green America operates as a collaborative and participatory workplace, where staff members are encouraged to give input and to reach consensus through democratic decision-making processes on key issues affecting staff of the organization.

Our History

In 1982, a small group of people got together, united by a belief that we could create an economy that works for people and the planet—and Co-op America, now called Green America, was born.

This visionary group of individuals bravely put forth a revolutionary idea to Americans: “Every time you spend or invest a dollar, it goes to work in the world. Too often, it goes to support institutions and corporations that perpetuate injustice, pollute the environment, and destroy communities. But we can change that. We can use economic power to push for socially and environmentally responsible businesses ... and put our society on a more sustainable path.”

More than 30 years later, the impact of the work we do together with our members is truly phenomenal.

We help people in their roles as consumers, investors, business owners, homeowners, community activists, teachers, people of faith, children and parents, to take both personal and collective action that promotes positive social and environmental progress. Together, these people are growing the market for green products, promoting renewable energy, promoting fair wages and fair trade, and building healthy communities here and abroad.

Over the years, we have helped millions of people use their money to create a life they can feel good about living, and to cultivate a social and environmental legacy worth leaving behind. And we've helped these people join hands with others to help put our world on a more just and sustainable path toward the future.

Indeed, leadership for a better world will come from people like you and me. Together, we must act boldly, creatively, and with a tremendous amount of cooperation and love.

We look forward to working with you! I hope that you'll join us.

Alisa Gravitz, CEO and President

Green America's Policy on Accepting Company Funds

Green America is committed to creating an economy that works for people and the planet. An important component of the organization’s work is engaging with companies of all sizes to encourage them to increase their environmental and social responsibility.

Green America has strict policies about accepting company funds.

Green America does not accept donations from companies that generate revenues primarily from tobacco, fossil fuels, mining, production of toxic chemicals (including synthetic pesticides), weapons, and/or armaments.

Dues

Green America accepts dues from companies that meet our published standards for economic and social progress in their industries, or, that are interested in receiving our resources to help them improve their practices so that they can meet our standards. Only businesses that have successfully completed our certification process may advertise in Green America print publications, Web sites, emails, and other electronic platforms. See section below on Advertising for additional information.

Advertising

Only businesses that have successfully completed our certification process may advertise in Green America publications, Web sites, emails, and other electronic channels. Subsidiaries that meet our standards may be certified, even if the parent company does not meet our standards, if those subsidiaries have their own sustainability criteria that meet our standards. Brands, which are fully part of a company with no separate governance structure like a subsidiary, do not qualify for our certification unless the parent company qualifies. Green America will be transparent, in print and online, about the ownership structure of companies it makes public facing. Green America reserves the right to decline dues, donations, sponsorships, fees for service, and partnerships with any subsidiary.

Donations and Sponsorships

We believe that companies should provide funding to support nonprofit organizations that are growing a truly green economy, and that this funding should not influence the mission or programs of the nonprofit. Green America does accept donations and sponsorships from companies that successfully complete the organization’s Green Business Certification and receive certification. These are the leading green business in the US. Green America also accepts donations and sponsorships from companies that demonstrate a clear commitment to the organization’s mission and promote goods and services that benefit people and the planet. Green America provides the logos of sponsoring companies on the Web site pages of the programs being sponsored, and allow sponsors to share content through our social media and email channels.

Green America promotes the products and services of select green businesses to our individual members, and in return, receives a portion of the proceeds. Only businesses that have earned Green America’s certification are eligible to promote products and services to these members. Green America promotes royalties to business members as well. We promote the greenest options available to these members. In limited cases (such as shipping services), there are no green businesses providing a particular service needed by Green America’s business members.

Fees for Service

We believe that when nonprofits assist companies in greening their supply chains those companies should pay for the service. These payments, in turn, provide revenues that the nonprofit can use to promote a more sustainable and equitable economy.

Green America accepts fees for service from companies that are engaged in increasing the sustainability of at least some of their goods or services. Green America provides consulting and educational services to companies to help them adopt social and environmental practices.

Partnerships

Green America may partner with organizations that do accept donations from companies that Green America won’t accept donations from. Green America will only partner with those organizations on projects that further Green America’s mission.

Green America may also partner with companies that have received Green America’s certification in order to execute a campaign or program. These companies may play an active role in executing and promoting a campaign or program but will not influence or change Green America's goals or policy positions.

Disclosure of Funds and Programmatic Independence

Green America discloses the existence of donations, sponsorships, dues, and fees received from companies.

The receipt of company funds does not influence Green America’s position on any issues, or any public statement Green America wishes to make on issues, or critiques of any company’s practices, or campaigns related to those practices. Green America reserves the right to terminate any relationships with a company and/or return company funding at any time.

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GOOD, BETTER, BEST: Secondhand Clothing

Refashioner.com: This unique women’s clothing swap site allows you to display photographs of your higher-end, unwanted clothes in your personal online “closet.” Once your photos are up, the site’s “fashion police” will assign your clothes a value. You’ll get half of that value immediately to spend purchasing items from other people’s closets on the site. The other half appears in your account once someone accepts your item and confirms receipt of it.

ThredUp.com: If you want to get rid of some children’s clothing and earn some cash without the hassle of holding a garage sale, consider this site. You can request a ThredUp bag for free, and once you receive it in the mail, stuff it with children’s clothing that’s still in very good shape. The ThredUp personnel will assess the value of your clothing, and you’ll receive a percentage of the sale. You can also buy used children’s clothing from the site.

Poshmark: An online storefront made up of regular folks trying to sell their gently used and unwanted items. Clothes abound, but sometimes other items do, too.

Name brand stores are starting to offer return, repair, and resale programs, too. REI outlet, Patagonia Worn Wear, and Madewell's Do Well program are all designed to keep used clothing in circulation longer.

Done with some of your clothing items? Help them find new owners with our article, “Finding New Life for Old Clothes.”

Find more options: Good, Better, Best.

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Updated April 2024.

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1. GOOD: Green Clothing Corporations

While many national clothing corporations are behind some of the greatest sins against workers and the environment, a handful of smaller retailers with a national presence are leading the way toward a better way of doing global business. While they aren’t perfect in every aspect of sustainability, they’re much better than most of the clothing behemoths that often sit next to them at your local shopping center.

Four Corporate Leaders

Patagonia: This US chain sells rugged outdoor clothing and gear for men, women, and children, some of it from organic cotton, hemp, chlorine-free wool, and recycled polyester. The company recently disclosed the location of all of its supplier factories, and it works with the Fair Labor Association to provide all workers in its supply chain with a fair wage and decent working conditions. Thirty percent of total fabric used in its products meets the bluesign standard. And under its Common Threads Initiative, customers can, for a small fee, send torn Patagonia items back to the company for repair—or for repurposing once they’ve worn out.

Hanna Andersson: This Swedish company sells virtually indestructible cotton and organic cotton clothing for children—including older kids—and women. Nearly 60 percent of its pieces are Oeko-Tex 100 certified, and the company is working to certify more.

Eileen Fisher: Designer Eileen Fisher sells elegant casual and dressy clothing for women. Twenty-six percent of the company’s clothing is made from eco-fibers like organic cotton, hemp, recycled polyester, and organic linen. Its organic fibers are Oeko-Tex and GOTS certified, and its Peruvian organic cotton pieces are made according to Fair Trade Federation guidelines. Its silk pieces meet bluesign standards. The company will take back its gently used clothing to resell in support of causes that benefit women and girls. It repurposes worn-out clothing via “Green Eileen” workshops with local artisans in New York City.

NAU: This retailer sells sustainable urban and outdoor apparel for men and women, much of it made from GOTS certified organic cotton, wool, and recycled polyester, free from toxic antimony (look for the “75 denier” on the label or product description). Its wool is certified as sustainable and from humanely treated animals through the Zque or New Merino certification systems.

Find more options: Good, Better, Best. 

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