Privacy and Policies
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. Green America only promotes businesses to the public in our National Green Pages® and Green Pages Online that have successfully completed our certification process (in addition to paying dues). Furthermore, only businesses that have successfully completed our certification process may advertise in Green America publications, Web sites, emails, and other electronic comments.
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.
Website Privacy Policy
Green America recognizes that you are concerned about privacy. We are committed to preserving your privacy and safeguarding your sensitive information. The following statement describes the general information-gathering and usage practices of our sites.
Our staff, contractors, Internet service providers and others involved in this site follow this policy or similarly strict policies regarding your information.
Disclosure
Green America is committed to fully disclosing our policies regarding the collection, use, maintenance, disclosure and security of personal information obtained from users of our site. The term "personal information" includes a name, address, email address, or any other information which could be used to contact you directly or to identify you personally.
Use and Disclosure Limitations
Green America only uses personal information about its Web site users for specific purposes. We do not share user information with third parties except when we have told users about the disclosures, when we have prior consent, or when required by law.
Use Policy: When Green America gathers personal information from users, we ask for permission first. We also disclose, at the time of collection, how the information will be used by us. Personal information is used for activities such as auto-completion of commonly-used forms and helping us contact you when you solicit information from Green America.
Disclosure Policy: We do not normally disclose personal information to anyone outside of Green America unless we have previously informed users about the disclosures. However, some data may be used from time to time by outside contractors, including auditors or consultants, to assist us in carrying out necessary financial or operational activities. These uses will be consistent with this privacy policy and all contractors using this potential personal information must agree to safeguard it, to use it only for the authorized purpose, and to return it or destroy it upon completion of the activity.
Green America might be required to disclose personal information in response to a valid legal process such as a subpoena, search warrant or court order.
Although unlikely, it is possible that we may have to make certain disclosures to ensure the security of our Web site, to protect its integrity, or to take precautions against potential liability. In any of these situations, we will take any reasonable steps to limit the scope of the data disclosed.
Specific Information Collection Activities
- "Contact" Functions. Some pages on our sites offers users the opportunity to email either Green America, its affiliate organizations or other companies or organizations about specific issues. To do so, users are asked to provide certain personal information to facilitate these communications. This information often includes the user’s name, email address, and, depending on which contact method the user chooses, postal address. This information is used to create a template letter or message from the user to the organization or company and, if the user chooses to email the message using our automated function, it will include the user’s email address to as part of the email message. This provides the organization or company a way to respond to users regarding the content of the message.
- "Join," "Donate" or "Give a gift membership" Functions. To contribute to Green America in any way, users are asked to provide certain personal information. This information may include the user’s name, email address, phone number and postal address. This information is used to process and fulfill your membership(s) or donation and to provide relevant information to you for tax purposes.
- "Survey" Function. We occasionally ask users to complete surveys on our sites and may ask for personally-identifying information as part of that process. Unless otherwise clearly specified at the point of the request, this information is not used for Green America for any purpose other than to process or analyze the results of the survey or to fulfill a request that you make as part of the survey.
- "Subscription" Function. To subscribe to email newsletters offered by Green America, users are asked to provide certain personal information. This information may include the user’s name, email address, phone number and postal address. This information is used exclusively to fulfill requests related to your email newsletter subscription and to contact you about participation in Green America membership and programs.
All our employees and processors who have access to the personal data of users and are associated with the processing of that data are obliged to respect the confidentiality of users’ personal data.
Complaints
Green America will work with users to resolve any complaints about our privacy policies or practices.
If you have a complaint about our privacy and fair information practices policy or about our implementation of the policy, you can contact us. Green America will try to resolve any problems that arise in a fair and prompt manner.
Technical Issues Related to Your Privacy
Green America uses a number of specific technical tools and techniques to ensure convenient, reliable and timely service. While we work to ensure the security of personal information, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure and some of these tools and techniques may affect your privacy concerns.
As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or from our online products or services, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.
Cookies: Green America occasionally uses "cookies" to provide convenience features to return visitors. "Cookies" are bits of information that are stored by your browser on your hard drive. As you activate certain information services at our Web site, we create a cookie to help our program remember who you are. The information stored in the cookie we send you contains personally identifiable information but is automatically deleted from your hard disk when you close your browser.
Green America uses cookies only when appropriate and we never use cookies to retrieve information from your computer that was not originally sent in a cookie from us.
Web Logs: Green America maintains standard Web logs that record basic information about visitors to our Web site. These logs contain:
- The Internet domain from which you came to our Web site.
- Your IP address. An IP address is a series of numbers which uniquely identifies your connection to the Internet. Although it is possible in some instances, certain types of IP addresses may be used by interested persons to identify users but we do not attempt to identify users in this way.
- The type of browser (e.g., Internet Explorer or Netscape) and operating system (e.g., Windows 98) you use.
- The date and time you visited the site, and the pages you saw.
We use Web log information to design our Web site, identify popular features, and in similar ways. We do not try to identify individuals from Web logs or to link Web logs to other user information. However, if someone tries to damage our Web site or use it in an unauthorized or illegal way, we may share Web log information with law enforcement agencies. Green America may provide aggregate information such as the number of users who visit particular pages of the site, or the number of people who link to certain external sites from our site, to other parties.
Links to Other Sites: Green America does carry advertising on some of its sites and provides links to other sources of information which we believe may be of interest to site visitors. We have no control over the content of the sites to which we link in Green America's sites and these sites may have different privacy policies, which we encourage you to review. When you click through to other Web sites, you may get cookies directly from them. Green America does not see or use these cookies, and we do not control how other sites use cookies.
Changes to Privacy Policy
Green America's features and services will change over time and our information-gathering practices and policies may also change.
While our philosophy of protecting user information from inappropriate uses and disclosures will not change, this policy will be updated occasionally to include any change that materially affects the collection, maintenance, use, or disclosure of personal information.
Other changes to this privacy policy statement that reflect refinements, improvements, updates, and new features will be made as appropriate and posted as soon as possible. Whenever the privacy policy changes, we will modify the date and version number to reflect that a change was made.
Does Green America rent, share, sell or trade my information?
Green America does not rent, share, sell or trade supporter e-mail addresses and telephone numbers. In addition, we do not rent, share, sell or trade information about the activities or donations of our supporters and action takers, whether shared with us online or offline. Occasionally we do make names and postal addresses of select donors available for a one-time, non-permanent use to like-minded advocacy and environmental organizations. However, our supporters’ information is not directly given to the other organizations. A trusted third party agency acts as an intermediary, keeping our supporters' personal information secure and never in the possession of the like-minded organization requesting it for their one-time use.
If you are a Green America member and you do NOT wish to have your information exchanged with other organizations, please call us toll-free at (800) 584-7336 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST, Monday through Thursday to speak to one of our Member Services representatives or email Members@GreenAmerica.org. It would be helpful if you had your Member ID available, as that will shorten the amount of time it takes to locate your member information.
If you are not a Green America member and you have provided personal contact information on our web site by signing up for a list, or sending us feedback, your information WILL NOT BE EXCHANGED.
How to Request and/or Correct Information
Although Green America has no programs or utilities to collect information other than those which have been outlined in this Privacy Policy, you may request in writing any personal information about you that we hold, or correct or amend information about you if it is inaccurate.
The following Web sites are operated by Green America, located at 1612 K Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20006. Our telephone number is (202)872-5307.
www.greenamerica.org
www.greenbusinessnetwork.org
www.betterpaper.org
www.responsibleshopper.org
www.fairtradeyoursupermarket.org
www.greengaintool.org
www.greenpages.org
www.gmoinside.org
Click here to contact us regarding privacy-related concerns.
Copyright Statement
The entire content included in this Site, including but not limited to text, design, graphics, interfaces, or code and the selection and arrangements thereof is copyrighted as a collective work under the United States and other copyright laws, and is the property of Green America. The collective work includes works that are licensed to Green America. Copyright 2005. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. All trademarks, service marks, and trade names (collectively the "Marks"), including Green America™, Green Pages Store®, WoodWise®, Green Pages Directory™ and National Green Pages™, are trademarks or registered trademarks of and are proprietary to Green America.
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Affiliated Sites
Green America's website is sponsored by Green America members and 