This piece builds upon the February 2015 post, “How Can Philanthropy Support Leaders of Color in the Environmental Movement?”
I imagine that most everyone knows General Mills Box Tops for Education, the school earnings loyalty program that encourages consumers to cut coupons off of General Mills product boxes (which can then be redeemed by schools for 10 cents each). There have been plenty of critiques about the ethicality of the food industry’s influence in public education, but let’s consider something else: once you cut off a box top, what happens to the rest of the box? Is it recycled? Thinking back to my experience with box top collection, and after perusing the corporate philanthropy campaign’s website, there isn’t explicit encouragement to recycle the containers – surely a missed opportunity for impact.
I think of this as an analogy for the environmental movement in philanthropy – in spite of our many successes, there is more impact that can be made. Environmental and ecological justice grantmakers, and nonprofits like NCRP, send out box tops in the form of grants and research, and in return see impact through community mobilization, increased public awareness, better conservation efforts, policy wins and more support for marginalized communities that suffer environmental racism.
NCRP highlighted a number of inspiring stories in its High Impact Strategies for Philanthropy series report, Cultivating the Grassroots: A Winning Approach for Environment and Climate Funders. In addition, the movements for mission investing and fossil fuel divestment, championed by the Mission Investors Exchange, Divest-Invest Philanthropy and others, have continued to gain success in the philanthropic sector. In more recent news, over a dozen funders, including Bloomberg Philanthropies, pledged $60 million to the Sierra Club’s effort to reduce carbon emissions and retire half of coal-fired power plants in the U.S. by 2017.
Yet how can philanthropy expand its responsiveness to the environment, not only through programming but in daily operations? In 2010, Grant Managers Network (GMN) released “Beyond the Recycling Bin: Greening Practices of Grantmakers,” which delved into survey responses from 279 GMN members from across the country. The report explored how foundations conduct grantmaking in environmentally friendly ways and which “greening” practices – from recycling to energy efficiency to green products – they adopt in their operations and organizational culture. GMN stressed that “it is imperative for the philanthropic community to stand at the forefront of the greening movement” given its commitment to “promoting human welfare and advancement in a fiscally responsible and efficient manner.”
Especially in philanthropy, we have the connections and resources necessary to think critically about systems change and adopt strategies for environmental sustainability. Recycling is an important avenue through which we can take more proactive measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which generate global warming and climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency writes that waste prevention and recycling, collectively known as waste reduction, reduce dangerous emissions from energy consumption, incinerators and landfills, and also increase carbon storage in trees. The Natural Resources Defense Council, which was recently in the news for its commitment to diversity in the environmental movement, writes that recycling “protects habitat and biodiversity, and saves energy, water and resources such as trees and metal ores,” in addition to cutting “global warming pollution from manufacturing, landfilling and incinerating.” In our nation’s capital, where NCRP is headquartered, only 23 percent of waste is recycled or composted (versus a national average of 33 percent). That means that most of DC’s waste is sent to landfills or incinerated. In response, NCRP recently installed additional recycling bins and new recycling guides, expanded recycling to include #2-7 plastics and began a staff-wide conversation about waste reduction in our office. Steps to improve recycling in our own office community are natural extensions of our dedication to social and environmental justice.
Not only are we inspired by our members and allies, but we find inspiration from sector leaders such as Pablo Eisenberg, co-founder of NCRP, who over 10 years ago wrote:
“The extraordinary problems that are tearing at the fabric of our society as we enter the twenty-first century — poverty, racism, environmental degradation, lack of health protection, declining trust in government, and many others — can only be tackled by strong policy work, advocacy, and citizen mobilization. They will not be resolved by better services and programs, although these are important. A much greater portion of our nonprofit activities in the future will have to be devoted to policies and actions that can produce constructive change.”
In the spirit of Earth Day, I challenge foundations to prioritize funding high-impact strategies such as civic engagement and advocacy to promote green practices. Not only that, I encourage you to implement such practices and initiate a green evolution within your organization. For more ideas and conversation starters, check out the Story of Stuff and Terracycle, and share other tips with us on social media!
Caitlin Duffy is the project associate for Philamplify at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP). Follow @NCRP and @DuffyInDC on Twitter and join the #Philamplify conversation.
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