NORTHWEST STUDY TOUR DAY 5

WASHINGTON GREEN SCHOOLS

Washington Green Schools works with schools to make them more sustainable. They are a non-profit organization that is supported by government agencies, individuals, businesses and foundations. The schools they work with choose a category and the organization helps them improve upon this category. Once the category that was chosen has been improved upon, the organization then asks the school to try the other categories. They also collect and organize the qualitative and quantitative data in order to compare the data gathered between school. Working with schools is a way for the organization to teach the kids about sustainability and hopefully those kids will be able to use this information at home.

NETWORK FOR BUSINESS INNOVATION AND SUSTAINABILITY

Network for Business Innovation and Sustainability believes that business is how to influence sustainability on a mass level. The organization is a business friendly portal to help businesses become more sustainable. Their method is to appeal to capitalists by focusing on how sustainability can be profitable. They are also working with a company to design an information system that can help with GRI reporting.

FUTUREWISE

Futurewise is a public interest group that works to promote healthy communities and cities. This organization is against urban growth at an unreasonable speed. They work to protect farmland. They also believe that communities should be built for people and not for cars. They use lobbying to promote the protection against urban growth and make sure cities in Washington stay at a sustainable growth rate.

SOURCES:

http://nbis.org/

http://www.wagreenschools.org/31/about-us.html

http://futurewise.org/about

PICS:

wagreenschools.org

betterworldtelecom.com

growingedge.com