May 21st – Seattle

May 21^st – Seattle

Earth Share

            Earth Share is a local Seattle non-profit that offers services to other local sustainably driven businesses.  They provide a link from one company to another, helping distribute local “green job professionals” to businesses that require a specific discipline to lend their knowledge to a green project.  Earth Share also helps to fund projects focused on sustainability as well as to companies demonstrating unique and successful ways to improve the environment.  They also fund-raise for those companies that are in desperate need of funds to continue their work for the sustainability movement.  They state, “EarthShare's member charities are the most respected and responsible environmental and conservation organizations in America. Our groups work locally, nationally and internationally to protect your health and all aspects of our environment -- air, land, water and wildlife. In turn, EarthShare protects its donors by ensuring that each of our charities adheres to strict eligibility criteria, and operates with the highest possible ethical and professional standards.”  They require each company they donate money to, meets a certain level of standard to ensure their funds are continuing to aid the green movement.  This helps charities progress with their cause, which is still controversial and often neglected by certain members of the community.  It’s difficult for companies fund their projects and campaigns because of that lack of support in some areas.  Many non-profits, just like Sustainable DFW, have no regular income, therefore it’s detrimental that company’s such as EarthShare held that helping hand when needed and help support the green movement.

Sustainable Seattle

            Sustainable Seattle began as a branch of the city offices focusing on sustainability.  After a few years, in 1991, the company branched off and began embracing their own green movement.  They’re vision is as stated, “We see an interconnected group of healthy, compact, livable urban centers across the Central Puget Sound region, where people work and play together to restore and improve the vitality of communities, the economy, and the ecosystem.”  Just as our local Sustainable DFW, they got their start in building demonstration gardens in lower income areas, not only introducing sustainability education to the local community, but getting them involved as well.  They define their goals into three different categories, social justice, collaboration, and stewardship.  They define their social justice category as “equal access to resources and opportunity, believing sustainability in our environment is not possible until people can meet their own needs.”  They define their collaboration category as, “defining collaboration as shared decision making, expanding each other’s capacity and building on past positive action, believing sustainability inherently requires collaboration”.  And lastly, they define their stewardship category as, “defining stewardship as conserving and restoring our natural environments in a way that cares for all in our systems.”  They have spent a great deal of time educating the local businesses on sustainable practices and things they can do to save money and help the environment.  And what is even more amazing is that this non-profit is run solely by volunteers.  Sustainable Seattle is run by people who donate their time, money, and efforts to promote sustainability, reaching out to others, for the good of community and the environment.