Environmental Policy

Recognizing the overwhelming evidence that climate change must be reversed in the next decade, the Taproot Foundation is committed to playing a catalyzing role in enabling the nonprofit sector to lead a societal transformation to radically reduce our collective carbon footprint. We recognize that transportation, cattle and deforestation are major contributors to climate change and seek to set policies to specifically address our impact in these areas that are commensurate with the urgency and stakes involved.

Definition

The Taproot Foundation seeks to minimize our use of fossil fuels by actively managing the travel of Roots and our program participants.

• We design our programs to minimize the travel required by participants.
• When setting travel budgets, we set our FY09 air travel budget as the target cap going forward.
• When appropriate, we encourage staff to telecommute one day per week and provide them with the systems to maintain their productivity remotely.
• We locate our offices near public transportation and provide space for bicycles.
• When renting cars, we always select the car with the best fuel economy.
• We only use taxis and car services when there is no other option.
• We use rail rather than air travel when possible.

The Taproot Foundation does not use organizational funds to purchase beef products.

The Taproot Foundation seeks to decrease our impact on deforestation by conserving paper usage.

• We do on demand printing whenever possible.
• We use only recycled paper.
• We strive to limit the use of paper in our programs.
• We encourage all participants to submit digital copies of materials.
• We regularly review all of our program documentation and seek solutions to move content online or otherwise reduce the need for printing by participants.
• We encourage nonprofits to move away from print materials (e.g. brochures) and to instead utilize online solutions.

 The Taproot Foundation actively seeks opportunities to encourage our stakeholders to join us.

• We will publish our environmental policy on our site, in our annual report and in grant proposals.
• We will ask nonprofit grant applicants for their environmental impact/sustainability policy.
• We will lobby the foundation community to request environmental policies as a standard part of grant proposals.