Green Tree Mission

To teach environmentally responsible gift giving by donors and encourage awareness and eco-friendly practices among recipients.

Children receiving gifts from Family Giving Tree programs are valuable members of the community and we want to further their sense of belonging even more by fostering their respect for the environment and doing what we can to help them be as environmentally friendly as possible.  In the future, we hope to involve the agencies working with us, who have direct contact with the children we serve. We'd like to help them encourage recipients to recycle the packaging and other disposable parts of the gifts received.  This may be done by providing recycled ‘recycling’ signs to any agencies who want to help with the cause. 

In 2009, with the help of all of the office Elves and over 6000 volunteer Elves, we recycled more than half of our waste. In doing so, we showed that small amounts of effort performed in concert by many people can have an impact and that even organizations with limited budgets can green their operations with little cost to their primary missions.

We encouraged donors to purchase supplies in bulk or to look for the different supplies needed that may come packaged together.  This not only reduces packaging, but saves money! Also, several donors this year bought recycled and/or recyclable school supplies and backpacks (see picture above)!

Green Tree Supporters

Allied Waste: helped to make this amount of recycling possible by providing dumpsters, trash and recycling bins at no cost, and also made a recycling and trash pick up for us for free!

Mr. Gift Wrap: discounts wrapping paper for us each year.  The paper, due to imperfections, would otherwise go directly to the landfill.  This allows us to prevent that much more wrapping paper from being used!