Asheville GreenWorks

Mission

Asheville GreenWorks inspires, equips, and mobilizes communities to create an equitable, climate-resilient future.

Vision

A climate-resilient community for all.

Core Impact

Through community engagement, we create four core impacts:

• Community-Scale Climate Resilience
• Empowered Communities
• Systems Change
• A Healthy Environment

Our Core Values

COMMUNITY

We celebrate the unique gifts and experiences each member of this community contributes to creating a climate-resilient future.The responsibility to our environment and to each other requires a collective commitment to take action.

In action: We work to ensure all our neighbors can benefit from a thriving, healthy, and abundant environment.

EQUITY

Climate resilience looks different for different people. We are committed to investing in transformational relationships that center the needs of those most impacted by the pressures of a changing climate.

In action: We work towards changing policies, practices, systems, and structures to ensure everyone in our communities can share in the benefits of a healthy environment.

ADAPTABILITY

Our environment is in a state of emergency. To be effective, we must be responsive to the continually changing needs of our community.

In action: We orient our programs and activities toward treating the root causes of our most pressing environmental challenges and work to create lasting, tangible results.

HUMILITY

The future we face promises unprecedented challenges and no one has all the answers. To meet this uncertainty head on, we commit to learning through experience, finding opportunities in failure, and designing solutions tailored to the circumstances at hand.

In action: Recognizing that the best solutions to the region’s climate-related disruptions will come from the people most directly impacted by them, we work in partnership with frontline communities to co-create solutions to the challenges of a changing climate.

GreenWorks is a community of action-takers. Each hour or dollar we devote to caring for our urban environment contributes to a healthier, more resilient future for all.

We’re so proud of our GreenWorks family, like you, for putting their concern for the environment into action.

Asheville Greenworks engages in numerous community-based, volunteer-led environmental conservation projects and education programs, including:

• Rivers and Roads: Projects designed to clean up or prevent the littering of streets, roads, rivers, and streams in Asheville and Buncombe County. 
• Urban Forestry: Projects throughout Asheville and Buncombe County such as promoting the adoption and maintenance of small slices of public land, establishing pollinator-friendly habitats, planting community orchards on public land, and maintaining a native tree nursery. 
• Waste Reduction: Projects involving collection of hard-to-recycle materials, provision of information on recycling, and establishment of a Plastics Reduction Taskforce, which designs creative solutions to plastic waste problems. 
• Education: Free environmental education programs, including hands-on learning experiences, on urban forestry, water quality, and waste reduction through recycling and composting.