Urban Green Lab

Sustainable Classrooms trains educators of all kinds on sustainability and how they can bring a sustainable lens into their classrooms.

Our award-winning three- to four-hour professional development training provides educators with the confidence, tools, and community needed to empower students to make lifelong sustainable choices. Using our standards-aligned curriculum, a project-based learning assignment, and student-led home investigations as a base, we explore how to use a sustainability lens in any formal or informal K-12 classroom.

The UGL Volunteers are Urban Green Lab’s frontline ambassadors working to make Nashville a more sustainable place. On their own time, volunteers connect their families, friends, and neighbors to key educational resources that inspire sustainable choices at home, like saving energy and reducing wasted food. We believe this monthly outreach is an impactful way to connect neighbors around topics of sustainability.

The Nashville Sustainability Roundtable is a gathering of workplaces to discuss sustainability. It is the only convening of its kind dedicated to guiding workplaces to be more sustainable.

Roundtable members can send two representatives to our six meetings of the Nashville Sustainability Roundtable each year at rotating workplaces where they'll have the opportunity to:

• connect and network with sustainability champions from other industries

• tour host facilities

• engage new vendors

• exchange best practices

• problem-solve collectively

• bring best practices back to their workplace

The Nashville Environmental Justice Initiative (NEJI) works to educate community stakeholders on the tenets of environmental justice and collaborative problem-solving that protects and empowers Nashville’s most marginalized communities from environmental hazards.

Through a partnership between Urban Green Lab and Tennessee State University, the initiative is designed to grow a culture of systemic learning around environmental justice in the city by exploring the issues facing marginalized communities today, developing impactful educational solutions, and connecting thought leaders to better mobilize their collective impact so Nashville grows responsibly for its people, prosperity, and the planet.

The Nashville Food Waste Initiative (NFWI) drives citywide policies and strategies that reduce food waste by preventing wasted food, rescuing surplus food for those in need, and composting and recycling food scraps to build healthy soil. The NFWI was founded by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in 2015 and is a partnership between Urban Green Lab and the Environmental Law Institute.

Through the NFWI, Urban Green Lab organizes, trains, and connects diverse food waste stakeholders year-round and offers training through our divisions for how you can reduce food waste in your own institution.

Urban Green Lab’s Sustainable Workplaces Collaborative is for Nashville area workplaces that want to be more sustainable and need support educating their staff and creating a culture of buy-in and engagement. We equip your employees with the education and resources to empower staff to make daily choices that protect people and the planet and also:

• help save costs

• attract and retain talent

• improve brand reputation

• avoid environmental risks to the business

Most of all, members are a part of a community of practitioners who want to do work for the benefit of a more sustainable Nashville.