The Green Museum: A Primer on Environmental Practice
Full citation: Brophy, Sarah, and Elizabeth Wylie. 2008.
The Green Museum: A Primer on Environmental Practice. Thousand Oaks, California: Altamira Press.
Monday, December 05, 2011
Contributed by Stephen Nill
For a moment, let’s forget that The Green Museum: A Primer on Environmental Practice, is about the greening of “just” museums. The idea of a genuine green transformation of your organization or institution—museum or not—is a daunting one.
For example:
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What should be made green? Products and sourcing? Food services? Energy efficiency and generation? Waste management? Recycling? Transportation? The landscape and maintenance practices? Contracting with vendors who are “approved” as green?
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How do you do it when things are already complex and difficult enough. Wouldn’t it shift focus away from mission, and drain resources from its pursuit?
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Isn’t such a transformation expensive? Resources are, after all, are in limited supply. How does one approach funders to help with the costs?
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Who should lead such a transformation—you? If not you, who?
Of course, The Green Museum, authored by veteran CharityChannel colleague Sarah Brophy and her writing partner Elizabeth Wylie, is about the greening of museums. As the authors admit at the outset, “we are unabashed museum people.” Yet, this primer could easily inform the greening of just about any kind of organization or institution that is housed on planet earth, because even the smallest, just-getting-started nonprofit, much less the established, successful larger institution, is impacting the planet.
I like that the authors don’t assume that the reader is yet convinced that the outcome—a greener organization—is worth the effort. In Chapter 1, “The Idea,” the authors make the case that green is good for all museums. “We want you to be green because it supports your mission (every institution’s—not just science museums), saves money (more than the myths will lead you to believe), and can make a positive impact on the environment while encouraging staff, board, volunteers, and visitors to do the same in their lives.”
The authors admit, of course, that “not everyone is there yet,” and that the default position, for some, has been ‘sorry, green is not our mission.’” The authors counter that “green can save you money that you can spend on carrying out core responsibilities, and green keeps the environment clean and safe for your objects, buildings, and visitors. Isn’t that mission support?”
Perhaps the toughest chapter to read, yet one that is essential if an organization or institution is to seriously undertake to become truly green, is Chapter 2, “The Metrics.” (Hint: If you don’t know what LEED stands for before, you will. I didn’t. I do now.) But it’s much more than measuring. It’s about coordinating different systems and processes to produce the most efficient and environmentally sensitive result. In other words, it’s about integration, according to the authors. “To be successful we need to integrate green action with the culture and systems of the museum, or we risk wasting money, time, and enthusiasm. Certainly that is no one’s intended outcome,” they advise.
The book becomes particularly pragmatic in Chapter 3, “The Options,” where the authors walk us through many options and examples of museums becoming green (or more green, in some cases).
They open the chapter with the question, “Where Does It Start?” They write, “sometimes staff instigates green; sometimes the board does. It can be one person on a recycling mission, or a team charged with finding ways to reduce waste, save energy, and change behaviors. Maybe a manager or board member says, ‘We have to find a way to reduce these energy bills!’”
They introduce the concepts of “journey” and “champion” when they write that “however it starts, there are two terms you will hear repeatedly from those who have gone green: journey and champion. Going green is a journey, not a destination; and you need a green champion to lead the charge.” I like the idea, advanced by the authors, of creating a “green team,” which involves a variety of staff and board members to “work, learn, and engage the rest of the institution.”
The chapter helpfully iterates through a number of specifics for museums to become green, such as waste management, green products and sourcing, food services and systems, cleaning and maintenance, exhibitions and materials, energy conservation and management, water conservation and management, landscape, transportation, and so on.
One of the biggest questions is how integrating green strategies will impact financial support. In Chapter 4, “The Money,” the authors hit this head on. “By integrating strategies for operational cost savings with mission objectives, museums are finding a powerful voice in green, one that is being heard and supported.” They point out that going green actually increases the opportunities for support, and increases the opportunities to engage the funder.
The authors show how to make the case for support, and give examples of well-known funders adapting to the green movement by inviting applicants to describe their environmentally sustainable behaviors in the applications. They give funding examples that I found helpful, and encouraging.
For the uninitiated (I’m in that camp) this going green stuff can be overwhelming. The authors offer this bit of advice: “Give yourself a break: no one knows it all. The field of environmental sustainability is expanding so rapidly, and new research is coming out so frequently, that no one person or institution is going to know it all. If we all share our knowledge and experience, we can all make progress. We have to; this may be one of the most important to-do lists in the museum field.” I would expand that to all organizations and institutions, and I suspect the authors would agree with me.
As well done and pragmatic as this book is—I like that it is written in first person—in some parts it can be tough slogging. Though the authors do break it up with some real-world examples that are clarifying, I would have liked to see more of those, because I think that examples are especially helpful in bringing together a number of principles and techniques. It is sometimes assumed that terms of art are familiar to the reader. Although a helpful glossary and abbreviations translation table are provided, I like to see the more important terms of art defined along the way, perhaps in sidebars. I enjoyed some of the quotes from practitioners in the field, though some were worthy to be highlighted in sidebars. But these are just style things, and probably influenced by my own preferences as a book editor myself.
I commend this nicely-written book to anyone in the sector who works for, or with, any nonprofit, large or small, museum or otherwise.
Table of Contents
(page numbers omitted)
Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Idea
Green Is Good for All Museums
Collections Care
Green Is Here to Stay
How Do You Know What Green Is?
What Makes Buildings, Sites, and Operations Green?
Get the Green Word Out
Green Influence, Advocacy, and Market Muscle
Synergies with Existing Green Practices
Turning the Idea into Policy and Public Trust
Public Expectations
Case: Green Education in Las Vegas
Chapter 2: The Metrics
Knowing What Is Green
People and Systems Integration
Benchmarking and Creating a Baseline
Carbon Footprint
Energy Audits
Waste Stream Audits
Life Cycle Analysis: Construction and Daily Use
LEED Program
Other Metrics, Tools, and Systems
Accreditation
Case: The Getty Center and LEED-EB
Case: Greening Mass Audubon
Chapter 3: The Options
Where Does It Start?
Creating a Green Team
Implementation
Integrated Waste Management
Waste Load Reduction
Green Products and Sourcing
Green Food Service and Systems
Green Cleaning and Maintenance
Green Exhibitions and Materials
Green Exhibitions and Energy
Energy Efficiency and Energy Generation
Water Conservation and Management
Green Roofs and Walls
Landscape and Maintenance Practices
Green Open Space
Green Historic Preservation
Green Transportation
Green Education: Connecting the Dots
Where Does It End? It Doesn’t!
Policy
Case: Go Green in Food Service
Case:Merging Green and Historic Preservation
Chapter 4: The Money
Sources and Approaches
Making the Case
Funding Examples
Agency Support: Federal, State, and Local
Nongrant Programs
Corporate Support
Mixing Funders
Individual Donors
Conclusion
Afterword
Resources
Abbreviations
Glossary
Index
About the Authors
Where to order this book online: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0759111650/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=cvfundraising-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0759111650
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