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What We Do

The International Sustainable Development Foundation (ISDF) envisions a world where commerce, communities and nature thrive in harmony.

Our mission is to accelerate sustainable development locally and across national borders based on nature’s design principles and to achieve results through a new form of cooperation among governments, businesses, universities, research institutions and non-governmental organizations. ISDF’s goal is to forge collaboration to model sustainability standards and develop capacity to achieve a sustaining future.

We focus our resources on three initiatives: The Zero Waste Alliance, The Green Electronics Council and The China US Center for Sustainable Development.

Zero Waste Alliance

The Zero Waste Alliance (ZWA) is a partnership of business, government, universities, and non profit organizations working to apply zero waste strategies. These strategies draw on nature’s zero waste design principles to reduce and eliminate waste and toxics for improved profitability, competitiveness and environmental performance.

Waste in all its forms is a failure of our industrial processes and product designs. Our view is that the entire concept of “waste” should be eliminated from our thinking and the word “resource” be substituted.

A Zero Waste strategy is a bold vision that includes an endpoint goal. This endpoint goal leads to faster innovation and movement far beyond incremental approaches that do not include an endpoint goal.

ZWA and its network of associates provide management support, direct technical assistance, education and training. ZWA prioritizes initiatives that:
  • Engage multiple stakeholders to develop standards that can leverage industry sectors and communities of practitioners
  • Develop tools and resources for scalable applications.

ZWA’s stakeholder initiatives include the design and development of the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool – EPEAT – that is now administered by the Green Electronics Council and in 2007 was formally adopted by presidential executive order as the US electronics standard. Past initiatives include the Northwest Compact Fluorescent Lighting Project and the Unified Green Cleaning Alliance. ZWA is now actively leading two new stakeholder initiatives – the K-12 Sustainable Schools program and the International Society of Sustainability Professionals.

ZWA has developed a range of technical tools and processes being used by business and communities to evaluate opportunities to reduce and eliminate waste, including: CARS – the Chemical Assessment and Ranking System, SEAT – the Supply-China Environmental Assessment Tool and SCORE – an assessment tool to evaluate organizational sustainability practices and develop practical ways to achieve results.

ZWA is an EPA Environmental Management Local Resource Center and also manages the Sustainable Building Advisors Certificate Program.

For more information, we invite you to visit the Zero Waste Alliance web site.

Green Electronics Council

The Green Electronics Council (GEC) was formed in 2006 to inspire and support the effective design, manufacture, use and recovery of electronic products to contribute to a healthy, fair and prosperous world.

Through partnerships with the electronics industry and other stakeholders, GEC seeks to:
  • Implement market-driven systems to recognize and reward environmentally preferable electronic products
  • Build the capacity of individuals and organizations to design and manage the life cycle of electronic products to improve their environmental and social performance.
Electronic products are a part of everyday life and expanded use of electronic information and communications technologies may be a key to achieving global sustainability. However, with our current industrial technology and infrastructure, electronic products also have unacceptably high social and environmental impacts. Electronic products often:
  • Are very resource intensive to manufacture
  • Contain significant amounts of toxic and environmentally sensitive materials
  • Use electricity inefficiently
  • Have a relatively short useable lifespan
  • Are inefficiently and/or ineffectively recovered and recycled.

GEC’s inaugural program is EPEAT.net – the electronic product environmental assessment tool – a new system for consumers to compare and select environmentally preferable electronic products. The first set of products on the EPEAT registry are computers, laptops and monitors. Registered products are in conformance with the environmental performance standard IEEE 1680-2006.

In its first six months of operation in the last half of 2006, the sales of EPEAT-registered electronics products will produce the following environmental benefits over their lifetimes:
  • Savings of 13.7 billion kWh of electricity, enough to power 1.2 million U.S. homes for a year
  • Savings of 24.4 million metric tons of materials, equivalent to the weight of 189 million refrigerators
  • Preventing 56.5 million metric tons of air pollution, including 1.07 million metric tons of global warming gases – the equivalent of removing 852,000 cars from the road for a year
  • Preventing 118,000 metric tons of water pollution
  • Avoiding the disposal of 41,100 metric tons of hazardous waste, equivalent to the weight of 20.5 million bricks.

The next series of products under consideration for EPEAT include: televisions, servers, cell phones and printers/imaging devices.

For more information, please visit the GEC web site.

China US Center for Sustainable Development

ISDF is the U.S. Secretariat for the China-US Center for Sustainable Development.

The China – U.S. Center for Sustainable Development (the Center) is an international public-private partnership fostering business models for sustainable development.

The Center serves as a vehicle for leaders of sustainable development in China to collaborate with international business leaders and experts. It was formed in 1999 with China’s Ministry of Science and Technology to address environmental impacts related to the globalizing economy.

The Center draws together technologies, skill sets and influence from an international community of practitioners committed to global sustainability. It consists of:
  • China’s science, technology and development leaders
  • Key ministries and environmental agencies
  • Agenda 21, China’s coordinating body for sustainable development
  • Senior officials in China’s 22 provinces, 5 autonomous regions and 4 municipalities
  • Top international and Chinese academic and design experts
  • Distinguished representatives of global and mid- sized businesses, university and non-profit institutions.
This unique partnership creates exceptional opportunities for collaboration. Through its network of high-level working relationships in China, the Center facilitates:
  • Connections with government leaders responsible for sustainability
  • Visibility for collaborative initiatives
  • Opportunity to demonstrate global leadership through pilots and projects
  • Engagement with a unique community of practitioners.

The China-U.S. Center is led by a distinguished Joint Board of Councilors representing business, government, science and non-governmental organizations. The Founding China Co-Chair is Madame Deng Nan, Chief Executive of the China Association for Science and Technology, and the Founding U.S. Co-Chair is William A. McDonough, FAIA, the renowned architect and designer.

The operations of the China-U.S. Center are jointly managed by two secretariats – the Administrative Center for China’s Agenda 21, a government agency, and the International Sustainable Development Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation in the United States.

For more information, please visit the Center’s web site.