ENVIRONMENT
"It is the responsibility of EVERY ROTARIAN to support
action directed at improving the environment and
protecting animals and plants from extinction."
(Rotary Council on Resolutions 92-287)
DISTRICT ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE
 | Ray Andrews Sidney By The Sea Member Contact |
 | Sonnet Lyre Force Sidney By The Sea Member Contact |
 | Lee Hoffman Port Townsend Member Contact |
 | Mark E. Hoppen Gig Harbor Member Contact |
 | George M. Roe Bonney Lake Tehaleh District Environmental Chair Contact |
ON THIS PAGE
PROTECTING OUR COMMON LEGACY: THE ENVIRONMENT
Rotary is committed to supporting activities that strengthen the conservation and protection of natural resources and advance ecological sustainability. We empower communities to embrace local solutions, create innovative service projects, and access grants and other resources to foster harmony between people and nature.
Rotary makes change happen
We work with communities to implement service projects that improve the environment and transform lives. Thriving ecosystems can support people’s health, create economic opportunities, and help build peace.
How Rotary will help protect our planet
The Rotary Foundation will enable our members and their community partners to take action by:
- Protecting and restoring land, coastal, marine, and freshwater resources
- Enhancing the capacity of communities to support natural resource management and conservation
- Supporting sustainable agriculture, fishing, and aquaculture practices
- Addressing the cause of climate change by reducing the emission of greenhouse gases
- Strengthening ecosystems and communities affected by climate change
- Supporting education initiatives that promote behavior that protects the environment
- Advocating for sustainable consumption to build an economy that uses resources more efficiently
- Addressing environmental public health concerns
Responsibilities of the District Environment Committee
- Champion the protection of the environment and environmental sustainability (ES) to Rotarians in the District under work plans approved by the District Governor
- Facilitate learning, advise, and network with club areas of service project leads to enable measurement of environmental aspects of projects
- Engage, motivate, and empower Rotarians to incorporate environmental sustainability into their daily lives, clubs and District 5020 activities, events and projects
- Liase with Rotary Action Groups to provide networking and foster resources, locally, regionally, and internationally, on environmental sustainability initiatives to assist clubs in developing such initiatives
- Provide ES advise and information to the 5020 Council, its clubs, and members
- Recognize club and district ES accomplishments at the end of the Rotary year
CLUBS IN ACTION
Poulsbo Viking Tour & Brew Fest 2026: A Near-Zero Waste Rotary Event
The Rotary Club of Poulsbo completed its annual Viking Tour & Brew Fest in June. It featured hundreds of bike riders and gallons of craft brews, all served up from a leafy park on the edge of Liberty Bay. What was missing? A whole lotta trash!
Here are some of the things the Club did to reduce waste:
- Stainless Steel Cups and Water Dispensers eliminated the need for plastic bottles. Stainless steel cups are machine washable, stack efficiently and don't break.
- Cool looking souvenir pint glasses included in the price eliminated solo cups and provided an additional revenue stream for the Club.
- Volunteer Environmental Science students from Olympic College became members of the Trashy Taskforce* for the event to staff Waste Stations (image below), which eliminated contamination of recycling and confusion by participants. Each Waste Station had bins for landfill, food waste, recycling, liquids and cup returns. All bins were at every station so participants didn't have to go looking, (or be tempted blindly dump).
- Ice bags used by brewers were collected in a separate bin and recycled in the NextTrex plastic film program.
- Table clothes were borrowed from a nearby Tableware Lending Library.
- Thoughtful snacks replaced plastic-wrapped processed foods at biker Rest Stops. Banana halves, quartered sandwiches and other finger foods were provided to riders at rest stops, eliminating snack wrappers.
*The focus of the Poulsbo Rotary Trashy Taskforce is to help minimize the burden of planning and arranging sustainable events. This prevents unsustainable choices being made by over-worked and over-whelmed event volunteers, and also provides the community with an example of ways to make their own events more sustainable!
For more information: How To Run Sustainable Rotary Events
HOW TO & CAN DO
Three Paths to Making Your Club Climate Friendly
From The 7 Steps to a Climate-Friendly and Sustainable Rotary Club
by Michael Koch
How to make your club climate friendly
When it comes to being climate friendly, the level that a club should aim for is to have a demonstrably positive impact on the climate. But Rotary Clubs are very diverse, and different clubs require different approaches. Therefore, we recommend three alternative paths for your club to choose from: make a financial contribution, start an effective project, or take the impactful, sustainable path.
PATH 1: Make a financial contribution
This path gives your club the biggest impact for the lowest effort – and it gives you an immediate result. This could be of interest for clubs that want to join the movement but also want to maintain enough time and energy for other initiatives which are also import to the club.
PATH 2: Start an effective project
This path is well suited for clubs that enjoy doing projects. Since action is in the DNA of many Rotarians, it is a good choice for many clubs.
PATH 3: Take the impactful, sustainable path
This path leads to the best positive results for the climate. It integrates the two paths described above and adds more positive actions for the climate. If you follow the complete seven-step approach described in The 7 Steps to a Climate-Friendly and Sustainable Rotary Club, your club members will learn how to reduce emissions and how to increase their handprint, i.e. their positive impact on the climate.
DID YOU KNOW?
Quebec Town Becomes First in Canada to
Recognize the Rights of Trees
Good Green News
Ryan Davis, June 23, 2026
A small town west of Montreal has become the first municipality in Quebec and Canada to recognize trees as common goods with legal rights of their own.
Terrasse-Vaudreuil is home to about 2,000 people and, after experiencing three damaging floods in recent years, its residents have come to see the forest around them as a form of protection rather than simply scenery.
On June 9, the town council voted to sign the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Tree, a global petition that has gathered more than 87,000 signatures since it launched in 2018. The resolution states that trees deserve “the right to life, to natural growth, to integrity and to regeneration.”
The declaration rests on three ideas: that trees are living beings and a shared good for all people, that life on Earth depends on them, and that humans should act toward them in a spirit of “fraternity and solidarity.”
The push began locally after a screening of Des arbres et des arts, a film by Quebec director André Desrochers that sparked debate over whether trees should be treated as living beings rather than objects. Residents carried the idea to the council through the town’s environment committee.
Mayor Michel Bourdeau, who said the vote was unanimous and popular with residents, told CBC News: “A tree is like a human being. It breathes, it lives, it takes in water. It protects us from all sorts of things.”
He described trees as “a true green infrastructure” that reduces urban heat, cleans the air, manages water and protects wildlife. The town now plans to review existing rules so that trees are protected or replaced when they must be cut down.
The move “demonstrates the strength of municipal government and its capacity to act according to the principles of sustainable development,” said Yenny Vega Cárdenas, president of the International Observatory of Nature’s Rights, adding that she hopes Terrasse-Vaudreuil “will be the first of many municipalities to commit to this path.”
The decision is part of a growing rights of nature movement in the region. In 2021, Quebec’s Magpie River was granted legal personhood by the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit and a regional council, which handed the waterway nine rights of its own.
The practical case for trees also continues to grow stronger: Research has shown that urban trees can cut cool streets around them and reduce noise pollution.
Karine Peloffy, a lawyer with Ecojustice, framed the decision as a “very hopeful gesture” that may be less strange than it sounds.
“We know corporations have legal personhood and rights, and they are definitely not living,” she said. “So if some nonliving things can have legal personhood, what’s stopping living beings from equally getting legal personhood?”
Beyond the resolution, Bourdeau says the town will increase its tree canopy by offering free trees for residents to plant and by running programs to raise public awareness of why trees matter.
COMMUNITY SHARE
Share Your Story With Our Environment Community
Our Environment Committee is passionate about helping the Clubs and Areas within District 5020 in their engagement with the place that they call home. A big part of that is sharing stories about ‘what is happening where’ ... there’s so much we can learn from one another’s experiences, and there’s a lot to gain through collaboration on shared interest areas.
Tell us about a project, event, or activity that exemplifies how your Club is helping protect the environment and we'll share it in our Clubs in Action section, which features a different Club (or Club collaboration) each month, as well as on our Environment Community Share page.
Send us your story in the message box below or submit directly to the contact person provided herein. Please also provide any media files (images, PDFs, videos) that you think will help make your story shine, and remember to include links to information that might prove valuable as resources for other community members and readers.
Contact:
Sonnet Force
lyreforce@gmail.com
250-241-5974
ENVIRONMENT RESOURCES
These are just a sampling of resources available to assist you in achieving your goals: