We teach communities
how to live sustainably.

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We are looking for some great new teammates to help us educate the community about sustainable living. Please visit our Team page or click the links below to learn more.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Divisions

Our Classrooms division is all about turning classrooms into spaces for exploring and demonstrating sustainable living early in life.

The Households Division creates sustainable living education systems that inspire residents and families to be part of the solution.

The Workplaces Division builds a community and culture of sustainable workplace behaviors in businesses large and small throughout Nashville.

Special Initiatives

The Nashville Environmental Justice Initiative is growing a movement of environmental justice learning that protects Nashville's most marginalized communities.

Urban Green Lab is partnering with organizations to develop and implement strategies and tools as models for cities across the country.

BLOG

Beyond the B: The Power of the B Corp Community for Sustainable Change

March 7, 2023

What’s in a sustainable business? We think it’s much more than offsetting carbon, going plastic-neutral, or paying above the minimum wage.

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Food For Thought: Wasted!

February 28, 2023

Hungry to learn? Join Second Harvest on March 19th for a documentary screening of Wasted! The Story of Food Waste followed by a brief panel with Urban Green Lab’s Executive Director, Todd Lawrence.

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Culturally-centered Nature Programming

February 28, 2023

Join us on the next episode of Sustainable in the City for an important conversation with Unearthing Joy’s founder, Ashley Brailsford, as we discuss the responsibility we have in the sustainability space to make our work joyful, inclusive, and relevant to the people we are in community with.

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Recent News

Mayor, Water Services Announce Start of Every Other Week Curbside Recycling for Nashville Residents

January 11, 2023

Today, Mayor John Cooper announced plans that starting on Monday, January 30, 2023, Nashville Metro Water Services (MWS) will provide Nashville residents with every other week curbside recycling pickup services.

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New Food Waste Mural Revealed in Green Hills

April 25, 2022

Urban Green Lab, in partnership with NRDC and Kroger, revealed a new mural on the Bandywood Drive side of the Kroger in Green Hills to celebrate the beauty of food and inspire shoppers to reduce food waste. Urban Green Lab is a local nonprofit that teaches communities to live sustainably.

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NPL Becoming an “Urban Green Lab”

April 22, 2022

Once the NPL Sustainability Committee formed in 2021, we were fortunate to connect with Urban Green Lab (UGL). Through a series of Zoom meetings with the Sustainability Committee, Jackie Goodwin, UGL’s Sustainable Workplaces Manager, oriented our team to the sustainability landscape in Nashville and led us through an assessment so we could see what areas we needed to focus on. In addition, NPL is in the process of joining UGL’s Nashville Sustainability Roundtable, which is “dedicated to guiding workplaces to be more sustainable.

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Environmental experts concerned over construction waste in Nashville

August 17, 2021

Nashville is known for its constant construction and with that comes a lot of waste. Experts said it’s becoming a problem that is impacting everyone.

In many cases developers and builders are on a deadline. Their goal is to get done and get done as quickly as possible.

But the extra wood, metal and cardboard materials end up in dumpsters, which is impacting the environment which in turns impacts everyone.

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