ACT COLLECTIVELY
Individual action is powerful. Collective action changes cities.
When thousands of people make similar decisions — about how they handle waste, how they get around, how they protect themselves and their neighbors from extreme heat — something shifts in how a city functions. That shift doesn't happen by accident. It takes coordination, community, and sustained effort.
Urban Green Lab builds the coalitions and runs the campaigns that help Nashville act together on the sustainability issues that matter most. We focus on the areas where collective action can genuinely move the needle: waste reduction, sustainable transportation, extreme heat adaptation, health, and equity.
Voices of Resilience
Nashville's frontline communities — the neighborhoods that have experienced the effects of environmental challenges first, worst, and longest — have knowledge, ideas, and solutions that don't always make it into city-wide conversations. Voices of Resilience centers those perspectives. It's a platform for community members to share what they know, connect with others across the city, and ensure that resilience-building in Nashville starts with the people who need it most.
Waste Less™ Murals
What if public art could change behavior? The Waste Less Mural Series brings community-designed murals to Nashville neighborhoods as visible, lasting reminders that reducing waste is a shared value. Each mural is created with the community it represents — and the conversations that happen in the process are often as powerful as the finished work.
Nashville's Waste Less Mural program is also part of a national cohort, connecting our work to sustainability educators and community artists across the country.
Alliances
Lasting change requires buy-in across sectors. Urban Green Lab builds and supports sustainability alliances that bring together organizations with shared values and real reach.
The Nashville Sustainable Sports Alliance includes the Tennessee Titans, Nashville Predators, Nashville Sounds, and Nashville SC — with Vanderbilt University joining soon. Together, these organizations have unmatched access to fans, students, and the broader Nashville community. When they make sustainability visible and normal, it matters.
New alliances are forming in two areas: Sustainable Coffeehouses and Faith and Sustainability. Both recognize that community gathering places — whether a neighborhood coffee shop or a congregation — are powerful sites for culture change.
Nashville is more sustainable when we're in it together.
Find a campaign, explore an alliance, or get involved in your neighborhood.
There's a moment in almost every industry alliance we have built— be it the Nashville Sustainable Sports Alliance, around the table with Faith and Sustainability, or with our cohorts in coffee and Waste Less murals — where you can feel the momentum around sustainability growing. The alliances demonstrate what it looks like when a community decides to move together, from our local waste reduction work becoming a national model to congregations and cafés finding common ground celebrating their sustainability journey. Together we don't just add — we multiply. That’s the real magic of collective action, when we become something stronger, louder, and more powerful than any of us could reach on our own.
Stephanie Roach, Director of Collective Action
We Want to Hear from You
Do you want to host our next mural on your building or host an upcoming Voices of Resilience exhibit? Email stephanie@urbangreenlab.org.