One organization most people assume was already as green as possible is the National Geographic Society (NGS). After all, the Washington, D.C.–based Society — perhaps best known for the distinctive yellow-bordered National Geographicmagazine that transports millions of readers to exotic or historic locations each month — is well into its second century of championing environmental awareness.

Its mission statement has been streamlined and updated over the years, but the current version reflects the same goal that prompted 33 explorers and scientists to found the Society in 1888: “To inspire people to care about the planet.”

Naturally, the Society tries to lead by example, trying to reduce its own carbon footprint and taking a sustainable approach to its operations, practices and purchases. The surprising part: Even a 121-year-old organization founded on green ideals has to work very hard to reduce its own impact on the environment.

Taking action

National Geographic regularly runs thoughtful and illuminating stories about climate change, energy consumption, pollution and deforestation, notes Hans Wegner, vice president of production services and director of in-house environmental initiatives. “But it’s not good enough just to talk about it,” he says. “We need to put talk into action.”

Wegner — an NGS employee since 1973 — emphasizes that the organization has met that goal in many ways over the years. “In paper purchasing, for example, we made sure that our suppliers used responsible forest-management practices long before there were any industry standards for that,” he says. “We also were probably the first to ask paper mills to eliminate elemental chlorine from their processes back in the mid-1980s.”

In 2003, the organization’s Washington, D.C., headquarters became the first existing building to receive Silver-level certification through the U.S. Green Building Council’s then-new Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification program.

The walk became a full-scale gallop late in 2006 when, with the Society leadership’s blessing, Wegner founded the GoGreen Committee, an all-volunteer employee group that has launched dozens of initiatives intended to make NGS greener both on its Washington, D.C., campus and at 22 other offices nationwide. For example, in response to GoGreen recommendations, the Society now supplies staffers with reusable mugs and water bottles to cut back on paper and plastic waste.

Responsible sourcing

One area ripe for improvement was the NGS headquarters cafeteria. Green-team members determined they could massively reduce that facility’s trash generation — but doing so required some sweeping changes.

Plastic “clamshell” take-out containers have been replaced with reusable ceramic bowls or compostable fiber containers. Plastic drinking straws have been replaced with paper ones. Condiments, such as mayonnaise and mustard, now are dispensed from large pump containers rather than individual plastic packets. Kitchen waste and non-recyclable paper products — such as paper towels, napkins and the new drinking straws — are composted. By 2008, these efforts had reduced trash generation by about 60 percent.

Team members also recommended that cafeteria food choices come primarily from local, organic and sustainable sources. “We found that tuna, shrimp and salmon were not being harvested sustainably, so we eliminated them from the menu,” Wegner says.

Getting buy-in is sometimes difficult, even in an organization like NGS. So, in addition to posting information about sustainability in the cafeteria and on the organization’s GoGreen intranet, team members drew on one of the Society’s own precious resources: its expert pool. “We asked one of our own emerging explorers, National Geographic fellow Enric Sala, to talk to the staff,” Wegner says.

The speaker, who had extensively studied the issue, described the long-term damage caused by worldwide over-harvesting. “He got the message across that the only way you can curb the problem is not to consume the food,” Wegner says. “That was very useful in allowing us to take this step.”

Looking down the supply chain

The Society also has taken a detailed look at the carbon footprint generated in the creation of its famous magazine. Working with an outside consultant, NGS methodically calculated the carbon value of every activity associated with creating an issue of National Geographic: staff travel, advertising sales, photography, computer use, office energy consumption, production, and distribution by rail and truck, among other things.

The findings? “Even including the travel that we consume, what we do internally produces only 4 percent of the total carbon associated with the magazine,” Wegner says. “The other 96 percent comes from operations beyond our control: paper manufacturing, printing and binding.

“That finding solidified the organization’s commitment to working with vendors to identify ways we can take carbon out of the processes,” Wegner says. NGS also encourages its suppliers to consider environmental factors in contracting with their own vendors. For instance, the Society’s primary paper supplier is asked to document that its wood pulp is harvested using environmentally sustainable practices.

The efforts to capture and measure the environmental impact and carbon emissions of the supply chain are critical to the Society’s mission. “We’re an organization with a foundation of credibility,” Wegner says. “So we have to account for all our carbon in a way that’s as credible and transparent as possible.”

The Society encourages the public to do the same. One example is an online tool scheduled to debut later this year that lets people who buy NGS expedition tour packages calculate the carbon footprint of their own travel from their home cities to the tour’s starting point.

Smart mailing

NGS also is taking a look at reducing the impact of the millions of catalogs, brochures, letters, reply envelopes, inserts and other materials it sends out annually. “Direct mail is a big part of our business,” Wegner says. “We’re working on greening our mail by developing more efficient standards.”

For the actual pieces, that means building environmental considerations in from the design stage. “We tell people, ‘If you’re using a lot of white space, you may want to cut down the size of the pieces,’” Wegner says.

For the campaigns themselves, it means improving list hygiene to eliminate duplicate addresses and other errors that lead to wasted mailings. Beyond that, though, it means taking a more thoughtful approach to exactly who receives the correspondence. “The prevailing norm in the past was that you flooded the market with mail and you eventually got enough hits,” Wegner says. “We need to be more focused. We have to do targeted appeals from better lists so that our mailings go to the purchasers who are most likely to buy our product.”

Wegner questions the argument that it’s greener to reach out online than via those mailings. “Paper is a renewable resource,” he says. “What’s more, it’s becoming better known that electronic communication has a much bigger carbon footprint than most people think. Any time you send an e-mail or another online message, you’re storing that information somewhere. For how long? At what cost? And is that smarter than doing it on paper? We need to determine the carbon emissions associated with electronic communications, come up with a way to quantify it, and then make decisions on which to use based on the facts.”

The NGS’s efforts already have significantly reduced its environmental impact. But Wegner calls the campaign a long-term effort that’s barely begun. “It’s simple: If you see something wrong, you have to try to change it,” he says. “It’s not good enough to say ‘I need to be better at conserving energy’ — you have to act. We, as a country, have to keep changing what we do.”