The Woodlands GREEN President Cinda Hitchcock (left) and founding member Christina West worked the annual 3R Bazaar in November.[/caption]When Cinda Hitchcock was 22 years old, she noticed a sign on a bulletin board in her dorm that read, “An empty trash can is a sign of ecological living.” It was the first time she became aware of the needs of the environment around her. Today, she is serving her third year as president of The Woodlands Grassroots Environmental Education Network.
The Woodlands GREEN was formed in 1989—formerly The Woodlands Recycles—by a group of residents who wanted curbside recycling in the then-relatively new community.
The founding members of the nonprofit organization lobbied The Woodlands’ governing powers, and by 1994, the group had secured curbside recycling for The Woodlands residents.
“When we first started, the organization’s only goal was to get curbside recycling,” Hitchcock said. “However, there was still education on environmental matters that was needed. So today, we’re an educational group—that’s our focus.”
The Woodlands GREEN has 65 members with a lengthy list of accomplishments and extensive hours of volunteer work through its partnership with The Woodlands Township and close ties to the Environmental Services Department.
The organization hosts six lectures annually on environmental topics, co-sponsors the township’s Walk in the Woods lecture series and the annual Green Up Clean Up and 3R Bazaar. It also provides volunteers at community events.
The Woodlands GREEN also raises scholarship money for high school students and has a student ambassador program through which students can earn community service hours.
“We want to reinvigorate our student ambassador program because we want to get more kids involved,” Hitchcock said. “The environmentalists of the 1970s are in our waning years now, so we need to get the younger generation involved.”
The organization has other ambitions aside from recycling it hopes to tackle, including promoting active transportation like biking, redevelopment of older villages with low-impact development strategies and banning plastic bags.
However, despite their education efforts, Hitchcock said recycling stream contamination —a result of improper recycling techniques —is still a big issue in The Woodlands. Because of this, the organization must continue to focus on recycling.
“We can’t live without a healthy environment,” she said. “Although we live in a nice community here in The Woodlands, there are people in other areas of the world that really suffer. We can still improve a lot of the things that we do here on a daily basis.”
