About Us

GreenWorks is a Community of Action Takers.

GreenWorks is a community of action takers. Each hour or dollar we devote to taking care of our urban environment adds up to a healthier, more resilient future for all of us. 

We’re so proud of our GreenWorks family, like you, for putting their concern for the environment into action.

What We Do

volunteers help in nursery

YOU:

woman planting seedling

Grow and plant urban trees to protect us from extreme heat and flooding.

volunteers help in river cleanup

Plant habitats to feed the native pollinators that run our food ecosystem.

kids pollinator eduction event

Keep recyclables out of the landfill and clean up our roadsides and waterways.

Educate and inspire others to take action to protects the natural resource systems we rely on.

As Asheville experiences more extreme weather, more action is required to protect the environment that sustains us.

More is More

The more native trees we plant, the more we protect pollinators, the more we clean up our rivers, the more we keep waste out of the landfill — the more easily we can recover from excessive rain, extreme heat, and other effects of a changing climate.

Our Impact

Since 1973, we’ve inspired, equipped and mobilized our community to take care of the places we love.

  • 50,195

    Native Trees Planted

  • 150,000+

    Volunteers Mobilized

  • 6,860

    Miles of River Cleaned

  • 2.4 million

    Pounds of Trash Collected

  • 1 million

    Pounds Diverted from the Landfill (since 2011)

  • 10,000

    Students per Year Served by our Education Programs

Mission

Asheville GreenWorks inspires, equips, and mobilizes communities to create an equitable, climate-resilient future.

Vision

A climate-resilient community for all.

Core Impact

Through community engagement we create four core impacts:

Community-Scale Climate Resilience

Empowered Communities

Systems Change

A Healthy Environment

Strategic Vision

Our Commitment to Racial Equity

We are committed to antiracism.

We are committed to advancing equity as an intersectional issue, understanding the foundation of all equity work is antiracism, due to the dominance of white supremacy in all systems of oppression.

We know the diversity of experiences, ideas, individuals, and organizations in our community

and the sector makes us stronger together. To create a more just and engaged world, we must embrace and celebrate diversity, practice inclusion, and exercise our role as a champion of equity.

We accept that our commitment to antiracism means a commitment to constant learning. We will make mistakes, but we are determined to learn from them and to improve.

To be transparent and realistic, we also acknowledge that our capacity as an organization means we cannot always implement measures to the standard we would wish. For example, we wish we could provide content in multiple languages but this isn’t feasible for every project. We are accountable to ourselves, both as staff and board, and to the community, and create regular opportunities for reporting on our work, progress, mistakes, and plans.

Equity in Action

Antiracism is an evolving practice. 

To meet our own commitments, Asheville GreenWorks is continually seeking ways to strengthen our organizational policies, practices, and structures to support our racial justice and environmental justice goals. 

These efforts are led by our Executive Director and Operations Manager with input and guidance from our Equity Committee, which is composed of board and staff members. 

GreenWorks has also invested in expert guidance to create a handbook of resources to inform the practice of antiracism in our organization. This handbook also lays the foundation for a shared language and understanding of diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

We have sat together in brave, earnest collaboration to create this racial equity statement and operational commitment. 

We have engaged an external facilitator to lead board and staff in an Racial Equity training, and as part of the process, identified opportunities to improve our programs, practices, and policies from a critical racial equity perspective. 

We plan to engage another external facilitator to guide our staff and board through a process to refine our programs and practices so they operate in full integrity with our diversity,  equity, and inclusion lenses.  

We are working with a human resources consultant to develop a staff and board member on-boarding sequence grounded in our values and commitments for equity, diversity and inclusion in every aspect of our organization.

This commitment is not to help us “remember equity,” but a public commitment to our community and an invitation for accountability. We encourage and invite your feedback and partnership. To support accountability and to be accessible as we continue to do this work, we hope that you will share your ideas, questions, and experiences with us.

Values

COMMUNITY

We celebrate the unique gifts and experiences each member of this community contributes to creating a climate-resilient future.The responsibility to our environment and to each other requires a collective commitment to take action.

In action: We work to ensure all our neighbors can benefit from a thriving, healthy, and abundant environment.

EQUITY

Climate resilience looks different for different people. We are committed to investing in transformational relationships that center the needs of those most impacted by the pressures of a changing climate. 

In action: We work towards changing policies, practices, systems, and structures to ensure everyone in our communities can share in the benefits of a healthy environment.

ADAPTABILITY 

Our environment is in a state of emergency. To be effective, we must be responsive to the continually changing needs of our community.

In action: We orient our programs and activities toward treating the root causes of our most pressing environmental challenges and work to create lasting, tangible results. 

HUMILITY

The future we face promises unprecedented challenges and no one has all the answers. To meet this uncertainty head on, we commit to learning through experience, finding opportunities in failure, and designing solutions tailored to the circumstances at hand. 

In action: Recognizing that the best solutions to the region's climate-related disruptions will come from the people most directly impacted by them, we work in partnership with frontline communities to co-create solutions to the challenges of a changing climate.

Our Staff

  • Chelsea Adams

    ACTING OPERATIONS ​DIRECTOR

  • Eric Bradford

    INTERIM EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

  • Carrie Harmon

    DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE

  • Sara Millar - Community Forestry Coordinator

    Sara Millar

    COMMUNITY FORESTRY COORDINATOR

  • Madison Sings

    WATERSHED OUTREACH COORDINATOR

  • Megan Ward

    DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR

2024 Board of Directors

Chair
Ed Macie

Urban Forest Consultant

Vice Chair
Lee Ann Smith
Buncombe County Schools

Treasurer
Greg Hammer
NOAA

Secretary
Sophie Min Mullinax
Solar Crowdsource

Jenny Abla
Black Mountain Arborists

Renee Caldwell
Mueller Water

Ben Colvin 
Devil's Foot Brewing

Todd Dunnuck
MTN Land Properties

Henry Gargan
Southern Environmental Law Center

Gina Miceli
Whistle Hop Brewing Company

John Robbins
Greathorn Properties, Inc / Retired

Gillie Roberts
Ware

Renée White
East End/Valley Street Neighborhood Association

Philip Blocklyn
AGW StreamKeeper & TreeKeeper

Dan Glidden
Retired/Community Volunteer

Community-Led Committees

GreenWorks also convenes several volunteer committees dedicated to specific environmental priorities. 

Bee City USA - Asheville Leadership Committee

Our Bee City USA - Asheville Leadership Committee maintains Asheville’s designation as a “Bee City USA” by educating residents on the importance of preserving native pollinators, certifying native pollinator habitat on public and private land, planting new native pollinator habitat, and hosting special events to inspire other residents to take action.

Treasured Tree Committee

Our Treasured Tree Committee leads our efforts to honor rare, special, or ancient trees planted throughout Buncombe County. By designating a tree on their property as a Treasured Tree, residents call attention to their unique value and legacy. Our goal in honoring our Treasured Trees is to inspire new residents to join our commitment to preserving these irreplaceable trees.  

Job Openings

To apply for a current opening, choose the job title you are interested in and click for the description, requirements and application process.

Federal law requires all employers to verify the identity and employment eligibility of all persons hired to work in the United States. A conviction record does not automatically eliminate you from employment consideration.

Asheville GreenWorks values a diverse workplace and strongly encourages women, Black, Indigenous and People of Color, LGBTIA+ individuals, people with disabilities, foreign-born residents, and veterans to apply. Asheville GreenWorks is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will not be discriminated against because of race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, religion, national origin, citizenship status, disability, ancestry, marital status, veteran status, medical condition or any protected category prohibited by local, state or federal laws.

Asheville GreenWorks is Living Wage Certified by Just Economics of WNC.

Contact Us

Asheville GreenWorks is a 501(c)3 registered environmental non-profit governed by a Board of Directors. Our Federal EIN is 56-1672870

Mailing address:
2 Sulphur Springs Road, Asheville NC 28806 
Ph 828-254-1776

Hours:
Monday through Friday
9am to 5pm

FAQs

  • Yes.

  • Asheville GreenWorks inspires, equips and mobilizes communities to create an equitable, climate-resilient future.

  • Your gifts go right back into the community through our programs to plant native trees, protect native pollinators, reduce the waste we send to the landfill, and keep litter out of our waterways.

  • Please refer to the list above to see our amazing staff and our Executive Director!

  • We always keep a full calendar of programs and projects. If you’d like to partner with us, please submit a partnership request form.

  • The fastest way to help is to donate. If you’d like to lend your actual hands to help create a climate-resilient future for Asheville, check out our Events page to see what volunteer opportunities we have coming up.

  • Donate here. Looking for other ways to give? We welcome several kinds of support. See how you can help here.

  • Federal EIN# 56-1672870

News + Blog + Media

Keep updated on all our events and activities. Sign up for our newsletter and visit our blog!

Our History

Quality 76 archival photo

Deep Roots - Quality '76

In 1972, a group of dedicated volunteers sat down together to ask what they could do to create a more resilient future for Asheville.

At that time, tree canopy loss and roadside and riverborn litter were the most pressing environmental problems they could address.  In 1973, Asheville GreenWorks began as Quality '76 with a $2,000 grant from Wachovia Bank under the umbrella of the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce

We all deserve to live in a beautiful, healthy place. Our founders brought that value to life by committing to an ambitious goal to clean up and plant as many trees as possible in the city in advance of the nation's Bicentennial in 1976.

Swannanoa River archival photo

First projects

For their first project, the newly formed Quality ‘76 bravely embraced the most ambitious goal they could – a deep cleanup of the then-polluted Swannanoa River.

With hundreds of volunteers and help from scuba divers and towing companies, they began the task of hauling decades of trash out of the river.

The group started in a section of the river by the old Sayles Bleachery (now Walmart), spending that first summer extracting cars, appliances, construction waste, and household garbage from the river. Our 50-year history of regular river cleanups and devoted water quality stewardship was born!

Quality Forward building

Moving Forward

The visionary leaders of Quality ‘76 met their goals for America’s Bicentennial, but recognized that no one cleanup—or any one isolated act of environmental advocacy—would ever reverse the damage done in the prior decades. 

They began to look forward, and embrace bigger, more ambitious goals to prepare Asheville for a future in which everyone could thrive. They developed stewardship programs to care for the French Broad River watershed and the city’s urban tree canopy, which are still in existence today. They also worked with neighborhood groups

In 1979, Quality ‘76 joined with the National Arbor Day Foundation to designate Asheville as "Tree City USA" The City of Asheville has been honored with this award every year since 1979 for our collective efforts to plant, preserve, and honor our urban trees. 

The next time you’re in downtown Asheville, take note of the trees. While many of the trees we planted in the 1970s had to be replaced during needed sewer upgrades to downtown, several of the larger trees you see —check out the ones around Pritchard Park—were planted nearly 50 years ago by a dedicated volunteer team who were concerned about climate change and invested in those trees to provide a cooler, flood-resilient future for downtown Asheville. 

They also chose a new name for the organization, "Quality Forward,” to reflect their future-focused vision for a resilient future for Asheville. From 1976 to 2007 Quality Forward was a name that meant education, beautification, advocacy, and environmental stewardship. We’re most proud to have supported a community of dedicated volunteers who took action to protect and restore their homes, now and for the future. 

Many programs started in those early days are still mainstays today.  Adopt-a-Street, Clean Streams Day, NC Big Sweep River Cleanup, Arbor Day Celebration, Earth Day, Tree City USA and the Great Asheville-Buncombe Cleanup.

Becoming GreenWorks

In 2007, our Board of Directors chose to change our name again, to reflect our focus on the action taken by our dedicated volunteer community.

By then, the world looked very different than it had in 1976, and new priorities had emerged. However, our leadership team was still focused on the environmental priorities that would create a future for Asheville in which everyone could thrive.  

With new priorities came new programs: 

  • Waste Reduction programs, like Hard 2 Recycle and Mind Your Plastic May

  • Urban Forestry programs, like our TreeKeepers volunteer team and Community Food Tree Project

  • River & Road programs, like Adopt-a-Street and the Spring Downtown Lunchtime Cleanup

  • Education programs, like our YELP internship for BIPOC youth and tree activity library backpacks for kids. 

  • Water Quality programs, like our StreamKeeper volunteer team and Trash Trout litter collection device.

To this day, Asheville GreenWorks remains the most active environmental volunteer organization in Western North Carolina. Consider joining the tens of thousands of volunteers that have worked for a resilient future or support our efforts with a gift. We need both to create a climate-resilient future for our home!

GreenWorks logo