Dr. Allen Hershkowitz is a Senior Scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), where he champions environmental responsibility. In 2009, Yoga + Joyful Living [1] magazine dubbed him “The Godfather of Greening.” Since joining NRDC in 1988, Dr. Hershkowitz has worked toward large-scale change in the areas of recycling, mountaintop removal coal mining, paper industry impacts, waste incineration, sustainable development and medical wastes.
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In recent years, Dr. Hershkowitz has helped iconic American organizations—including professional sports leagues and major record labels—go green. He helped lead the greening of the 2007-2010 Academy Awards,[2] and the 50th, 51st and 52nd Grammy Awards.[3] He earned the United States Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) 2008 Environmental Merit Award [4] for his role in the greening of Major League Baseball (MLB),[5] the National Basketball Association (NBA),[6] the U.S. Tennis Association (USTA) [7] and the National Hockey League (NHL).[8] Dr. Hershkowitz is a member of the steering committees of the Green Sports Alliance and Broadway Greening Alliance, which he helped establish. He is also a member of the 2011 NCAA Final Four Sustainability Committee.
Dr. Hershkowitz has advised corporations including DuPont, Hugo Neu and Sims Metal Management in their sustainability efforts. His successes include protecting nature in Belize,[9] Appalachian ranges threatened by mountaintop removal coal mining [10] and the boreal forests.[11] Dr. Hershkowitz was a leader in negotiating NRDC’s 2006 forestry protection settlement with Bowater Paper Company [12] , which led to large-scale protections of the Cumberland Plateau. He was also an originator of NRDC’s “Testing the Waters”,[13] an annual documentation of beach closures.
As an expert on environmental issues, Dr. Hershkowitz has authored numerous publications including Bronx Ecology: A Blueprint for a New Environmentalism (Island Press, 2002).[14] In 2011, he contributed an essay titled "Life is God's Masterpiece" to the J. Henry Fair book The Day After Tomorrow: Images of Our Earth in Crisis (powerHouse Books, 2011). From 2006-2008, he was on the editorial board of OnEarth magazine. Other projects he has authored include Waste Incineration & Public Health (National Academy Press: Washington, D.C., Dec. 2002), Too Good to Throw Away: Recycling's Proven Record (New York, NRDC, 1997), Garbage: Practices, Problems and Remedies (New York: INFORM, 1988), Garbage Management in Japan (New York: INFORM, 1987) and Garbage Burning: Lessons from Europe (New York: INFORM, 1986).