Environmental Defense Fund - Key Accomplishments

Key Accomplishments

Key accomplishments of Environmental Defense Fund include:

• 1967 - A group of scientists forms the organization and sets out to ban DDT (succeeding in 1972).
• 1970 - Efforts to ban whale hunting.
• 1974 - An Environmental Defense Fund study of Mississippi River water helps pass the Safe Drinking Water Act, establishing the first comprehensive health standards for water nationwide.
• 1985 - Helped convince federal regulators to phase out lead from gasoline, leading to a dramatic decline in childhood lead poisoning.
• 1986 - Pushed McDonalds to institute biodegradable food-packaging containers.
• 1987 - Played a key role in the treaty to phase out the use of CFCs, chemicals that many researchers believe damage the Earth’s ozone layer.
• 1990 - Designed Title IV of the Clean Air Act, which incorporates market-based methods to cut air pollution and acid rain. The measures reduced sulfur dioxide pollution faster than expected, and at a fraction of the cost.
• 1990 - Improved McDonald's packaging, reducing solid waste in a groundbreaking corporate partnership.
• 1995 - Designed the Safe Harbor plan that gives landowners new incentives to help endangered species on their property.
• 1999 - Contributed to the Endangered Species Act, including inventing the Safe Harbor concept
• 2000 - Seven of the world's largest corporations join Environmental Defense in a partnership to address global warming, setting firm targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
• 2001 - Helped create the 1,200-mile-long Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve.
• 2001, 2004, 2008 - Won measures resulting in cleaner vehicle exhaust from trucks, ships and other vehicles
• 2002 - Initiated the recent campaign to remove the O'Shaughnessy Dam in Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park
• 2004 - Culmination of 4-year partnership with FedEx to develop and deploy hybrid electric trucks. The new vehicles cut smog-forming pollution by 65%, reduce soot by 96%, and move 57% farther on a gallon of fuel.
• 2006 - Co-authored the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 with Natural Resources Defense Council.
• 2006 - Led adoption of catch shares, a science-based method to manage fishing and control fish population decline.
• 2007 - Co-founded United States Climate Action Partnership (US-CAP), a coalition of major corporations and environmental groups supporting action on global warming, including a market-based carbon emissions cap. Corporate participants include GE, DuPont and Duke Energy; non-profit groups involved are Pew Center on Global Climate Change, Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Resources Institute, a co-founder.
• 2007 - Helped negotiate an environmental codicil as part of Texas Pacific's buyout of TXU.
• 2008-2011 - Founded and developed the Climate Corps program, which matches organizations with MBA and MPA students to uncover energy savings.
• 2011 - Successful campaign to clean up highly-polluting heating oil in New York City.
• 2011 - Built coalition to defeat Proposition 23, an industry-backed ballot initiative that would have blocked California’s Global Warming Solutions Act (AB32).