Green Tea

The Climate Toolkit from the Phipps Conservatory aims to create and sustain momentum in and between cultural heritage institutions through free resources and building connections. Lindsey speaks with Andrew Lampl and Jennifer Torrance from the Phipps about their roles in developing the Toolkit’s framework and resources and facilitating connections between institutions to create catalytic change.

Using themes from the SDGs, each institution has free rein to build the goals and agenda’s they want to work towards and join working groups built by the Phipps or internally to make sustainable changes.

Jennifer highlights her joy in working with youth climate groups to empower the next generation as they navigate growing up in a world that they know needs active change.

Andrew reminds us how pivotal it is for the cultural heritage sector to take the lead towards sustainable action.

We can have such an impact on our future planet and communities when we work together. Jennifer and Andrew are ready to share how Climate Joy together can help us avoid the inaction that comes from feeling alone in Climate Anxiety.

Resources:

Phipps Conservatory

Climate Toolkit

LEED Certification

Phipps Production Greenhouse LEED Platinum

One Earth

Climate Resilience Resources

Green Tea episode on the Climate Resilience Resources

Regenerative Systems Thinking

Roger Hart's Ladder of Participation

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

Action for Climate Empowerment

The National Heritage Responders are a unique subset of volunteers from within the American Institute for Conservation who engage in disaster relief. Whether its liaising between institutions, resource building and dissemination, or boots on the ground recovery of cultural heritage in disaster zones, the trained responders are finding their skills regularly called upon as climate change impacts our local communities more each year.

Roxy talked with two heritage responders from the Hawaiian Islands, Malia van Heukelem and Liane Naauao, who participated in relief and recovery efforts after the Lahaina wildfires in 2023. They discuss how the scale of the disaster impacted their strategy for relief action and how important it is to be trauma-informed as a responders when victims need to process the loss of their material culture. Mahalo Malia and Liane.

We encourage you to donate to the National Heritage Responders through their recent gofundme page since their federal stream of funding which enabled deployments to communities like Lahaina has recently been eliminated.

Resources

1. National Heritage Responders

2. National Heritage Responders GoFundMe

3. FEMA Heritage Emergency National Task Force (HENTF)

4. Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative

5. Lahaina Restoration Foundation

6. Maui Recovers

7. Treecovery Hawai'i

8. "Saving Hawai'i History from the Ashes, One Object at a Time", NYTimes

9. Hawai'i Public Radio: Kaiaulu Initiatives

Glenn Wharton and Justine Wuebold from the UCLA Getty conservation program talk to Rachel about their NEH grant-funded project to develop sustainability-focused curriculum.

Justine’s role encompassed researching the current state of education surrounding sustainability including the various pedagogical models being used by other schools and programs around the world. This then developed into crafting small scale modules for testing in the classroom by various professors in the program.

With its focus on archaeological and indigenous cultural heritage, the program prioritizes “action learning” modules to give students more agency and experience. Glenn discusses how role playing is an active teaching style that allows students to really engage with critical thinking, learn to advocate with evidence-supported ideas, and balance differing priorities in real world scenarios.

By opening up the theme of sustainability to include human and social perspectives, students have taken on projects related to Traditional Knowledge and incorporating that learning with contemporary material analysis techniques. These projects are multi-directional as students return to the communities of indigenous knowledge to share what they have learned. Community engagement like this is a pivotal element for conservation students as they are learning to preserve material culture from various communities.

The NEH project is only the beginning and next steps involve getting further feedback from students mid-program and post-program, developing workshops with specific themes, and establishing “green lab certification” criteria to further instill sustainable paradigms into practice for future conservators.

If your program incorporates sustainable paradigms and practices into its teaching, we would like to hear from you. Please reach out to us at [email protected] with the header “Green Tea” so we can learn more about how you are preparing the future generation of cultural heritage professionals.

Resources:

1. UCLA/Getty Interdepartmental Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage

2. Wuebold, Justine, Ellen Pearlstein, William Shelley & Glenn Wharton. April 2022. “Preliminary Research into Education for Sustainability in Cultural Heritage Conservation.” Studies in Conservation. 67:sup1. 326-333. DOI: 10.1080/00393630.2022.2059642

3. Pearlstein, Ellen, Justine Wuebold, Glenn Wharton, and Chedeya Brown. (2024). “Barriers to Embedding Sustainability in Conservation Education and Practice.” American Institute of Conservation Research and Technical Studies Specialty Group Annual Meeting Postprints, Salt Lake City, UT, 9-11.

4. The Cloud Institute

5. ENCRyM

In our second episode concerning the intersection of the ecological and cultural heritage conservation fields, we learn about an academic think tank called the Natureculture Lab that was held in January 2025. Hanna B. Hölling, Sven Dupré, co-organizers of the Lab, and Maartje Stols-Witlox, co-author of one of the lectures, speak with Lindsey about the beneficial relationship that both conservation fields could develop by engaging more directly with each other.

The Lab aimed to break down silos between the two fields with perspectives from around the globe and centered upon themes from sociology, anthropology, and systems evolution. Presenters discussed how the two fields faced similar challenges even though the subjects differ and had similar histories in their development as disciplines.

Stewardship has been defined in a variety of ways in both disciplines over time. The Natureculture Lab cohort would often question what it would mean to redefine the concept of ‘conservation’ to be much more inclusive of both naturally-made and man-made entities. In small groups the participants were posed questions concerning how we engage with the nature of change, determine agency or authority to determine actions of conservation, and identify what those actions might be to create a holistically beneficial relationship with our environment now and into the future.

Resources discussed:

News in Conservation, June/July 2025

Donna Haraway -

biologist and philosopher of science

Bruno Latour - anthropologist, sociologist and philosopher of science

Laura Martin - author "Wild by Design"

Systems Change Theory

Indigenous or Traditional Knowledge

Ecological Restoration "Disturbance" Concept

Society for Ecological Restoration

Active Materials

Conserving Active Matter

Jacob Badcock, coordinator for Reading Group

In our first of two back to back episodes concerning the overlap between ecological conservation and cultural heritage conservation, Lindsey speaks with Dr Jordan Teisher director of the herbarium at the Missouri Botanic Gardens in St Louis Missouri.

Herbariums and other natural history collections contain a wealth of human heritage even if socially we no longer associate them with ‘art’ or other ‘cultural’ objects of value. While some cultures have particular reverence or place significant value upon specific plants, animals or places, it seems that the people of most Western nations have largely ignored the value of our ecological heritage unless participating in the botanical community themselves.

Many of the challenges faced by herbarium collections are familiar to museum and library conservators: from navigating overseas loans, developing robust integrated pest management plans, maintaining databases, and participating in digitization efforts. Jordan points out that even though an herbarium specimen isn’t a man-made object like a book or a painting, it still is curated and because it was harvested, mounted, and described through the perspective of a person has historical and cultural significance beyond it’s ecological significance .

Even conservation professionals may not see plants as having their own material culture value unless they are elements of an ‘art object’ made by a person, since then they better fall under our purview.

Missouri Botanic Gardens Herbarium Website

GBIF.org

Ethnobotany

Hyperspectral scanning of plants

Revolutionizing Species identification project

SPNC conference

Finding safer alternatives to hazardous solvents not only has a positive impact on our planet's health, but also the health of conservation professionals who use the solvents. Very often the problem solving skills that conservators use in determining treatment options already includes a degree of 'sustainability' without perhaps giving it that label. In this episode, Roxy speaks with Rosie Grayburn and Gwen Fife about their project concerning 'greener' solvent use, specifically for removal of resins in paintings' conservation.

(For a similar, but different topic within this theme, please see our episode with Soraya Alcala and the MFA Houston's Greener Gels project with GREENART.)

While the term 'green' may refer to a 'bio-based' product this alone would not reflect a truly holistic perspective of sustainable practices. Gwen explains how there is a flexible model for weighing options for treatment might be 'greener' and how there's not one 'perfect' solvent, but that we should be viewing our choices through a lens of the complexity of the task and the context of our use. Like in our 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle' episode, the most sustainable action may be one that uses what you already have to avoid unnecessary waste, but also considering that you might have multiple options in your chemical cabinet, Gwen recommends reviewing the Hazard Codes in Materials' Safety Data Sheets and the Greener Solvents Handbook to consider the pros and cons of using different materials.

The aim of developing sustainable practices isn't to restrict or regulate your choices, but rather create environments where conservators continue to have agency: by expanding our awareness to a multi-faceted and holistic perspective of sustainable chemical use, you'll be better able to make informed decisions for the object you're treating, your health, and the health of the planet.

Rosie highlights information from their 2024 survey concerning the field's engagement with solvent use and some of the surprises that data showcased to them. Comparing their results against a 1998 AIC survey on the same theme, they were able to see a decrease in use of specific solvents, an increase in PPE usage by individuals, and most strikingly, a severe lack of annual safety training and chemical hygiene training for a large percentage of our field. She also talks briefly about the project that followed that survey: its focus solvents and the partnership with Dow Chemical.

For listeners attending the AIC Annual Meeting this week, please check out the Rosie's talk about this project on Thursday, May 29th at 5pm CT. It's part of the Research and Technical Studies (RATS) session: "Developments in Safer Solvent Selections for the Removal of Synthetic Resins". As either a virtual or in-person attendee, you should be able to review the talk online after the conference as well.

Additionally, each annual meeting, the Health and Safety Committee offers a Respirator Fit Test workshop. For more information about the health and safety aspects of our field including information about the Globally Harmonized System for Hazard Communication used in MSDS, please check out the H&S Committee's wiki, available in the show notes below.

Resources:

1. SiC website

2. 2024 AIC Survey Results on Solvent Use, AIC News Brief

3. SiC Greener Solvents Handbook, 2021

4. SiC Greener Solvents Database with Chem 21 Ratings

5. GoGr

Continuing our conversation with Latin American conservators, Roxy speaks with Josefa Orrego Trincado is preventative conservator based in Santiago, Chile.

Josefa’s recent MA thesis focused on the approaches that LA conservators take to be sustainable. While many don’t use the language specifically, their actions and perspectives often are congruent with sustainable action.

Due to financial and local sourcing difficulties, LA conservators are much more adaptive, making reuse a common strategy of their practice as well as reconsidering rigid climate set point regulation, and reliance on energy-consuming equipment.

She argues for a more holistic perspective of sustainability one that includes social and economic alongside environmental, and highlights how having a relationship with the indigenous communities as a steward of their heritage has impacted her work as a preventative conservator.

She advocates for conservators to occupy higher administrative roles and better communication between LA and NA conservators. Having attended AIC Annual Meeting on a scholarship, she believes there’s much we can do to create more spaces for dialogue between the two geographic groups.

One recommendation of Josefa’s we’d like to highlight is make sustainable thinking a part of your lab conversations. The more we talk about how sustainable thinking motivates our actions, we can create momentum for integrating sustainability into our common ethos passively. After all, many of us are already engaging in a sustainable practice, as best as we can; we just might not see it that way.

2. Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino

3. Sustainable Development Goals

4. Changemakers Webinars Youtube Playlist

5. APOYOnline

6. APOYOnline Scholarships

7. AIC Scholarships

The most common questions that are emailed to the Sustainability Committee relate to disposable gloves. Co-chair of the committee, Kate Fugett, talks to Roxy about an article that she co-wrote in 2022 about the environmental impact of glove manufacturing and waste, as well as the impact on global human health.

While there often isn't a satisfying solution for a truly 'sustainable glove', Kate lays out the various avenues that conservation labs can take in effort to be more conscientious of the social and environmental harms that come with this very necessary tool in protecting ourselves and the objects we preserve.

Building off of expertise from other fields, we can be more informed about the pros and cons of each solution and decide which impact we would like to contribute: perhaps the conditions of your lab make it easier to recycle the many pairs of gloves you use because you don’t have to worry about biohazards - or your lab decides to prioritize American-made gloves to be ensure that your impact isn’t contributing to social harms and exploitative labor practices - or maybe latex is ideal because no one is allergic, and it's an option with a small carbon impact in waste management terms.

**Please ensure you are prioritizing the right material glove for the solvent or hazards you are using. PPE is designed to protect you first and foremost.**

Ultimately, “[you] cannot do all the good that the world needs. But the world needs all the good that [you] can do.” - Jana Stanfield

“The Use, Reuse, Refuse, and Recycling of Nitrile Gloves: A Collaboration between the Sustainability Committee and Health & Safety Network”, 2022

2. RightCycle - Kimberly-Clark

3. Kimberly-Clark Nitrile gloves

4. Terracycle Gloves Zero Waste Box

5. STiCH: Gloves

6. How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

7. The Myth of Plastic Recycling

8. The Fraud of Plastic Recycling

9. EPA: Landfills

10. Solid Waste Association of North America: Ownership of municipal landfills

11. CBP Seizes Millions of Disposable Gloves Following Forced Labor Finding Against Top Glove Corporation

12. Notice of Finding that Certain Disposable Gloves Produced in Malaysia with the use of convict, forced or indentured labor are being, or are likely to be, imported into the United States

The ⁠UN's Sustainable Development Goals⁠ (SDGs) considers sustainability through a more holistic paradigm including many themes concerning social, economic, and environmental impacts.

Combining many of these themes, Roxy speaks with Bianca Gonçalves, an independent paintings conservator, about her lived experience in Europe, Australia, and Brazil and how it has impacted her perception of the conservation field. Using two recent reports from AIC/FAIC, they discuss some of the current social roadblocks to a thriving and sustainable conservation field.

Economic inequality is a reoccurring theme throughout the conversation, concerning pre-program and post-graduate professionals’ experiences outlined in the reports. Starting with a more equitable path to education or training, regardless of economical status or racial background, will help the profession shift into a more diverse community of voices and talents. Heritage belongs to everyone, so everyone should be allowed equitable access to joining the field of preservers of heritage.

Bianca brings up a tantalizing question about how gender bias in the current worldview could be impacting the health of our female-dominated profession: “If more men entered the profession, would wages and recognition be increased?” If we cannot sustain ourselves financially, more people will leave the field to only the select few who can afford to stay due to other means, leading to a less diverse community in the profession.

She calls for membership institutions like AIC and Icon, to continue to advocate for our field on a national and global scale and that the field must pivot to an environmentally sustainable paradigm in order to validate it further in the public eye: It showcases that we are a profession already ahead of most industries when it comes to prioritizing people and planet and that we can contribute in lasting ways which is worth funding.

Highlighting that geographic and economic context can have a radical impact on the problem-solving nature of our work, she describes how resourcefulness, creativity, and a willingness to challenge the status quo can lead to significant positive shifts in our field’s capacity to be environmentally sustainable.

We cannot grow as a profession without expanding our idea of what the profession could encompass, who could help it grow in ways that would benefit both people and planet, and convincing the general public that our field is worth investing in.

Resources:

1. Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
2. Projeto de Lei PL 1183/2019
3. FAIC Compensation Survey
4. ECPN Expectations and Realities Report
5. The European Green Deal
6. Atelier CurArte Green Conservation- Bianca's website
7. GoGreen Project
8. KiCulture
9. "The gender pay gap is smaller in occupations with a higher ratio of men: Evidence from a national panel study", 2022

“If it was once alive, we can compost it”. Mary Beth and Erlene talk to Lindsey about the nuances of composting plant and animal based materials, from food scraps, to yard waste, to materials we use in conservation labs.

58% of the methane that comes off the landfill comes from the fermentation and breaking down of food and organic waste - most of which isn’t utilized in a useful way and instead impacts our environment negatively.

Good news: Most of the plant and animal-based materials we use CAN be composted in MOST compost methods, but for best case: commercial composting is the most comprehensive route. It just takes some research effort to find what local options are available to you and your lab.

They also offer tips for managing your own lab-wide or workplace kitchen compost collection to avoid odors, pests, and materials that don’t break down congruently. No matter how small, the pieces add up. Moving organic material out of the landfill can be significantly impactful for our communities: for our water, soil, and atmosphere.

Resources from this episode: