Heinz Center

FOUNDED IN 1995, in honor of late Republican Senator H. John Heinz, III (1938–1991), the Heinz Center is a nonprofit institution dedicated to improving the scientific and economic foundation for environmental policy through collaboration in different sectors among industry, government, academia, and environmental organizations.

Senator Heinz was always active as a politician in initiatives to preserve the environment and to understand the impact of human actions on it. By the mid-1980s, Heinz claimed that human actions were damaging the environment and, with Democratic Senator Tim Wirth, he set up Project 88. The Project contributed to the landmark legislation Clean Air Act Reauthorization passed by the Senate in 1990. Heinz also introduced bills to encourage the recycling of newspapers, motor oil, and other hazardous wastes.

The Senate version of the Clean Air Act reauthorization bill included a Heinz amendment protecting the right of local communities to fix strict limits on radio-nuclide emissions from nuclear facilities. Heinz was one of the main supporters of legislation to require banks to encourage sustainable growth in developing nations by considering the environmental implications of projects they finance. Heinz also proposed legislation to protect groundwater and ensure proper maintenance of above-ground storage tanks, and cosponsored a bill to curtail global warming. Heinz was a firm believer that many environmental problems went beyond national borders, so he was a founding member of GLOBE (Global Legislators Organization for a Balanced Environment) International, created in 1989 as a forum for the worlds policy-makers to exchange environmental ideas and concerns. He also chaired GLOBE-US. Heinz served in the U.S. delegation to the Interparliamentary Conference on the Global Environment in 1989. In his capacity as a member of the national board for Earth Day, Heinz sponsored a variety of organizations with educational missions. He co-chaired the Alliance to Save Energy, served as a board member to the Environment and Energy Study Institute, and, along with Senator and future Vice-President Al Gore, supported EarthTech 90, a fair of environment-friendly technology on the National Mall in 1990.

To carry out the environmentalist legacy of Senator Heinz, the center focuses on issues that confront policymakers regarding the environment. The diverse membership of the center's board of trustees, its steering committees, and all its committees and working groups, mirror its guiding philosophy that aims to involve all relevant parties to offer solutions to the complex issues surrounding environmental policymaking. Industry, environmental organizations, academia, and government are the four components that the center attempts to involve in each of its program areas and projects. All four sectors are actively involved in all aspects of environmental policymaking, from the identification of a problem, through the suggestions of recommendations, to implementation of a policy. The cooperation between these four sectors produces solutions to the environmental challenges that face the United States and the world. The center, thus, gathers leading policymakers and practitioners from government, industry, environmental organizations, and uni-versities to work together to identify pressing environmental challenges and to agree upon ways of meeting those challenges.