The UPS Foundation, which leads the global citizenship programs for UPS, announced it will award more than $2.6 million in grants to nonprofit organizations focused on environmental initiatives that align with UPS’s new sustainability goals to increase its reliance on renewable energy sources and reduce its absolute greenhouse gas emissions from global ground operations.

A significant grant will support The World Resources Institute, a global research organization that provides continued program support for the development of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the Science Based Targets initiative, and the sustainable use of Renewable Natural Gas. These protocols and targets were used to help establish UPS’s 2020 and 2025 emissions, energy, fuel, and vehicle environmental goals. The UPS Foundation’s funding of WRI has helped produce many of the GHG Protocol Standards and Tools that companies are using to set and measure their emission reduction goals.

Grants will also be awarded to UPS partners The Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund. Both organizations have played an integral role in the UPS Global Forestry Initiative, a program designed to plant, protect and preserve trees in urban and rural areas and forests worldwide. By the end of 2017, 2.6 million trees will have been planted as a part of the program. The UPS Foundation’s goal is to fund the planting of 15 million trees by the end of 2020.  At the end of this year, 9.7 million trees will have been planted during the last five years which equates to reaching 65 percent of the goal.

“UPS set aggressive environmental goals that require innovative solutions for today’s global sustainability challenges,” said Eduardo Martinez, president of The UPS Foundation and chief diversity and inclusion officer at UPS. “The UPS Foundation helps us partner with organizations that help meet those same challenges. From helping build standards and tools to measure progress, to increasing reforestation efforts, we continue to fund projects that deliver impact for the environmental issues we face on a daily basis.”

In addition to The Nature Conservancy, the WRI and the WWF, The UPS Foundation awarded environmental grants to eight other organizations:

• DonorsChoose.org, backing environmental education classroom projects submitted by public school teachers in rural communities in the U.S.

• Earth Day Network, for the Trees for Communities project that will plant more than 500,000 trees in Mexico, India, Cameroon, Uganda and the Boreal Forest in Canada.

• Earthwatch, to support an education and research workshop as part of UPS’s Climate Ambassadors Program.

• Keep America Beautiful, Inc., to fulfill local tree planting grants and beautification projects, advance community education and engage UPS employees through volunteerism.

• National Arbor Day Foundation, for continued help with reforestation programs of Canada’s Boreal Forest, planting 50,000 trees.

• National Park Foundation, to extend reforestation efforts in reclaimed mining land at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Penn.

• Student Conservation Association, for assistance with its National Conservation Internship Program for college students interested in environmental stewardship careers.

• World Business Council for Sustainable Development, to support public private partnerships to enhance environmental sustainability.