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2025 Green Globe Award
The Department of Natural Resources and Parks honored the recipients of the 2025 Green Globe Awards, King County’s highest honor for environmental stewardship. Presented every two years, the awards recognize nonprofits, small businesses, government agencies, volunteers, and employees who help us create more resilient, sustainable, equitable communities.
King County Executive Shannon Braddock led the ceremony at the Bethaday Community Learning Space in White Center.
Environmental Catalyst
Lynda Mapes, Seattle Times environmental reporter
The top honor went to longtime Seattle Times environmental reporter and award-winning author Lynda Mapes.
“Lynda Mapes is the narrator for Puget Sound,” said Executive Braddock.
Mapes has covered the Department of Natural Resources and Parks since the mid-1990s, joining field scientists to show how we’re removing barriers to historic salmon habitat, restoring habitat throughout the watershed to benefit people, fish, and wildlife, and modernizing our approach to floodplain restoration as the local beaver population recovers.
Mapes previously received the Washington State Book Award and the National Outdoor Book Award, and has twice been honored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Earlier this year, she was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of culverts.
“Our work is often complicated, driven by hard sciences – ecology, biology, toxicology, and oceanography,” Executive Braddock. “The people of King County have a better understanding of our work thanks to her rigorous reporting.”
Leader in Local Food Economy
Growing for Good
The nonprofit Growing for Good brings fresh, locally grown food to King County communities that often lack access to nutritious, culturally relevant produce.
A partnership between Neighborhood Farmers Markets, Harvest Against Hunger, and PCC Community Markets, they provide upfront payments to small farms, which helps stabilize their operations, allowing small farms to plan, invest, and grow more sustainably.
The farm-to-food bank partnerships are tailored to meet each community’s needs, reducing food insecurity while supporting the local agricultural economy.
During the first five years of the program, more than $660,000 was raised by the community and provided directly to 22 different local farms who delivered more than 230,000 pounds of fresh, local produce to 25 hunger relief agencies improving food access while strengthening local agriculture.
Leader in Circular Economy
Bike Works
Bike Works is a regional bike donation hub offering classes, camps, volunteer opportunities, and open shop for bike repairs and tuning to the broader community. Their nonprofit, full-service bike shop in Columbia City sells quality used bikes as well as new and used bike parts and accessories.
Bike Works collects 5,000 bikes per year for use in their programs, to share with smaller organizations, and to recycle or upcycle. That diverts 250,000 pounds of steel, aluminum, and other metals from the waste stream.
Through their relationships with vendors and sponsors – they strive to hold the bike industry and manufacturers more accountable for the entire life cycle of their products. They have been a strong advocate for the circular economy by encouraging manufacturers to participate in Bike-Take-Back programs and other actions that reduce waste.
Leader in Clean Water
Villa Comunitaria
Villa Comunitaria – a Latine and women-led nonprofit organization – provides in-language resources, leadership training, and economic development support to the diverse populations of the Duwamish Valley.
Through a partnership with King County’s Wastewater Treatment Division, the organization spreads awareness about our capital projects, employment opportunities, apprenticeships, internships, and trainings.
Recent examples of their work include:
- Promoting the Clean Water Ambassadors internship to high school students and supporting students through the application process.
- Promoting King County’s award-winning Operator-in-Training program, creating a new generation of frontline professionals who represent the diversity of the communities we service.
- Working with our Partners in Water Program to better support underserved communities and small businesses through our contracting program.
The partnership sets the standard for how the Wastewater Treatment Division and trusted community-based organizations can work together to achieve better outcomes for capital projects, communities, and environment.
Leader in Green Built Environment
Homestead Community Land Trust – The Southard
Homestead Community Land Trust is developing The Southard, providing transit-friendly, high-quality homes made permanently affordable through its community land trust. It will provide 11 families homes at subsidized prices affordable to low- to moderate-income buyers, and two additional homes to adults with disabilities.
What makes the Southard unique is its commitment to being an environmentally sustainable neighborhood. Homes will be highly energy efficient by using solar panels for onsite energy generation and other green features, including net-zero energy and Salmon Safe certifications.
These features lower the cost of operating and maintaining the homes, making them more affordable to own, and making homes more resilient to climate impacts while protecting water quality.
Homestead’s affordable homeownership development in Tukwila was named to honor DNRP Solid Waste Division’s longtime Green Building Program Manager, Patti Southard, who passed away in 2019.
Leader in Land Conservation
King County Conservation Futures Advisory Committee
The volunteer members of the King County Conservation Futures Advisory Committee have helped guide the Land Conservation Initiative, a partnership to protect the last, best 65,000 acres of urban greenspace, trails, forestland, farmland, river corridors, and natural areas. They generously donate their time and expertise to review each application for funding generated by the Conservation Futures Tax and the King County Parks Levy.
Their rigorous review and recommendations help ensure that the Department of Natural Resources and Parks’ approach to open space preservation upholds its commitment to equity and racial justice.
They provide a balanced package of open space acquisition projects that benefit people, fish, and wildlife – laying the foundation for habitat restoration and more access to healthy outdoor recreation.
They carefully review hundreds of pages of application documents, then participate in multiple meetings to finalize their recommendations.
Their well-informed recommendations have guided conservation actions throughout King County, creating a more just future where all people have access to the natural environment.
Leader in Outdoor Recreation
Golden Bricks Events
Chevon Powell founded Golden Bricks Events to create culturally rooted and equity centered outdoor experience. Their marquee event is Refuge Outdoor Festival, a unique three-day gathering at King County’s Tolt-MacDonald Park and Campground in Carnation.
Now in its eighth year, the festival will feature workshops on outdoors themes, art and performances, outdoor recreation activities, and DJs under the night sky. It reflects Golden Bricks Events’ passion for inclusivity, education, and entertainment.
Participants have learned everything from camping hacks, backpacking tips and ways to improve birdwatching results – all in a welcoming and relaxed environment.
Leader in Salmon Recovery
Charlotte Spang
Charlotte Spang is a tireless, engaging advocate for native salmon.
Whether it’s with Seattle Public Utilities’ Cedar River Salmon Journey or the Seattle Aquarium’s Stories from the Salish Sea, Spang has provided a sustained, entertaining, and inspiring stream of easy-to-understand information about the remarkable lives of salmon.
A longtime participant in King County’s popular Salmon SEEson, Spang used her knowledge and entertaining approach to discussing with streamside visitors what could be an overly science-y topic – salmon spawning.
Spang brought the same energy and knowledge to Puget Sound beaches during low tide as the Field Outreach Coordinator for the Seattle Aquarium, sharing reports of spawning nudibranch, oozing anemones, and colorful sea stars.
Through these connections, she reinforced the importance of environmental stewardship, teaching scores of visitors the important lesson that we’re all connected to this remarkable landscape.
Christie J. True Award for Outstanding Public Service
David Kimmett, retired from King County Parks
The Christie J. True Award for Outstanding Public Service – a new category named in honor of the former DNRP Director – honors an employee or team that has reinforced the department’s reputation as a trusted environmental steward.
The first recipient is David Kimmett, who recently retired after 38 years of service at King County Parks. His career included 14 year with the Open Space Program where he helped protect and restore natural areas that contribute to the quality of life throughout the region.
Kimmett led or partnered on projects that protected more than 2,500 acres of natural land, improving habitat and creating welcoming spaces where people, families, and friends can play, relax, and connect.
His ingenuity and persistence transformed a degraded ravine in North Highline into Glendale Forest, a healthy, vibrant urban greenspace for nearby kids, families, and schools. Unifying the efforts of multiple King County divisions and partnering with Washington Trails Association, Kimmett created a welcoming greenspace in an underserved community.
King County announced its first-ever Extreme Heat Mitigation Strategy at the forest park, identifying it a model for healthy greenspaces where people can stay safe and cool during dangerous heat waves.