The Biden administration’s Climate Corps program, which once stated it “put 15,000 young Americans to work” in multiple fields, including waste management, is over. However, many of the jobs remain ongoing.
The Climate Corps was an umbrella term for certain service and conservation corps positions that were already operating and receiving funding, some for many years. The Biden initiative eventually landed a memorandum of understanding between AmeriCorps and seven other federal agencies in 2023, but no federal money was ever assigned to the program as Grist reported in January.
Instead, an open corps member position with responsibilities that overlapped with climate change mitigation efforts might have been listed under the federal program or on a nationwide Climate Corps job site. As a result, sources say, this means the thousands of workers participating in climate and conservation-related programs that predate the Biden initiative are expected to continue.
But President Donald Trump’s administration could still threaten the programs. In the wake of the broad funding pause and the executive order terminating any Climate Corps activities, both issued in January, some organizations have preemptively scrubbed mentions of climate change from their websites and program names or been asked to pull similar language from their initiatives.
For the positions managing recycling or helping schools reduce food waste, it is possible that the only effect will be a name change. If left untouched by federal action, parts of the programs that many think can be the most beneficial — the work accomplished and the introductions to waste and recycling careers — will stay intact.
Federal and state efforts
President Joe Biden first proposed the Climate Corps with an executive order in 2021. The program was meant to create “accessible training opportunities and good jobs” in a host of categories such as land and water restoration, community resilience, forest restoration and carbon sequestration in agriculture.
The “corps” name references the Civilian Conservation Corps, a program introduced by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. Over its nine-year run, the jobs initiative employed an estimated 3,000,000 people directly with the federal government to build parks, municipal structures and more.
Since then, service programs around the country — some national, others local — have revived the “corps” name. These programs have been smaller in scope and have less direct federal ties.
AmeriCorps, a federal agency, routes funding allocated from Congress into grants for local governments, nonprofits, tribal organizations and sometimes other federal departments that apply to hire and host corps members for one-year contracts. Depending on who is hiring and what the corps member is doing, the positions might fall into one of several categories. Someone in a two-year position working at least partially on federal properties might be considered part of the Public Lands Corps, for example, while a position dedicated to alleviating local poverty might be part of Volunteers in Service to America.
States can also tap their own resources to create corps. California funded its first local Conservation Corps in 1982. Since 1988, versions throughout the state have received funding from the California Redemption Value program.
The federal Climate Corps program, without its own funding, aimed instead to elevate existing jobs. One way it did this was to collect relevant programs on a designated Climate Corps jobs page. Two recent postings on the now-defunct website looking to fill positions with recycling and zero waste responsibilities came from two of California’s long-standing, bottle bill-funded programs: The Conservation Corps of Long Beach and the San Jose Conservation Corps.
Elsewhere in the country, AmeriCorps-funded programs became Climate Corps positions after they had already started.
In October 2023, 10 corps members came to help Ann Arbor, Michigan, and its Office of Sustainability and Innovations with a range of tasks. This included running an educational table that discussed composting and food waste reduction at the local farmer’s market, said Maggie Halpern, the program director for the AmeriCorps positions.
The city, which is working towards a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2030, applied directly to AmeriCorps for the grants. The Ann Arbor program became part of the Michigan Climate Corps, one of several state programs the Biden administration called out as already-operating when it announced its jobs website.
A similar process played out in New Jersey.
“This was an idea I had before I knew the Climate Corps existed,” said Jennifer Shukaitis, an assistant professor at Rutgers University. Shukaitis’ initiative places members in school districts throughout New Jersey to help cut back on food waste in cafeterias.
At partner schools, members conduct waste audits and teach a lesson series about the effects that food systems have on climate change. They’ll also introduce share tables, which are monitored spaces where students can safely leave leftover parts of their lunch for others.
Shukaitis applied for AmeriCorps funding through the state of New Jersey and started working with her first cohort of eight corps members. After that work had started a state employee got in touch to say that hers and a few other programs would be considered part of the New Jersey Climate Corps, which in turn considered itself part of the federal program by the same name.
Like in Ann Arbor, the label change didn't affect Shukatis' funding. Shukaitis also knows she will apply for funding for more corps members when the time comes. Because the program is built on a similar pilot project she and her coworkers developed, Shukaitis has heard years of feedback from school staff that like the lessons and cafeteria components but don’t have the time and resources to run the programs themselves.
“We thought that by placing an AmeriCorps member full time into these schools, that would address that gap,” Shukaitis said. “If we actually had a cafeteria share table, they could get it going and then hopefully the maintenance can continue after they leave in two or three years.”
So far, the plan is working out. A few of the schools served last year were able to take over cafeteria responsibilities, while others are now working with their second round of corps members. Shukaitis is still analyzing data from the first year of Corps help, but she has good reason to think the interventions are helpful: Data from the pilot program found that one school saw a 17% reduction in waste over a single school year, or 90,000 pounds of food.
Looking ahead
Regardless of whether they have an official “Climate Corps” label aside, these jobs will continue to include waste management and climate change mitigation in their descriptions.
Corps programs across the country recycled over 25,000 tons of material in 2023, according to the most recent annual report The Corps Network has available. The Corps Network declined to comment for this story.
Even the Working Lands Conservation Corps — one of the few interagency programs that sent members to their host organizations after the 2023 Climate Corps memorandum of understanding — plans to continue. The group draws funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, a piece of Biden-era legislation named in the Trump administration memo retracting payments. Sources recently said that the Working Lands Conservation Corps had so far remained unaffected.
The program is still geared toward training the next generation of conservationists and the appeal of corps positions as a way to bring people into a profession predates the federal Climate Corps.
Host organizations find that corps employees accomplish more than other service groups. An AmeriCorps-backed survey found that when conservation corps helped the United States Forest Service and state park agencies, the departments built out over 60% more trail mileage than expected and about 10% more than other volunteers or Scout troops contributed.
When asked to rank these partners, the Conservation Corps was at the top of the agencies’ lists. Corps members likely had some kind of relevant training already, for example, and were promising recruits, said Allie McCreary, an assistant professor of parks and recreation at Auburn University who helped run the questionnaire.
“They describe these programs as a pipeline of future employees for these agencies,” McCreary said.
Shukaitis in New Jersey found this was true at the end of last year, when several of her corps members decided to go into education based on their time in the schools. One even found a master’s program that was fully funded thanks to her AmeriCorps experience.
“The mentorship and the professional development piece is something that I personally take very seriously,” Shukaitis said. “I also see it as a path to creating the next generation of young professionals who are going to be in the sustainability field.”
