Disaster relief is often measured by what arrives: meals, water, blankets, medical supplies and equipment. But another test begins after the trucks unload and eventually leave.
Did responders deliver what the community actually needed? Did the operation strengthen local businesses or compete with them? Was useful equipment left behind, or did donated goods become part of an already overwhelming waste stream?
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies describes “green response” as integrating environmental considerations throughout preparedness, assessment, program design, delivery and evaluation. Its recommendations include reducing packaging, eliminating single-use plastics, buying lower-carbon materials and promoting local procurement.
Those practices matter because relief operations can generate their own environmental costs. A New Humanitarian investigation found that transportation, procurement, energy use, packaging and waste all contribute to the aid sector’s carbon footprint. Yet the full environmental impact remains difficult to calculate because humanitarian organizations have not historically used a single, sector-wide accounting method. For Amazon and World Central Kitchen, some of the most instructive lessons have come from smaller operational decisions: adding can openers to food donations, replacing bottled water with filters, hiring local restaurants, leaving water systems behind and knowing when free meals may begin to displace recovering businesses.
Together, those examples suggest a broader definition of sustainable relief. It means solving the immediate problem without creating another burden for the community that remains.
The “Second Disaster” Of Unwanted Aid
Emergency managers sometimes describe unsolicited donations as a “second disaster.” After a major event, clothing, food and other goods can arrive faster than local organizations can sort, store or distribute them.
Research published by the Natural Hazards Center found that donors may be motivated by generosity, a desire to feel directly connected to survivors or an opportunity to clear unwanted items from their homes. Whatever the intent, relief organizations must still transport, warehouse, inspect and dispose of goods that may not match local needs.
Abe Diaz, Amazon’s head of disaster relief, described the same operational problem in an interview about the company’s response model. “We deliver what is actually needed, not what we assume is needed,” Diaz said. “Our partners understand those needs best, so tell us the real problem you’re trying to solve, ideally before a disaster strikes, and we’ll work backwards from there to the best solution.” That discipline can reduce waste before it starts. The most sustainable shipment may be the one that is never sent.
It can also reduce pressure on communities already facing debris and damaged waste systems. As we learned from the wildfires in Hawaii, disaster debris can contain hazardous materials that complicate public health protection and delay long-term recovery. The United Nations Environment Programme warns that disaster waste can impede reconstruction, threaten public health, and cause additional environmental harm when disposal decisions are rushed. Planning for waste is therefore not only a cleanup function. It is part of disaster preparedness.
A Relief Catalog Written By Its Users
Kara Hurst, Amazon’s chief sustainability officer, said field feedback has changed what the company procures and how products are designed. “Every response to a disaster teaches us something,” Hurst said. “Our disaster relief catalog is a living document written by the people who use it.” Amazon began adding can openers to food donations after learning that displaced families often did not have them. The company added toolboxes for shelter managers because mobility devices and shower chairs arrived in flat boxes that required assembly.
It also changed products in response to waste. Food operations were generating plastic and foam, so Amazon shifted to compostable cutlery and clamshell meal containers. On islands where plastic bottles could not easily be recycled, it replaced some bottled-water donations with filtration systems.
The company also created Responder Ready Kits and Mission Support Kits after learning that first responders sometimes lacked soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste and other basic personal supplies during the first 24 hours of an operation. These adjustments are not dramatic technological breakthroughs. They are examples of design improving because someone observed how a product was used under difficult conditions.
Sustainability, in that context, includes usability. A low-carbon or recyclable product that cannot be assembled, opened, maintained or culturally accepted may still become waste.
Relief Should Not Crowd Out Recovery
World Central Kitchen also considers local economic recovery when deciding when and how to reduce operations.
Roth said the organization looks for signs that roads are clear, grocery stores and schools have reopened, children can again receive school meals and residents can reach local businesses. “If the restaurants are open, we don’t want to take away business from the local restaurant,” she said.
Instead of building a separate food operation, WCK may pay a restaurant to prepare meals, retain its workers, use local catering companies or equip community kitchens. In some places, it leaves equipment or water systems behind when they will help local businesses continue operating. “We don’t just cook one day and then disappear,” Roth said. This approach recognizes that an indefinite flow of free outside services can weaken the same local economy that recovery is supposed to restore. It also aligns with a broader principle that sustainable recovery works best when communities help define the solution and retain access to the economic and institutional resources created through the process.
Children Experience The Effects Long After The Emergency
Save the Children adds another dimension to sustainable disaster response: whether relief protects children’s long-term development as well as their immediate survival. The organization argues that children are often excluded from disaster planning, even though damaged schools, interrupted water and health services, displacement, and the loss of safe spaces can affect their education, protection, emotional well-being, and future resilience. It calls for anticipatory action, stronger local capacity, and disaster-risk planning that places children’s needs at the center rather than treating them as an extension of adult response systems.
That perspective is visible in Save the Children’s response with local partners following the recent earthquakes in Venezuela. The organization says its assistance includes safe water, food, health care, shelter, child protection, psychosocial support, family reunification, and safe spaces for children whose homes and schools have been damaged or disrupted.
The example reinforces a central point: sustainable relief must account for what people need to resume ordinary life. For children, that means more than receiving an emergency kit. It means restoring safety, education, family connections, health services, and places where recovery can begin.
What Remains After Response
A sustainable disaster operation does not always mean removing every asset. Nor does it always mean leaving equipment behind. World Central Kitchen may leave a water system, kitchen equipment or local operating capacity when those resources will continue serving the community. Amazon retrieves and refurbishes many of its portable technology systems so they can be updated and deployed again.
Both approaches can be forms of circularity. The relevant question is what creates the greatest continuing value with the least additional burden.
The same principle applies to data. Hurst said Amazon uses feedback from disaster partners to change future products and procurement decisions. “It’s not just: deploy a bunch of stuff,” she said during an interview at their Nashville hub. “We want to know what worked and what didn’t. Then we’ll rapidly change and adapt those kits and change how we deploy.”
The humanitarian sector still needs better ways to measure those results. Meals served, supplies delivered and systems deployed are useful outputs. They do not fully show whether local businesses survived, waste declined, community organizations gained capacity or residents had more control over recovery.
A more complete measure of sustainable relief would ask what remains after the visible response ends.
Are local kitchens functioning? Are restaurants employing workers? Can shelters use and maintain the equipment they received? Did the response reduce plastic and packaging waste? Did community leaders help determine what was needed? Did outside aid restore local capacity, or temporarily replace it?
Disaster response is not sustainable simply because a container is compostable or a generator runs on renewable energy. It is sustainable when it solves the actual problem, strengthens the systems already present and does not leave the community with another disaster after the trucks leave.
