Cox Conserves Heroes
Cox Conserves Heroes is part of Cox Enterprises’ national sustainability initiative, designed to recognize youth and adult volunteers, plus nonprofits, making a positive impact on our environment.
The Heroes are actively reducing or reusing carbon/energy and water, or are minimizing waste sent to landfills in line with our company’s own sustainability goals.
Nominations for your favorite environmental enthusiast will begin August 2025.
Our 2024 Cox Conserves Heroes
With nearly 6,000 votes, we’re excited to share our top three environmental enthusiasts, each earning $30,000 to continue growing the good in their communities. Congratulations to Tixie Fowler, Hunter Guthrie and Keep Oklahoma Beautiful.
Tixie Fowler
Tixie Fowler of Atlanta, Georgia, won the Groundbreaker Award for her work as an environmental educator and conservationist. The Georgia Chapter of the American Fisheries Society named Fowler “Conservationist of the Year” in 2023 for inspiring students, volunteers and federal agencies to unite in restoring the most heavily impacted tributary in Atlanta’s Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area.
Hunter Guthrie
Hunter Guthrie of Vienna, Virginia, was named the winner in the youth category and received the Planet Protector Award for his commitment to waste reduction. Once Guthrie learned that 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food waste, he was determined to take action in his own community — while also helping end hunger. At 16 years old, Guthrie has donated over 700,000 meals that would otherwise have ended up in landfills through a nonprofit he founded in 2022.
Keep Oklahoma Beautiful
Keep Oklahoma Beautiful was awarded the Jim Kennedy Conservation Award, named in honor of Cox Enterprises Chairman Emeritus and James M. Cox Foundation Chairman Jim Kennedy, an environmentalist who started Cox Conserves in 2007. This year alone, volunteers for Keep Oklahoma Beautiful have collected 3.4 million pounds of trash and cleaned up more than 1,200 miles of roads and 31,000 acres of public land, saving the state of Oklahoma $7.1 million in litter remediation costs.
Evelyn Schaefer, executive director of Keep Oklahoma Beautiful, accepted the award on behalf of her organization.
Cox’s Goals
Cox Conserves has been instrumental in driving meaningful progress toward environmental change. Our goal as a company is to continue to send zero waste to landfill and become carbon and water neutral by 2034.
We believe the path to reaching these goals begins with the simple philosophy that actions, not words, drive success. Our company’s platform, along with the generosity of the James M. Cox Foundation, allows us to support others in achieving these goals.
ACHIEVED
Criteria + Eligibility
We want to honor volunteers and nonprofits who are actively working to make progress in environmental sustainability while inspiring others to do the same.
To be eligible, nominees must be positively impacting the planet in all of the following areas:
Individuals of all ages are eligible to be nominated.* For the full list of requirements, please see our FAQ page.
*Nominees who are minors (under age 18) must have a parent or legal guardian’s (“parent”) permission in order to be nominated and parents will be required to sign a permission form.
What Your Nominee Could Win
Annually, the program awards a total of $150,000 from the James M. Cox Foundation to nine non-profits selected by the program’s winners. The program includes three first place grants, three second place grants, and three third place grants. The winner of the nonprofit category receives the Jim Kennedy Conservation Award in honor of Mr. Kennedy, chairman emeritus of Cox Enterprises, chairman of the James M. Cox Foundation, and an environmentalist who started the Cox Conserves sustainability program in 2007.
