i s w

How green is the environment in social work? Christine Marlow and Colin Van Rooyen Worldwide there is increased concern with the welfare of the environment (Van Rooyen, 1999). Reports of toxic waste dumps, deforestation, acid rain and pesticides in our food are widespread in the media. Despite this global concern, social work as a profession remains largely isolated from this debate and distanced from envi-ronmental action efforts. Even though authors such as Germain and Gitterman (1980) define environment to include both the physical and social, there is a tendency to focus only on the social environment both in schools of social work and by practitioners in the field. Recently, however, social workers are being urged to consider environmental issues in their practice. Theoretical perspectives and value orientations for incorporating environmental issues and con-cerns within social work practice are currently being considered (Berger and Kelly, 1993; Hoff and Polack, 1993; Van Rooyen, 1995). Berger’s (1995) editorial in Social Work pointed to a wide-spread mental illness in US society of ‘habitat destruction syndrome ’ where there is continual damage to the environment, leading to self-destruction. He called for increased involvement and activism by social workers to address this ‘treatable illness’