Top 5 Eco Cities In The US
By Pippa Sorley
Filed Under The Big Picture | 22 Comments
The United States was recently rated as the 39th greenest country in the world according to a recent Yale study titled the Environmental Performance Index, an embarrassing score that paled in comparison to other countries including Costa Rica (5th), Columbia (9th) and Slovenia (15th). The U.S. has a long way to go in achieving environmental and social sustainability and it is important to recognize the importance of the role cities play in that equation. As more and more people migrate from rural to metro areas, it is essential that cities develop innovative plans to accommodate the influx, while also diminishing the damaging effects of population overload. With the federal government of the US refusing to participate in the Kyoto Protocol and surrendering leadership on so many environmental issues, American municipal governments are taking climate change into their own hands. Since 2006, more than 230 Mayors have signed the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, which fosters the goals of the Kyoto Protocol.
Continue reading Top 5 Eco Cities In The US…
Posted on July 10, 2008 |
Top 5 Easiest Ways To Save The Planet
By Jenn Breckenridge
Filed Under Green Living | 3 Comments
1 CARPOOL by Wolf
Sharing a trip with one other person immediately cuts the emissions in half by taking a car off the road. On average a carpool saves 527.8 gallons of gasoline and 4.536 tons of CO2 each year. The average family purchases 1,143 gallons of gas per year.
2 EAT LESS MEAT by DAVEC
Raising meat for food (livestock) is an environmental disaster, contributing more to global warming than transportation, using up 30% of the Earth’s land (yes, that’s right, 30% of the entire land mass of the Earth is used directly or indirectly in livestock production), contributing to significant water pollution, using up tons of energy and water for raising and transporting livestock, etc. For example, it takes 2500 gallons of water to produce 1 lb of meat. The average American eats 185 lbs of meat per year, meaning 462,500 gallons of water can be saved by moving to a vegetarian diet!
3 TUNE YOUR CAR REGULARLY by Argam
Keep your engine tuned properly. Checking spark plugs, oxygen sensors, air filters, hoses and belts are a few examples of maintenance that can save a vehicle owner up to 165 gallons of gas per year, resulting in potential savings of over $600.
4 ELIMINATE JUNK MAIL by karlbach
- Junk mail destroys 100 million trees a year — the equivalent of deforesting all of Rocky Mountain National Park every four months.
- Largely due to deforestation, junk mail manufacturing creates as much greenhouse gas emissions annually as 3.7 million cars.
- Every year, Americans receive 848 pieces of junk mail per household — 44% of which ends up unopened in a landfill
Also, more than half of unsolicited mail is discarded unread or unopened; the response rate is less than 2%. And junk mail creates 4 million tons of unnecessary waste per year! Calculating the weight of the junk mail trash from EPA data, it works out to 13.4% of 1276 lbs per household! So that’s 170 pounds of trash per household per year.
5 DON’T WATER YOUR LAWN EVERY DAY by Ghengis
The amount of water used by a sprinkler in one hour is equal to the daily water needs of a family of four! The average sprinkler will use in excess of 240 gallons of water per hour. If the average person sprinkles every day for a half hour and reduced that to once a week, one could save 37,560 gallons a year!! This is huge!
These Top 5 Creative Solutions were chosen by the folks at CreativeCitizen.com, the freshly launched collaborative website for community-proposed eco tips.
Posted on June 12, 2008 |
Top 5 Eco Cities
By Pippa Sorley
Filed Under The Big Picture | 18 Comments
Every year urban sprawl spreads upon farmland, forests, and shorelines. Rural areas are rapidly losing ground to their rival cities. Hundreds of thousands of people flock each year to their nearest city in search of sustainable employment. Farmers are losing their farms, ranchers are losing their pastures, and fishermen their livelihoods. Some say it is unavoidable-with population growth comes development. And with development, comes a loss of nature. So, in light of this inevitability, we face a predicament. If cities generate the greatest pollution across continents, which ones are taking the lead in their fight against climate change? eCo Times searched for the greenest cities, attempting to find one on each continent. We picked out our Top 5 and a couple of runners up which seemed to deserve it. Each of these cities have gone above and beyond standard operating practices to implement policies and incentives to create a truly sustainable urban environment.
CURITIBA, BRAZIL (SOUTH AMERICA)
With a population of 1.6 million, Curitiba represents a model sustainable city. Faced with a fast-rising population, worsening air pollution and imminent gridlock, this city turned its center into a pedestrian-only zone and transformed several key highways into roadways reserved solely for mass transit. By planting millions of trees, the city created “green moats” to buffer against the harmful effects of polluting industry. Perhaps Curitaba’s most famous greening story is that of its innovative recycling program. The Mayor created a social and environmental revolution by offering groceries and bus passes to the city’s poor in return for bags of recyclables. The result? Two-thirds of Curitiba’s garbage is recycled. Continue reading Top 5 Eco Cities…
Posted on May 29, 2008 |
Top 5 Most Eco Countries
By Pippa Sorley
Filed Under The Big Picture | 27 Comments
Measuring the “eco-ness” of a country immediately begs the question- what exactly is being measured? Is it the country’s cultural and social contributions, or merely the percentage of GNP devoted to renewable and environmental technologies? Do the metrics take into account the losses of warfare or the abundance of natural resources?
Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, in conjunction with Columbia University, recently released its first official Environmental Performance Index. The EPI is a ranking of almost every nation’s commitment to with a range of metrics for everything from greenhouse gas emissions to water purity and conservation practices.
It is not surprising that the wealthy Scandinavian countries dominate the top five, while the poorest African nations fell into the bottom five. You may think all developing nations would be so focused on daily subsistence over global environmental standards, that they wouldn’t score well on the Environmental Performance Index. However, several developing countries proved that money isn’t everything. Columbia, with a per capita GDP of $6886, came in at number 9, well ahead of France and Japan. And Costa Rica, far from being wealthy, scored number 5 due to its commitment to wildlife conservation and environmental practices. The United States embarrassingly came in at number 39, well below large nations like Canada and Russia, and small ones like Latvia, Panama and the Dominican Republic.
Let’s take a look at how the Eco Top 5 are making it happen… Continue reading Top 5 Most Eco Countries…
Posted on May 1, 2008 |
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