SustainLane's top 50 sustainable cities

New York is #5!! Being sustainable essentially means how clean and efficient your city is in all aspects, whether it be energy, air, economy (the irony), etc.

Here is the list (2006 Rankings in Parentheses):

1) Portland (1)
2) San Francisco (2)
3) Seattle (3)
4) Chicago (4)
5) New York (6)
6) Boston (7)
7) Minneapolis (10)
8) Philadelphia (8)
9) Oakland (5)
10) Baltimore (11)
11) Denver (9)
12) Milwaukee (16)
13) Austin (14)
14) Sacramento (13)
15) Washington (12)
16) Cleveland (28)
17) Honolulu (15)
18) Albuquerque (19)
19) Atlanta (38)
20) Kansas City (18)
21) San Jose (23)
22) Tucson (20)
23) Jacksonville (36)
24) Dallas (24)
25) Omaha (37)
26) San Diego (17)
27) New Orleans (32)
28) Los Angeles (25)
29) Louisville (35)
30) Columbus (50)
31) Detroit (43)
32) Phoenix (22)
33) San Antonio (21)
34) Miami (29)
35) Charlotte (34)
36) Houston (39)
37) Fresno (37)
38) El Paso (31)
39) Fort Worth (46)
40) Nashville (42)
41) Arlington (41)
42) Long Beach (30)
43) Colorado Springs (26)
44) Indianapolis (45)
45) Virginia Beach (48)
46) Memphis (43)
47) Las Vegas (27)
48) Tulsa (40)
49) Oklahoma City (49)
50) Mesa (47)

If you give up, they give up.

A friend sent this PSA to me about global warming; it was made for a Portuguese organization, Quercus, by McCann Erickson. If this video does not touch you in anyway, you have no soul.

http://www.fubiz.net/blog/index.php?2008/09/18/2229-global-warming-quercus

The Return

Just want to apologize to all three of our devoted readers for not blogging, it's been a busy summer. I will leave you all with this, Green is not simply a new form of generating electric power. It is a new form of generating national power. It is not just about lighting up our house; it is about lighting up our future.

The Dangers of plastic bags

My co-worker's mother sent this slideshow to him and passed it along to me.

The Dangers of Plastic Bags.

The Boy who saved the planet.

Taken from The Week Magazine:

"A Canadian teen may have just solved the world's plastic problem. Every year, we throw away 500 billion plastic bags, and those that wind up in landfills won't degrade for 1,000 years. But high school junior Daniel Burd has figured out a way to destroy a plastic bag in record time. For a school science fair, Burd combined yeast, water, and bacteria-laden landfill dirt with pieces of a torn-up plastic bag, and let this soup sit for a few months. He then examined the decomposing plastic, isolating two strains of bacteria that were actually digesting the bags. After the six weeks, Burd found, these strains (Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas) could reduce the weight of a piece of plastic by more than 30 percent. If he could mass-produce these two strains in an industrial plant, Burd suggests that entire plastic bags could be decomposed in about three months' time. "This is a huge, huge step forward," Bard told his local paper, the Waterloo, Ontario, Record. "We're using nature to solve a man-made problem."

I remember when I was in high school, my projects consisted of replicas relating to the solar system.

The Bag

Sunday is the day that I do my grocery shopping and of course right by my side are my reusable cotton bags, at first I would always forget to bring them so I would have to run home and get them. But it has been a habit for me to grab them before I leave, anyway so one of the moments I enjoy is the look on the cashier's face when I tell them that I brought my own bags.

*Cashier swipes my groceries and starts bagging*

BT: No it's okay, I brought my own bags.

*Cashier stops bagging, stares at me with a confused look*

*BT whips out his reusable cotton bags, BAM!*

*Cashier stares with a look of disbelief*

*BT starts bagging his own groceries*

*Cashier stands there with no sense of direction*

Cashier: Um...cash or credit?

BT: Credit. Thanks.

*BT walks out*

The TP

One change in my life that I made by going green is the use of environment friendly toilet paper. The decision to change from soft 3-ply to this 2-ply was a difficult one to make but nonetheless my conscience can rest at ease and at the end of the day, that is what's most important.

Where Recycled Materials Go...

• Recycled glass bottles can be made into roads, tiles, even surfboards.
• Recycled plastic bottles can be made into rugs, jackets, fences.
• Recycled cans can be made into airplanes, appliances, furniture and more.

Another person's trash is another person's treasure...

Before you throw things out, find your nearest resale shop or Goodwill store and drop your items off. If you do not know where to find a resale shop or Goodwill, email us and we will find it for you.