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.

Toothbrushes: More Uses Than Just For Teeth!

Toothbrushes are great at cleaning those hard to get places in car rims, bathroom tiles, around the faucets and all other tiny crevices and corners.

Recycling Initiative...

The commercial building which I work in does not have a recycling program for plastic bottles, but it does so for paper. It doesn't make any sense to me but its probably something bureaucratic. Anyway, my co-worker (GY) and I are going to launch an initiative to install a recycling program for plastic bottles. I'm positive we would be able to generate some momentum with this, the majority of co-workers in my company are conscious about plastic consumption. In the meantime GY and I are storing all the plastic bottles we have used in hopes of finding a person collecting bottles so we can give it to them to recycle.

Edit #1: Listed below are the recycled materials in question:

Polar Bear Alert!

Polar Bears are on they way to extinction with in our children's life time if we do not act now. Go on line to www.givewwf.org and see how you can make a difference.

Images of a changing World!

This is the Aral sea over thirty years.

Another way to recyle...

When you're finished reading your magazines - instead of chucking it, share it! In our apartment building on the Upper West Side, we have a magazine share in the lobby. Share your magazines with coworkers or any other community office.

Bottled Water

Stop drinking bottled water. Todays filters do a great job at cleaning the water we use and are much less damaging to the environment. We at Good is Green have added some reasons to stop drinking bottled water.

* 60 Million plastic bottles a day are disposed of in America alone!
* Massive volumes of greenhouse gases are produced in the making of plastic bottles
* Fossil fuel emissions are produced from transporting millions of bottles everyday
* It requires 3 times as much water to make the bottles as it does to fill it.

To give or not to give..

So I have two cars, one of them is a 1993 Saturn SL2, which I am planning to hand it off to CN. Now you might say to yourself, that's pretty generous BT, I suppose it is but mind you that the insurance coverage is worth more than the car. I could have easily donated to a charity and redeem my free cruise & $25 tax deductible for my tax returns next year. But I did not know what their intentions were, it would probably be the same as me giving it to CN. But I ran into a moral issue, should I have had the car recycled for parts, potentially doing my part in helping the planet? Unfortunately no, instead, I am leaving it out on the road for it to contribute its harmful fumes to the environment.

It's only one car, what harm could it possibly do the environment? Well, one gallon of gasoline produces 19 pounds of carbon dioxide (one of the leading causes of global warming), the average car has a 13 gallon gas tank, 13 times 19 = 247 pounds of carbon dioxide per re-fill. Now lets say you've used up 800 gallons of gas a year, that equals to 10,400 pounds or 5.4 tons a year of pollution coming out of the car. Now take that amount and multiply that with the amount of cars in the U.S alone, which is roughly 200 million.

The decision has already been made, it's out of my hands now. It's up to the new owner to determine his carbon footprint.

RECYCLE!

In some communities the recycling programs are being discontinued due to low participation. We at Good is Green implore you to call your local leaders and start recycling - PLEASE.

Carpool!

Start carpooling. When you start to carpool, for either work, school or play and can eliminate at least 25 miles of driving a day you can reduce at least 6 tons of CO's from the being added to our atmosphere.

Weekend Fact!

Lighting an office overnight wastes enough energy to boil 1000 cups of tea. Think about it.