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The Safest Cities for Walking to Work
Tweet Share on Facebook November 13, 2009 CommentEarlier this week, my colleague Matt Bandyk listed the 15 best cities for people who crave shorter commutes and less time in the car. And while, to most people, that means hopping on a train, bike, or bus, Matt was good enough to highlight arguably the most difficult of those options: walking. In many of the communities highlighted, residents get themselves to work in less than 20 minutes via the lowest-impact method of all: their own two feet. But they are a rarity. Our communities have been designed for cars, not pedestrians, so in many places, it's all but impossible to walk safely to work.
Transportation for America has issued a report on the safety and walkability of America's biggest cities, and some of their findings are cringe-worthy. In the past 15 years, more than 76,000 American pedestrians have been struck and killed on our roadways. Children, the elderly, and minorities are disproportionately affected. Transportation for America has developed a Pedestrian Danger Index that accounts for the pedestrian fatality rate of a metropolitan area weighted by the amount of residents who walk to work, since cities wth more pedestrians are likely to have higher fatality rates. The more pedestrian commuters in a city, the safer is it likely to be for them. Therefore, the cities with the fewest pedestrians and the highest fatality rates are considered the most deadly for these commuters. -
Sharing is Green (And Good for Your Wallet)
Tweet Share on Facebook November 10, 2009 Comment (15)It's one of the first things you're taught in preschool: Sharing is caring. Be nice. A recent crop of sharing websites has proven that sharing is nice for the planet, too—not to mention our wallets. Think about it: Each website that hooks you up with a loaner dress, car, or tool will save you cash, eliminate needless purchases, and reduce waste. Check out these sites that help facilitate sharing.
Transportation: Zipcar is old news. For urbanites in Washington, D.C. (and soon, Boston), bike sharing is the new way residents are getting from point A to point B cheaply and healthily. Like car sharing, anyone can pay for a membership and can pick up bikes at depots scattered throughout a city—Washington's year-old system has more than 10 ports. Bike sharing is picking up speed: D.C.'s program is receiving extra funding for more stations and bikes, and unlike European bike-shares, the system has had few incidents of theft or vandalism.Office space: Small business owners or solo entrepreneurs need not toil away in solitude from a home office. The practice of coworking allows individuals and small businesses to share office space, and with it, resources like copiers and printers. Many who cowork love the collaborative aspect of it—sharing space, and also ideas. EcoSalon recommends this site as a resource for finding a coworking space near you.
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The Green War on Pets
Tweet Share on Facebook November 5, 2009 Comment (10)People who care about the environment are often people who also care about animals—the kind of folks who take in stray cats and adopt shelter dogs, driving them home in a Prius. But over the past month, the tide of green opinions seems to have turned against those sweet-faced puppies and kittens, which some environmentalists view as a waste of precious resources. Instead of having a pet, you may as well get an SUV.
Much of the impetus for this anti-pet sentiment comes from Robert and Brenda Vale, scientists and authors of “Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living.” In it, the Vales argue that cats and dogs consume resources, devastate wildlife populations, and contribute to pollution and the spread of disease. Thanks to their calculations, we get this graphic from New Scientist, which displays the footprints (pawprints?) of hamsters, cats, large and medium-sized dogs, a Toyota Land Cruiser, and a Volkswagen Golf. As you can imagine, you're better off seeking companionship with rodents, based on the amount of resources they consume. Cats are second best, but owning either of the vehicles is better than having a dog—mostly for the amount of meat they consume. Also unnerving is this chart from Wired, which displays the amount of land required to produce food for all of the pets in America, versus land needed for enough solar panels to power the whole country. Turns out, feeding Fido takes up 17 times more land than meeting our entire electricity demand. -
Michael Pollan's Prius-Hummer Blunder
Tweet Share on Facebook October 29, 2009 Comment (7)What a soundbite it was, for all of two days: Michael Pollan, sustainable food guru and author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," told the crowd at the 2009 Poptech conference, "Our meat eating is one of the most important contributors we make to climate change. A vegan in a Hummer has a lighter carbon footprint than a beef eater in a Prius.”
That line was blogged and tweeted countless times over the next few days. The only problem? It isn't true.
Reuters' Adam Pacisk refuted the claim shortly after, and here's his math: -
22 Tips for Minimizing Trash
Tweet Share on Facebook October 21, 2009 Comment (8)It's been said before that the most important of the three R's—reduce, reuse, and recycle—is the first. The best way to keep garbage out of landfills is not to make so much of it in the first place. It's a notion that's starting to take hold across America, where some communities and restaurants are going waste-free. According to the New York Times, the community of Nantucket has a stringent recycling and trash sorting program that has caused the percentage of residents' trash that is landfill-bound to drop to 8 percent, compared with 66 percent for the rest of Massachusetts. Their mentality is similar to that of many Europeans, who generate far less waste than Americans: After all, if your trash was only picked up a few times a month, you wouldn't want to make much of it either. Restaurants and corporations are getting in on the act, too, by composting their food waste, and Honda has jettisoned their dumpsters at eight plants—recycling has eliminated the need.
The Times' waste-free story was fortuitously timed to coincide with the first No Impact Week. You'll recall Colin Beavan, the New Yorker who tried to live with the smallest possible impact on the planet for a year, taking his wife and daughter down the rabbit hole with him, and emerging with a book deal. Beavan found that a waste-free lifestyle with a tinier footprint actually made him a happier person. He thinks it could make you happier, too. So with his non-profit, the No Impact Project, Beavan has designed a one-week program that encourages anyone to replicate his feat (or stunt), and decide how they feel: inconvenienced? satisfied? restricted? relaxed? Each day has a different focus, from food to transportation to energy. And this week—the Inaugural No Impact Week—Monday's focus was on eliminating trash. Another blog, EcoSalon, has accounced the beginning of "Trashless Tuesday" to encourage waste-free living at least one day a week (The day is a companion to "Meatless Monday," an initiative that goes back to World War I).
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Bisphenol A: Another Reason You Don't Need Your Receipt
Tweet Share on Facebook October 8, 2009 Comment (18)It's been found in baby bottles, water bottles, and cans, but here's a new item to avoid that contains the estrogen-mimicking chemical Bisphenol A: paper receipts. Science News reports that John C. Warner of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry has found that both carbonless copy papers and the thermal imaging papers that form most receipts today are coated in a powdery layer of the chemical. He believes that our exposure to BPA through receipts is many times greater than through bottles or cans.
So why should you be concerned about BPA? Recent studies of the chemical have found that, when ingested, it is linked to diabetes, heart disease, liver toxicity, and birth defects. Warner told Science News that BPA found on receipts is dusted off on the fingers, where it either makes its way to food, or is absorbed through the skin.
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For Quick Cash, Drop Your Gadgets at an EcoATM
Tweet Share on Facebook October 6, 2009 Comment (1)If dropping off old cellphones and iPods were as easy as taking cash out of an ATM, recycling rates for these devices wouldn't be so absymal. Enter EcoATM, a machine that will buy your old gadgets for you, instantly determine their worth, and spit out cash or coupons for your effort. The very first EcoATM has been installed in Nebraska, but a larger rollout is slated for Texas, Washington state, Vermont, and San Diego this year.
Before EcoATM, the process of recycling gadgets responsibly could be time-consuming—and inertia kept many from giving up their old technology. The average household has five unused gadgets lying around. And if their owners were too busy to mail them in to a service like Gazelle or BuyMyTronics, they would be forgotten in a drawer, or simply be thrown away. But when high-tech toys make it into a landfill, they can leach hazardous chemicals into the ground and water—so that's why recyling these items is worth the extra effort. The extra spending money it will put in your pocket certainly won't hurt.
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The G-20: 5 Green Things You Should Know About Pittsburgh
Tweet Share on Facebook September 24, 2009 Comment (7)There were chuckles when Pittsburgh was announced as the site of the G-20, but no one's laughing anymore: It's been made quite clear that, though Pittsburgh is no London or Beijing, it was selected as a symbol of the American ability to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Obama has a crush on Pittsburgh because the city is a symbol of recovery, and of how a green economy can be a force of revitalization. (Full disclosure: I was born and raised there.) So why is Pittsburgh deserving of its host status? Here are some of the ways that the city is green.
1. It's not the smoggy steel town it once was. Though the steel mills that inspired the name of the city's championship football team remain an important part of its history, their decline made Pittsburgh a cleaner place to live. These days, employment in Pittsburgh is dominated by healthcare and education. Those smog and smoke-spewing factories downtown have been turned into condos and lofts with waterfront views of three clean rivers. -
Say 'Yes' to the SurvivaBall
Tweet Share on Facebook September 23, 2009 Comment (4)When the planet heats up, it will be time to slip into something more comfortable—like the SurvivaBall. A self-heating, self-cooling and self-powered pod, the SurvivaBall is designed by top scientists to weather all of the effects of climate change to keep its user alive through catastrophe. Even though it makes its occupant resemble a giant tick, it's also luxurious—"Like a gated community for one," claims the SurvivaBall's site. And only for the low price of $100 million! The folks at Halliburton love them.
But even if the cost wasn't prohibitive, you won't be seeing the SurvivaBall for sale any time soon. That's because the global warming protection device is just a twinkle in the eyes of the culture-jamming pranksters the Yes Men. An environmental and corporate ethics activism group, the Yes Men have had an active week. First, they distributed a million spoof copies of the New York Post with a climate-themed bent in time for the U.N. meeting—and even though the paper was fake, the group insists that all of the details within are fact-checked and accurate. Then, when Yes Men were demonstrating a model of the SurvivaBall in New York, leader Andy Bichlbaum was arrested for an old parking ticket charge when police were giving summons to other demonstrators for disorderly conduct.
Check out a video below. There's more at SurvivaBall's YouTube Channel—the device's defensive capabilities are particularly impressive.
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Check Out These Green Genius Grant Recipients
Tweet Share on Facebook September 22, 2009 Comment (2)Every year, the "Genius Grant" recipients of the MacArthur Fellowship span the disciplines, including scientists, poets, painters, historians, physicians, mathematicians and activists, among others. Of this year's varied group (the full list can be found here) several of the winners of the 500,000 grant, which honors individuals that have demonstrated exceptional creativity in their work, will be putting that money towards good environmental use. Check out this year's green geniuses:
Peter Huybers, Climate Scientist, Harvard University
Why he's a genius: Huybers has taken on a daunting task—his work attempts to explain global climate change throughout time, beginning with the Pleistocene era. Huybers has studied the cycle of glaciation, including its relationship to volcanic activity. He's also studied the skewing of seasons.The season skewing means that the hottest and coldest days of the year come about two days sooner than they did 50 years ago, according to a study published in the Jan. 22 edition of the journal Nature. The study also found that the difference between average winter and summer temperatures shrank in the same 50-year span, indicating winters are heating up faster than summers. The change coincides with the rise in global temperatures, which could suggest a link to human-induced global warming.
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