Top 5 ECO Cities

Top 5 Eco Cities

By Pippa Sorley

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.

VAXJO, SWEDEN (EUROPE)
The Nordic countries of Europe continue to excel when it comes to environmental stewardship. Winner of the Sustainable Energy for Europe Campaign Award in 2007, Växjö , Sweden, is a stark example . The city made a pledge in 1996 to become fossil-fuel free. With the cooperation of the city’s administration, NGO’s, universities, and individuals, as well as the energy, housing, and transport sectors, Växjö is well on its way to meeting this goal. In 1980, at a time when environmental issues were barely a blip on the planetary radar, Vaxjo created an energy company that used biomass to produce heating and electricity. By 2006, the city had succeeded in reducing its CO2 emissions per capita by 30% since 1993. US citizens emit around 20 tonnes per year, the EU’s per capita emissions average 10 tonnes, and China’s roughly 5 tonnes. Today, the citizens of Växjö emit a mere 3 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, a level far below the global average. With such impressive numbers, Växjö produces a carbon footprint similar to that found in many developing countries, while still maintaining high living standards.

TORONTO, CANADA (NORTH AMERICA)
Toronto boasts a population of over 5 million, a number that represents almost one sixth of the whole population of Canada. By implementing programs to cut overall emissions from its own facilities by 42%, Toronto is recognized as one of the greenest cities in North America. It uses cold water from Lake Ontario to cool its buildings in summer, saving up to 90% on electricity compared to conventional air-conditioning systems. The city has also established the Toronto Atmospheric Fund which creates new programs to accelerate the incubation and scale-up of low carbon initiatives in Toronto.

For the rest of the list

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The United States really needs to get on the ball. There is no reason that we can not incorporate everything these cities are doing. I especially love the incentive of food and transportation in return for recyclables, what an amazing and creative solution! What do you do in your daily life to help change the world?

Solar Window Screens

CRL Charcoal Solar Screen - 24" x 100 ft roll

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Remember to take them out in the winter, so that you can benefit from the heat coming through the windows.

Please invest in some reusable grocery bags

A plastic shopping bag can take anywhere from 15 to 1000 years to decompose. In a compressed landfill, deprived of atmosphere to help them biodegrade, paper bags don't fare much better.

Plastic bags don't biodegrade, but are at risk for photo degradation, light exposure dissolving them into toxic polymer particles. Most often, when this happens, it happens in the ocean.

The cost to recycle plastic bags so outweighs their value that most recycling facilities will not take them, leading more and more to just be thrown out with the rest of the trash.

According to the Wall Street Journal, only 1% of plastic bags are recycled world-wide; the rest are left to live on indefinitely in landfills.

The United States alone uses approximately 100 billion new plastic bags per year - the average person goes through between 350 and 500.

20 More Facts located here: Click Here


Also remember to keep them in your vehicle so that you grab them on your way into the store.
My experience has been, that one reusable grocery bag can hold at least 6 plastic bags worth of groceries. Not to mention there is no fear of it busting all over the sidewalk.

Aquaduct

Obama says;

“Our dependence on foreign oil strains family budgets and it saps our economy. Oil money pays for the bombs going off from Baghdad to Beirut, and the bombast of dictators from Caracas to Tehran,” Obama said. “Our nation will not be secure unless we take that leverage away, and our planet will not be safe unless we move decisively toward a clean energy future.”

On the subject of toilet paper

It is ECO friendly to get the double rolls of toilet paper. Because you are buying twice as much toilet paper but producing half the cardboard inserts.

West Corinth Studio

Shop Name: West Corinth Studio

Name: Isaac Willis and Heidi Shaulis

Shop Link:http://westcorinthstudio.etsy.com

Location: Corinth, Vermont

Ships To: Everywhere

What materials do you use for your ECO friendly products?
I had my first horse,Pinnochio, for about 2 years before he passed away from Cushing's disease. My supply of horselogged lumber is perhaps my greenest, and most treasured stock. I salvage a great deal of high quality hardwood cutoffs from bins at a local furniture factory, Copeland Furniture. Most of my pieces contain a large proportion of this salvaged material, and WCS guitar bodies are made almost entirely of salvaged strips. I also buy wood from local sawyers, and I get some fantastic premium North American hardwoods from a specialty mill just over in New Hampshire, Kiln Works, LLC. So you can see there are varying degrees of eco-friendly wood, but all of my material is sustainable and low energy. The use of hand tools for joinery and decorative work also keeps things green.

Why did you decide to make ECO friendly products?
In truth, I have never made anything that wasn't eco friendly. Wood is expensive and I have always had to look to alternative sources for my material. No matter where I have lived in the U.S., there seems to be an incredible amount of wasted wood, free for the taking. Learning to use what is available has just become a habit at this point. Prior to Etsy, however, it was almost something that had to remain a secret. Selling to craft galleries, they don't really want to hear that your stuff is made of scrap. Now though, it seems people are starting to mind less, especially with the guitars, and noones even heard one played yet.
What inspires you?
Heidi and the boys. Keeping them happy and perhaps leaving a few trinkets behind that someone will treasure.

How long have you had your shop on Etsy?
Since March, 2008

Is this a job for you or a hobby?
Heidi and I hesitate to call it a job, as we think of that as something we'd have to go get if noone buys our stuff. We do what we do full time, though. In fact neither of us has ever worked more hours a day than we do now.
How did you get into your craft?
I first had access to a proper shop when I came to live with my Grandparents at age 16. My Grandpa worked for Greenfield Tap & Die and Millers Falls Tool Company in Mass, so he had one of everything. I spent hours at his lathe. Heidi's love of old houses rubbed off on me and we have always had a fixer upper. Carpentry led to cabinets and after a while I was making a living off my furniture and boxes. Of course, very early on I started framing Heidi's paintings. She was painting her cats when I met her in Atlanta. When my boys both took up the guitar I took one look at an acoustic and said "I can make one of those!" But, the electrics are where it's at for me now, more of an obsession than anything else, to build the rockingist axe but keep it really really green.

Do you have any advice for fellow Etsy shop owners?
Ditch the tropical hardwood. If you don't live smack dab in the middle of a rainforest you have no business making trinkets out of chunks of it. Do a google search and find out the truth about where your material is coming from. There is a reason most other western nations have banned the importation of this stuff. It's just like it was with ivory, only every mahogany guitar brings us closer to the brink.

Anything else you would like to add?
Etsy is incredible. Thanks to the folks in charge for giving us a place to show our work. Not having to worry about pleasing, and thus selling, specific gallery owners has really set our work free.

Letter

Dear Mrs. Waldron:

Thank you for your letter regarding actions that Congress should be taking to curtail global climate change. I share your concern for the health of our environment, especially the fragile balance of ecosystems that may be destroyed by the climatic changes that we are now experiencing. As Senator, I have pushed legislation that would address some of the causes of climate change, in particular by trying to reduce carbon emissions. In particular, I am a sponsor of S. 2191, the Lieberman-Warner bill called America’s Climate Security Act of 2007.

The Lieberman-Warner bill would set an economy-wide cap on carbon emissions and would allocate “credits” to various institutions to emit carbon. Although Lieberman-Warner is not as strong as I would like it to be, I believe that it is an important step in the right direction. I will be working with my colleagues in the Senate to make the bill stronger before it finally passes.

The recent passage in the Senate of H.R. 6, the Clean Energy Act of 2007, provided an important first step toward improving the ways our nation uses energy. This bill includes substantial increases in fuel economy standards for cars, including a 35mpg standard by 2020 and closing the SUV and flex-fuel-vehicle loopholes. The Senate’s success in this area will reduce our consumption of foreign oil by 10.7 billion gallons annually by 2020. I believe that H.R. 6 makes important steps towards curbing climate change. For the first time in decades, the Senate has produced a bill that does not give tax breaks to big oil, but instead gives incentives to companies to use renewable fuel sources, makes significant improvements in cars’ fuel economy, and requires improved energy efficiency in government actions.

However, there is still more to be done to reduce our consumption of petroleum and fossil fuels. In the current Congress, I have introduced two bills that seek to improve energy efficiency in practical, cost-effective ways. The first bill, S. 2078, would require states to make their building codes 30% more energy efficient. The Alliance to Save Energy estimates that if our nation were to meet these targets by 2030, the nation could save 5% of its total energy use, save consumers $50 billion a year, and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by an amount equivalent to that of taking 70 million cars off the road. The second, S. 2079 would require power utilities gradually to reduce their fuel consumption by improving their efficiency to reach a final target of 10% less fuel use by 2020. The technologies exist today to achieve the increases in efficiency that my bills demand – all we need do is create incentives for their implementation. With smart changes, like these improvements in efficiency, our nation can grow our economy while shrinking our dependence on petroleum, reducing fuel costs, and protecting the environment.

I also support several other bills aimed at helping to slow this crisis. I am a co-sponsor of S. 590, Securing America's Energy Independence Act of 2007, which would extend and improve tax credits for individuals and companies to invest in solar technology. I also co-sponsored the Clean Air Planning Act, S. 1177, a multi-pollutant bill that would require fossil-fuel-fired power plants to cut their emissions of four dangerous compounds, including carbon dioxide. This bill would halt the increase in CO2 emissions in 2012 and will implement a 57% cut from today’s levels by 2050. I was also an original co-sponsor of S. 339, the DRIVE Act, which will reduce our oil use through a range of actions – from improving fuel economies to encouraging development along existing transit corridors, rather than into new areas. That bill was passed by the Senate as part of the Clean Energy Act.

Climate change matters to all of us and we need smart, pragmatic policies now if we are to address this crisis. We cannot afford to delay action in the hope that a “silver bullet” will save us: there will be no perfect new technology to produce infinite energy, no special sponge to take carbon out of the air, no global air-conditioning system. It takes lots of smart changes in the ways that we make and use energy to fix this problem, and we need to approach this complex problem from every angle possible.

Again, thank you for taking the time to contact me on this import issue. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can ever be of assistance to you on this or any other matter.



Sincerely,

Charles E. Schumer
United States Senator

Kidney Stone Size 7

I wanted to let you all know that while I am around, I am down and out
for at least the next week on being useful for anything. I was in the
hospital today and apparently my body is passing a ginormous kidney
stone, one the doctors have not seen the likes of in a while, so they
are keeping me pretty drugged up. My husband has to take vacation
days to take care of the children and keep an eye on me.

Ill let you know when this passes
Thanks
Hyla

On a side note, gasoline has risen to $4.12 where I live :(