See What A Mess You're Living In

A commenter, Karen, (thanks!!) brought to my attention this website from Earth Day Network. It has a map with major cities of the US on it, and you click on whatever city to learn it's environmental scores. If you scrol down, it breaks down its averages into smaller numbers, based on things like public health, sprawl, air quality, etc. All in all, it's pretty interesting, and probably gives a great start to understanding the issues surrounding your hometown. I'm not exactly sure about the methodology or the exact science, but use it as a guideline and maybe you can start getting involved in efforts to fix the worst problems.

My original hometown of Philadelphia got a pretty bad rating.. including a 4.1 (1-5 with 5 being the worst) in air quality. We're a rather obese and asthmatic city. Whoops a daisy!


San Francisco has started an aggressive recycling program which is trying to reduce waste going to landfills to zero in the coming years (they already recycle 60% of their waste). They're also starting a local food system to encourage efficiency and community in food production. They got pretty decent scores..better than Philadelphia, anyway. Portland got even better scores, probably due to its incredible land planning.

No cities' without its projects. It's a really hard problem to tackle - how to not only reduce and cut pollution/emissions from cities, but clean former pollution as well.

Anyway, food for thought. Check out your city!