When an abandoned train track was transformed into an elevated urban park space — the High Line — in New York City last year, I was impressed. But now, Lima, Peru, is giving New York a run for its money in the recycled park arena.

Spanish architecture firm Basurama has transformed the ruins of a half-finished electric train project that was abandoned in the 1980s into a pretty amazing space called the Ghost Train Park. Cutting right through the center of Lima, the amusement park is free for children and families and features colorful car tire swings, a canopy line and climbing structures, much of which is made from recycled and/or reclaimed materials. Basurama has completed similar projects in other Latin American cities, all focused on making us think about what we throw away.

I love the idea of reclaiming unused urban spaces for the benefit of city residents. Kids get a safe place to play, the city gets a facelift and, hopefully, others are inspired to reuse and recycle materials themselves. Just check out some of these great images of the Ghost Train Park. Has recycling ever looked so fun?

The Danish capital city is aiming to be the first carbon-neutral capital in the world. It could very well reach that goal.

Sounds cool, right? But, I wondered the whole time I was in Copenhagen, where were all the recycling bins? There were recycling bins in the Bella Center, where the COP15 conference was taking place, but in terms of the city streets and residential buildings, where were all the recycling bins? I wondered if recycling even happened in Copenhagen, so I looked into it and here’s what I found out.

As it turns out, Copenhagen has an aggressive climate action plan. The city plans to reduce its CO₂ emissions by 20% by the year 2015. It’s getting into geothermal power stations, increasing its wind power and using biomass (incinerating waste) to create heat. Sounds good.

I was couch surfing over there, as were thousands of others who were in Copenhagen for COP15. Hotels in Copenhagen were sold out months before the event, and in an incredible show of Danish hospitality, citizens across the city agreed to open their homes free of charge to couch surfers from all over the world.

The apartment where I was staying did not have recycling bins, nor did the residents sort their trash. My host, Alexander Norsk, explained that there was a private company contracted in Copenhagen that sorts all waste at its facility.

I asked some other people about their recycling experiences in Copenhagen. Caitlin Grey from Alameda, CA, said, “There was recycling in the Bella Center, Klimaforum (an alternate location with Internet access for people who did not have UNFCCC accreditation to enter the Bella Center) and my hostel, and I think the Fresh Air Center (another alternative location for citizen journalists and NGO activists). Not on the street though.”

Alex says he generally leaves his “empties” (empty cans and bottles) on the street near trashcans, where others pick them up and return them to supermarkets and collection facilities to reclaim deposit money charged for bottles and other recyclables.

Terje Raa writes in an article in Go World Travel Magazine that “collecting empties” is almost a sport in Copenhagen, with money to be made.

At Tivoli, the amusement park located in Copenhagen’s town square, they sell all beer and soft drinks in recyclable drinking cups with a deposit of about $1 per cup. The return rate on these cups has been shown to be about 80% and they score better in lifecycle analysis than disposables at a break-even cost to vendors.

I spoke with Anette Bjerge from The Danish Ministry of the Environment’s Information Centre, who says Copenhagen recycles more than 70% of its waste, “and more than 90% if you take the part that we put into our incineration facility and convert to local heating in households.”

Anette is talking about Copenhagen’s “Waste to Energy” plants that convert approximately 23% of all Copenhagen’s waste into usable heat. According to a document released by the Danish Ministry of the Environment called “Nature and Environment in Balance: Today and in the Future,” glass and cans constitute about 6% of all waste generated in Copenhagen and are widely returned for deposit money, about 23% gets incinerated and turned into heat for households and the bulk of all waste — 73% of all waste created in Copenhagen — is recycled and reused in the creation of other products.

The document can be viewed here.

In Copenhagen, the R98 company seems to have an exclusive lock on carrying out the municipality’s waste activities. It’s become big business for R98 to sort waste on site at its facility, because not only does a portion of the glass collected become money in its pockets, but also when it returns those bottles for deposit money, or “mortgage,” as Anette Bjerge calls it, it makes money from the processing of wastes.

I’m impressed with Copenhagen more and more as I learn about how much the city is doing with its waste management. It may just become the world’s first carbon-neutral capital city.

Tampa Bay may have contaminated water, but everyone everywhere should pursue safe water.

One of the main concerns of residents is the outcome of these various chemicals mixing together to form a new toxic recipe. Although the local government isn’t making any moves toward improvement, people are concerned about the possibly toxic water they’re bathing in, cooking with and drinking. With the skin being the largest organ in the human body, these small levels of chemicals are making their way into the body.

There currently aren’t any regulations on these chemicals found in the water supply, so the city isn’t required to report the findings to any governmental agency or the general public, according to The Tampa Tribune.

Dee Ann Miller, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection stated, “At this time, no research has shown that concentrations of these substances reported in recent studies pose a threat to drinking water supplies. Research is ongoing, especially on the effects of multiple chemical constituents at low concentrations.” Although Miller was attempting to calm fears and concerns, her statement actually is quite alarming.

So, the question that faces most of the country is what to do with the water. The safest solution for residents is to purchase a home water filtration system that uses reverse osmosis. Reverse osmosis removes everything from the water, including beneficial minerals, but those missed minerals can be accounted for by eating a well-balanced diet. Most cities facing a similar problem as that of Tampa are ignoring the issue because of the lack of regulation.

One of the most proactive ways to help alleviate this growing issue is to educate people how to prevent this from continuing to happen. According to Oregon State University, most of the contaminates found in drinking water are due to human activity. The overuse of pesticides, littering, urban runoff and leakage from landfills all contribute to water contamination.

Recycling and the proper disposal of waste are the most effective ways to prevent the contamination of public drinking water, claims Green Student U. The Green student organization says the best ways to recycle are:

• Reuse any items that you can
• Buy biodegradable products
• Store all liquid chemicals and waste in spill-proof containers
• Eat organic foods that are grown without pesticides
• Don’t use pesticides
• Use a drip tray to collect engine oil
• Buy products that have little packaging
• Don’t dump motor oil on the ground

The solution to this growing issue is to implement sustainable eco-friendly activities.

Be responsible if you ever have to use chemicals in your home or on your lawn. Dispose of the chemicals appropriately and see if there any agencies in your city that can recycle or reuse the chemical or oil you’re discarding.

Avoiding the use of all pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and chemical fertilizers is an excellent way to reverse the tide of toxic water. Using natural and organic approaches to lawn care and growing a garden will keep toxic chemicals from seeping into the city’s public water system. Avoid the use of traditional household cleaners that contain chemicals that end up down the drain. Use all-natural cleaners to promote a safe and healthy planet.

Each person taking personal responsibility is the way to not only improve water pollution, but also to improve all areas of the environment. Check with your local water facility and ask for a printout of the contaminates found in your drinking supply. Gather people with a like mind and contact your city and state government with your concerns in order to see a change for future generations.

There are a lot of reasons to enjoy riding the New York City subway system: It’s convenient, it’s inexpensive, you don’t have to deal with parking and some of the musicians are pretty awesome (especially the mariachi band that plays on the F train). And, there’s a whole subset of reasons that have to do with being environmentally friendly. Here are a few of them:

Taking mass transit reduces your carbon footprint. Because NYC subway trains run on electrified rails, they produce virtually no carbon dioxide (aside from their heating and cooling systems). According to the EPA, the average car produces about 12,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year — an amount that would be offset by 242 tropical trees. Also, starting in 2000, many NYC buses began running on alternative, cleaner-burning fuels, further helping to keep carbon dioxide emissions down.

The Stillwell Avenue-Coney Island station in Brooklyn utilizes solar power.

The subway system recycles. The system supports recycling efforts in several different ways. For one, it has recycled thousands of tons of construction waste that otherwise would have gone into a landfill. Additionally, the system collects and sorts recyclable materials from trash bins and designated recycling bins on the subway platforms. According to the NYC Transit website, in 2008, the system’s 468 subway stations yielded 8,444 tons of recyclables, or approximately 50% of all refuse removed from the system — one of the highest recycling rates for a transit system in the country. The system also recycles old train cars and equipment (in 2008, about 763 tons of recyclables were taken from train yards and other locations).

The system has a green-building program. A lot of New Yorkers may not even know this (I certainly didn’t), but the NYC transit system does a lot to reduce the environmental impact of construction and expansion projects. For instance, it utilizes construction materials made of recycled content, uses heat recovery units in many projects to reduce a building’s ventilation energy load and uses eco-friendly fuel cells whenever possible to generate electricity for powering motors, lights, buildings. One of the systems maintenance facilities in Queens is even LEED certified.

The system works to conserve water and electricity. This is another one I bet a lot of New Yorkers aren’t aware of: At least two stations in the subway system — the Stillwell Avenue-Coney Island station in Brooklyn and the Roosevelt Avenue-74th Street station in Queens — are partially powered by solar panels on the roofs. Another interesting fact is that the Grand Avenue bus depot and maintenance facility in Brooklyn has a bus-washing reclamation system with a 200,000-gallon underground tank that stores rainwater collected from the roof of the building. The system also purchases mostly Energy Star electrical equipment and uses florescent light bulbs in the subway tunnels, which burn for 7,500 to 10,000 hours, compared to 750 hours for incandescent bulbs.

All of that is pretty cool! Now I just have to try and remember these things when the G train is delayed and I’m standing on a crowded subway platform for 45 minutes.

The California Green Building Standards Code, unanimously approved on January 12, 2010, promises landmarks of less waste into landfills and smarter irrigation as building standards, according to the Business Standards Commission. In the near future, memories of construction that isn’t focused on conservation may be a thing of the past.

But, this is 2010, and LEED certification is king. This begs the question, do the most notable green building projects have what it takes to stay true to green code across the state of Caliornia?

After all, even building projects that thought they stood on good green footing may not anymore. Four huge changes include:

• Water consumption reduction of 20%
• Diverting 50% of construction waste from landfills
• Separating water meters for commercial buildings’ indoor and outdoor water use
• Moisture-sensitive irrigation systems for large landscape projects

Let’s see how one high-profile California building project measures up with the new standards in mind.

The 2008 Calabasas City Project

The city of Calabasas elected for higher green building standards.

This project gives hope for the new legislation; it happened two years ago, and included a whole city — two factors that make the changes in Calabasas, CA, groundbreaking, according to The Acorn. You know the saying: if one (whole city) can do it, anyone can.

Calabasas simply decided not to wait for the statewide ordinance to come into effect this year. With the same standards required now, the city voluntarily adopted the 2008 California Green Building Standards Code. With an emphasis on small changes for the entire town, builders of commercial and residential projects checked off some hefty requirements. With points attached to each improvement, the builders had to reach a total of 20. To give an idea as to how many alterations this requires for contractors, engineers and architects, the following improvements only add up to 16 points:

• Reducing water use for irrigation by 50% (6 points)
• Planting water-efficient landscaping (6 points)
• Using local materials (2 points)
• Handling construction waste properly (1 point)
• Using advanced framing techniques (1/2 point)
• Using Energy Star appliances (1/2 point)

With water conservation, energy efficiency and construction waste under a microscope, the city noted that the changes were worth it. One official even noted that these requirements were seen as “low-hanging fruit” that would instantly reward the city in savings and negative imprint.

But, this isn’t to say that there hasn’t been flack for the code’s shortcomings. Two-tiered labeling sytems mean that voluntary codes leave some standards open to interpretation by local officials. The worry is that these officials may not be as qualified to check standards as LEED or another third-party vendor, according to The Los Angeles Times.

As the story says, the nation (and the world) will be watching.

How heavy rain affects buildings (the real drama)

The next time a storm rolls into LA, will you be prepared?

The damages of any particular building follow the rules of real estate value: Location, location, location. Three hundred people evacuated in Los Angeles after 12 inches of rain caused mudslides, flooding and other panic, according to CNN. Flash flood warnings told many more to watch out. But, the real problem can come after the rain — mold is a huge threat, according to Ellis Environmental Management, Inc. Warning signs can come from the wall boards. Moisture wicks up wall boards a foot or two when it gets a chance to collect.

How water is reused: The payoff for the danger

Mold aside, when collected properly, rain is always welcome water. California offers a tax credit for harvested rainwater. By capturing rainwater from the roofs of buildings, massive amounts of water can be reserved to use for indoor needs and outdoor irrigation. The water savings can be up to several thousands of gallons, according to SustainableSources.com.

What you can do

You may have heard it before: Take shorter and more efficient showers, do not irrigate more than necessary and turn off the faucet.

Some simple steps that you may not have thought about taking:

1. Replace your showerhead: Cut your water usage down from 5 gallons per minute to 1.5 without feeling much of a difference by changing your old showerhead to a high-performance one. That is a water savings of 60%!
2. Water only when you need to: 40% of our freshwater in California goes to landscape irrigation. It is OK to get irritated with a neighbor’s flooded lawn, but it is wasteful (and an eyesore) to have one yourself.
3. Install more efficient faucets: 3-5 gallons of water per minute down the drain instantly turns into 1.5 — you do the math. If you can’t replace yours, add a pressure-reducing valve; it can reduce water use by one-third.

There are other benefits as well, including incentives from certain cities. The city of San Diego, for instance, offers a voucher program for low-flush toilets and high-efficiency washing machines. To check for rebates in Southern California, click here to save money for installing water-saving devices while funding is available.

Green communities currently cannot be defined by the government but are commonly certified through a state agency created to greenify the state and hold it to high standards. The EPA agrees, “a green community is, by definition and process, dynamic,” and therefore ever changing. As technology and research unveil new information, the standards and need for constant improvements are required.

To get a better understanding of these new green communities, let’s take a look at some green communities around the country. Who knows, maybe you live by one, or better yet, in one.

Stapleton, CO

Stapleton may look like a normal suburb, but it has a sustainable mindset.

Stapleton, CO, is a prime example of how history is made and driven by an unseen force. The Stapleton Foundation was organically developed to help with Denver’s airport expansion, but as the years went on, the foundation found itself calling the surrounding community to a higher standard of living.

The communities that are part of Stapleton, about 10 miles east of downtown Denver, are committed to “working to create an urban development that meets social needs, provides economic opportunity and preserves rather than degrades the natural environment.” The residents of these communities have agreed to follow the town’s Green Book that abides by five basic sustainable principles by partnering with Forest City and the Park Creek Metropolitan District.

Forest City enforces and sets standards for green building, affordable housing, energy conservation and water resource management. This agency oversees many of the recycling procedures of material and water in a sustainable way. They also ensure the houses are built within their guidelines. These guidelines are defined in the Green Book.

Park Creek Metropolitan District is the governing agency that creates, maintains and oversees the parks, wildlife and other outdoor activities around the community. The agency is named after the creek that runs along the community in efforts to preserve and live in harmony with the natural landscape and wildlife.

The Green Book governs the schools, the parks and the houses the people live in. The synergy created by living in this community is always growing, inviting its people to live a greener lifestyle.

This green neighborhood consists of five main communities that are striving to increase green awareness by the lifestyle they live. They have improved their public transportation system to minimize the amount of personal vehicles used. The schools promote recycling and bikes and walking as a means of transportation. To learn more about this green community go to Discover Stapleton.

Seabrook, WA

Seabrook, unlike Stapleton, was a master-planned community designed specifically with the purpose of creating what as been termed “New Urbanism.” New Urbanism, simply put, is the intentional pursuit of creating urban neighbors with the earth and nature in mind. The developers of Seabrook took an 83-acre piece of land and developed an exclusive green community where buying organic is more than a sales pitch and using your feet as a mode of transportation is more desirable than a car.

Seabrook, on the Pacific Coast of Washington about 2.5 hours from Seattle and three hours from Portland, is centered on maintaining and sustaining the natural habitat that was alive there before the development. All the animals and plant life have been preserved and still have a home among the new residents. The trees that had to be removed to build the development were milled locally and placed back into the community as mulch or other wood products. The community thrives off of local products, reducing greenhouse gases used to transport common products from around the world. All the landscaping uses organic practices to restrict weed growth and to maintain the fragile balance of nature. You won’t find synthetic fertilizers, pesticides or gas-powered lawn mowers in Seabrook. The entire community prospers on living in harmony with nature and using every opportunity to recycle even the uncommon things.

Seabrook uses green building practices to make an impact on the environment and the community. Seabrook states, “We use sustainable materials that maintain their strength and integrity. Our homes are outfitted with the most current and energy efficient appliances and construction techniques available. Our landscaping features native plants and much of our building makes use of local reclaimed cedar.”

Although residents are not required to recycle or conserve, it is an expectation for all residents of the community. Convictions to live green are what draw people to purchase at Seabrook, so recycling and reuse are part of the lifestyle and community culture.

People from near and far have moved their lives to join up with one of these communities. If you don’t feel like making the move the Colorado or Washington, take a moment and research sustainable communities in your area or contact local builders and voice your desire to see these types of communities built where you live. Green communities are on a rise, and you may be surprised how close and accessible one is to you.

Photo courtesy of Metropolis

One building that has caught my eye as I’ve walked around Brooklyn (where I live) is the Ice House, a 14,000-square-foot building that was built in 1880 as — you guessed it! — an ice house for the Nassau Brewery and converted into apartments in the early aughts. What struck me first about the building was that it’s gorgeous, with amazing original brick detail. But, then I started to hear about how the building had all these cool green features, and my interest piqued. Here are some more interesting facts about the building, courtesy of GreenHomeNYC and Metropolis:

• The building features high-performance windows, compact fluorescent lights and radiant floor heating.
• All the bathroom fixtures, with the exception of the toilets, were purchased from local architectural salvage stores. Eighteen original steel-frame windows have been reused throughout the building.
• All the appliances are Energy Star.
• Building materials included low-VOC paints and adhesives and salvaged wood from the building’s previous usage.
• The roof features not only solar panels, but also two extensive green areas that cut summer cooling bills by up to 30%.

So, as you can see, it’s super cool and super eco-friendly. What’s most impressive, actually, is that it shows that a building can be both aesthetically to-die-for and eco-friendly at the same time. It’s given me a lot of ideas for places I may inhabit in the future!

Synergy earned the maximum available points in five of the six areas assessed in the LEED-NC checklist: Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy & Atmosphere, Indoor Environmental Quality and Innovation & Design Process.

The residential facility earned seven out of 14 points in Materials & Resources. During the construction process, sorting bins were set up on site, which allowed the builders to divert more than 75% of construction waste from local landfills through reuse and recycling. This earned Synergy two of the seven points in Materials & Resources.

Synergy earned two more points in the Materials & Resources category for using products with recycled content, including the bedroom carpeting. Synergy’s green design was also recognized by the American Institute of Architects as one of the Top 10 Green Projects of 2009.

Synergy at Dockside Green. Photo courtesy of Perkins+Will.

In order to not only achieve Platinum-level certification, but also to set the record as the highest-scoring LEED-certified building, Synergy had to implement a variety of green design features. One example is the wood used in Synergy’s 95 residential suites. Dockside Green and Triton Logging joined forces to harvest the wood used on site from underwater. Triton Logging prides itself on recovering wood from underwater forests created by dams. These forests lie underneath reservoirs across the world and are generally an untapped resource.

Understanding that blue is the new green, Dockside Green also features an on-site sewage treatment process. The treatment process allows Dockside Green to treat 100% of the sewage on site, which could save up to 70 million gallons of water each year.

Of course, the design team behind Dockside Green also focused on energy efficiency. All of the buildings in the entire project, including Synergy, are at least 48% more efficient than the Canadian Model National Energy Code. This is achieved through the use of Energy Star appliances, motion-sensitive lighting and individual carbon footprint monitors in all the residential suites.

In addition to the green elements implemented during the design and construction process, there are also environmentally friendly community amenities. Residents of Synergy at Dockside Green can participate in a car-share program, take advantage of subsidized mass transit passes and utilize the bike and pedestrian paths that connect the community to downtown Victoria.

Synergy at Dockside Green offers a unique green-living opportunity to residents of Victoria. For more information about Synergy, contact the Dockside Green Presentation Centre at (877) 382-7278.

This farmers market in Pinecrest, FL, is an example of South Florida moving in the right direction. Photo courtesy of MangoAndLime.net.

1-800-RECYCLING: What prompted you to start Local Food Miami? When did you start it?
Yanez: Local Food Miami’s website started in March 2009. Back around that time, Will Allen (an urban agriculture leader) came to town and maybe 150 people showed up. Everyone was pretty much in awe that there were that many people interested in local food. Some of us met after that and kept meeting regularly. The challenge with South Florida is that the community is widespread and people don’t know what’s going on. Finding out what’s happening is a major feat here compared to urban areas that are more centralized. The need [in greater Miami] is so great, because so many communities are classified as Urban Food Deserts and with our year-round growing season, we have no excuse for not being able to feed all our residents with fresh, sustainably grown food.

1-800-RECYCLING: Was the community reaction to the site what you expected?
Yanez: Everybody who has come across it is really interested. People are literally hungry for more; everyone’s ready for locally grown food. The task will be growing food and marketing it. Everything’s still in its infancy, and people need help connecting and pulling their resources together.

1-800-RECYCLING: Local Food Miami has about 170 members as of this writing. Are there any plans to extend your network?
Yanez: It’s pretty basic — if you look at the Local Food Cleveland, there’s so much more that can be done, such as sharing produce, community gardens, etc. From there, we’ve started putting together a network of other people doing urban agriculture. A lot of our work involves trying to organize the local food system. There are farmers markets around town, but it’s hard to figure out who’s doing what. Farmers markets don’t always carry local food, and most of the time it’s not organic. There’s very little sustainably grown in Miami. A lot is grown throughout the state of Florida, but very little is making its way to urban areas. The infrastructure just isn’t there. It’s hard to sell my produce anywhere, even at some of the farm stands. We’re trying to make cooperatives where we can market it on a bigger scale and pull resources together. Most people growing sustainable and organic produce do so on a small scale — we’re trying to get the advantages of the big scale with the sustainability of the small scale.

1-800-RECYCLING: Do Local Food Miami members ever get together in person to discuss sustainability issues, or just to hang out with like-minded folks?
Yanez: Meetings and potlucks mostly organized by Urban Oasis Project/Growing Green Network have continued since the site started. While the site is great for organizing people, face to face is really most important. Members of Local Food Miami meet at different sites and different gardens and see what other people are doing.

1-800-RECYCLING: What do you hope to accomplish from your site? Do you have any goals for 2010?
Yanez: There are lots of goals for this year. One is to get a community food summit launched and get a larger conversation going — work up the site. We want to add a lot more important information on the site, including what’s available locally as far as buying produce, restaurants and other institutions that use local produce, etc. We hope to bring a lot more functionality and a lot more dialogue and hopefully have a big summit for local food this March. In the meantime, we’re busy going after funding and local opportunities to spread the word of our initiative.

1-800-RECYCLING: What can people do in urban areas to help the local food dialogue?
Yanez:

1. Request local, sustainably grown food wherever you buy food.
2. Join a local CSA or buying co-op that mainly purchases local, sustainably grown food.
3. Grow food at home, in a community garden, on a roof — any nook and cranny anywhere — and share if you have more than you can eat.
4. Get active, participate in initiatives such as ours and push local governments to make local food and food security a priority.
5. Tell everyone you know about the importance and benefits of local, sustainably grown food. It is better for you, your community, your ecosystems and your planet — guaranteed!

The next time Seattle sees snow, the city will be ready. Photo courtesy of The Seattle Times.

The Seattle Times ran an article about the city’s eco-friendly storm policies in December 2008. Many in the Northwest remember this as a two-week period in which Seattle was all but shut down. In 2008, the approach in the Emerald City was to avoid salting roads because of the negative environmental effects the chemical concoctions could have. According to many sources, including an MSNBC article, road salt “can be responsible for changes in water chemistry many miles downriver from a road crossing. ‘You can see the effects all the way down to the ocean,’” said Stephen Norton, a University of Maine professor. The article also mentions, “Excess salt changes stream chemistry, causing certain minerals to leech out of soils. At high concentrations, salt can increase the acidity of water, causing some of the same negative effects as acid rain.” Such environmentally altering consequences were the reasons behind the no-salting policy in Seattle, where aquatic species, particularly salmon, are treated with special attention. So, while the snow fell and piled up at a rate the city had never seen, the salmon were happy.

As an former Seattleite, I will be the first to back an eco-friendly venture or product, but when emergency services are halted or painfully delayed (literally) perhaps a rethinking of policy is a good idea. The Seattle Times article details the lengthy waits of Seattle citizens who suffered at the hands of Old Man Winter one year ago. An asthma attack left one woman immobile for hours on end. A 21-year-old woman did everything she could to postpone the birth of her daughter while in labor. Another little girl was “run over by a vehicle while sledding” and suffered life-threatening injuries. All of these cases were reported in that December snowstorm, and all of these people waited upwards of three or more hours to receive much-needed medical attention because of the fire, police and ambulance’s inability to navigate the icy streets in hilly Seattle. Additionally, and to a much less terrifying degree, the city buses aggravated many and became all but useless as they stalled and blocked traffic throughout the city.

Today, when the accidents have been dealt with and the emergencies have been solved, a new approach to adverse weather conditions has been implemented. In the words of the Transportation Department, in accordance with Seattle’s newly hired Director of the Street Maintenance Division, Monty Sedlak, “Salt first, ask questions later.” This winter, Seattle is prepared to cover roads with mixtures of brine, sodium chloride, salt and alkali “at a rate of 200 pounds per mile, if a snow or ice storm arrives.” This approach has one aim only: to get the roads clear so emergency vehicles can get to where they need to be. And, with a goal of reaching any emergency within two to four minutes, (according to Kenny Stuart, President of the Seattle Fire Fighters Union), the deicing of roads is paramount.

Whether a one-time thing or a routine event, this situational policy change in Seattle is representative of the spectrum between green practices and pragmatic standards within which we are all forced to live. Eco-friendly is a growing philosophy, and being “green” is a hot topic, but priorities are different for everyone. While such emergency circumstances are surely rare, a critical look is needed in green practices as much as in any other. Without such analysis it is nearly impossible to ensure a healthy, symbiotic relationship between humans and nature, which in the end are the overall goals of the green movement.

For eco-friendly deicing tips, see the 1-800-RECYCLING article “Deice the Earth-Friendly Way.”

Author Tony Robbins said it, and the state of California lives by it; along with 16 countries, the Golden State was deemed to be the largest solar market in the U.S. — giving it a big enough platform to stand on its own amongst entire countries on a report card.

Global Green USA released a 2009 solar report card, giving marks on the improvement (or lack thereof) of solar power — yet it was so similar to last year’s results that the grades for the U.S. and California (which is ranked separately from the rest of the country) stayed the same: C+ for the U.S. and a B- for California.

The grading was based on a first of its kind country-by-country evaluation measuring how much (and how well) solar energy is used, and the policies that back them up. The breakdown encourages growth more than the current state of solar energy, according to the site’s report card breakdown.

The ranking is based on a 100-point system that allocates a maximum of 30 points to the amount of solar installed so far, and the remaining 70 points to drivers of future growth (56 points for financial incentives, 12 points for regulatory incentives and two points for educational and advocacy efforts).

Now, with the grading breakdown, it isn’t hard to fathom putting California ahead of the United States in a huge green initiative, but 1-800-RECYCLING had to ask the experts: What puts California ahead of the rest when it is already a solar-powered force to be reckoned with?

Along with advanced programs, California is doing some amazing things to make solar roofing affordable, according to Ruben Aronin, Director of Communications for Global Green USA.

“Generally, California has offered a variety of important incentives to promote solar investments throughout the state,” Aronin said, “including the Million Solar Roofs initiative to create 1 million new homes with solar roofs.”

Citing reduced energy costs, it makes sense that California, along with Italy, experienced almost 400% annual growth in installed capacity this past year. There were, however, some surprising components of the report card’s findings. Of note: China (despite new programs), Canada and the United Kingdom all scored a D.

But, the purpose of the grade isn’t to point fingers. Instead, it is to raise awareness among policymakers, media and the public at large by grading the effectiveness of each country’s policies every year, according to Matt Petersen, President and CEO of Global Green USA.

“Solar is a key strategic investment that can help combat energy poverty to create economic growth and help fight climate change,” Petersen said. “We need governments to shift subsidies for oil, gas and coal toward solar and renewable technologies to create jobs, improve the lives of those in need and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The report card enables us to see which countries are doing exactly that and which countries still need to strengthen their solar programs.”

Creating economic growth and improving the lives of those in need are high on the Golden State’s list; California is also leading the way with some of the nation’s first net-zero-energy affordable housing developments. Funding isn’t a stopping point, even in a tough economy, according to Aronin, as Global Green USA was instrumental in making two economic roofing projects available in affordable housing developments at Los Vecinos and Solara possible.

Check out this video to see the making of affordable solar panels in the Los Vecinos and Solara projects.

For more about Global Green USA and the 2009 Global Solar Report Card, please see the Global Green USA site.

Curious about solar power? 1-800-RECYCLING has your solar conservation information.