POLICY POST: Reduce your Trash or pay higher for waste collection (and other good things in a city near you)

Change is coming to a city near you!

I wrote about how Seattle is becoming a Carbon-Neutral City (at http://tinyurl.com/2fbu9fk )

Now Sanford, Maine is going to charge you by the weight/volume for the trash you generate. http://tinyurl.com/25br8d4

But wait there's more that other cities are doing. Check out this comprehensive list of Clean-Green initiatives in major US cities.:

http://ecolocalizer.com/2010/08/17/2010-smarter-cities-for-energy/

The point is simple - If you are not going to change your consumer behavior, its going to get harder when regulation comes knocking on the door. But luckily there is tons of help. http://www.zerowasteamerica.org/ will give you lots of ideas on how to reduce your waste.

If you are planning to build your own home, I would seriously recommend building your own waste-digester that will provide you biogas methane to power your own home. See this video which tells you have to do it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2SMQGUuY3g

BIG PICTURE: "Greenest Campuses" Surveys - New financial realities encourage saving money by adopting environmentally friendly innovations

If you or someone you know is going (back) to School, it would be worth considering the schools sustainability practices. Why? Because in the long run, the greenest campuses will be the most profitable and the others will incur greater costs. For example its important to know if your campuse will be able to survive the next unexpected flood, or the next earthquake or the next hurricane, or the next drought or the next epidemic. Those are all likely scenarios as the earth's climate changes. If a campus is already geared up to say get electricity from onsite solar generators or draws from a grid that uses renewable energy, there is less risk of an extended outage when oil based energy sources go down!

There are several noteworthy surveys of the greenest campuses out there. I will be adding and updating the list below as I find new stuff. So consider subscribing/following this blog/blog post to stay up to date when the content changes.

- http://greenreportcard.org/media - Covers 332 colleges in US and Canada and offers universal access to 1,100 survey responses! The Survey includes 48 indicators in the following 9 categories: Administration, Climate Change & Energy, Food & Recycling, Green Building, Transportation, Student Involvement, Endowment Transparency, Shareholder Engagement and Investment Priorities.