This month's issue (February) of Popular Science listed America's Top 50 greenest cities. Each city was scored on different scales for emissions, recycling, water conservation, and how much the community cared about environmental issues. I quickly scanned the list looking for my city. Only to find that not only was my city missing from the list, but so was every other city in the state of Tennessee. Not one Tennessee city had made the list.
Now my hometown has always seemed to me, filled with environmentalists, and as labeled by older residents, hippies that smoke weed and have nothing else to worry about than where everyone else's trash goes. The city has free recycling centers for all its communities and I thought had a pretty good green plan.
But I thought again. Chattanooga Creek was so polluted during the 60's and 70's it was unsafe to even be around it and it emptied into the Tennessee River. A major cleanup project was taken on by the city years ago, but now after recent tests, results have shown the creek's pollution levels to be almost as bad as they were. With everyone else around us (Georgia and Alabama) is in quagmire to find water, Tennesseans, especially Chattanoogans, use as much water as our hearts desire. Of course, OUR river will never run out. Why should we ration our water usage? And on top of it all, TVA uses the dam to provide the valley with all its electrical needs.
And how many suburban families are really using those recycling centers? My own mother says, I dont' have room in the house for a tub to hold plastic and we don't use enough aluminum to take the time to recycle cans. If all my fellow Tennesseans fill the same as my mother, I guess I can look forward to never seeing one of our cities on that list.
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Well, there's always time to change that. Although it seems like it doesn't do much, writing to your congressman or getting a petition together might make some changes. Just writing about it and talking to people in your town might get more awareness of the problem. I'm sure the state of Tennessee isn't proud of the fact that they didn't make the list so maybe you can find some more people who want change as well.
However, as someone who lives in a state that doesn't seem to care much about the environment when it stands in the way of development, I can feel your frustration.
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You must be the change you wish to see in the world -- Mahatma Ghandi
Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress. --Mahatma Gandhi
My Blog: http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/kablock
Although cities can implement plans to reduce their ecological footprint, I really feel that the real impact that is made on our environment is determined by individuals. I have found a similar sentiment to that of your mother, regarding recycling at my university. I find it impossible to instigate change when individuals are not willing to make an individual effort.
However, some things that you may want to do in your individual home (I did these with my mom over the summer and we were both amazed at how much it lowered our electricity bill and the amount of waste we produced and such): In addition to recycling plastics and glass and such, many supermarkets collect plastic bag recycling. The wrappers you take off packages and most products can be recycled. At college I do not buy much, but I found it incredible just how much plastic bag waste I create from daily activity. Also, it is something small that you can do that won't take up much space, as with what your mother was concerned. Instead of using paper napkins at meals, replace them with cloth napkins. You can buy them relatively cheap on sale and you produce a lot less waste at meals. Also, COMPOST your food waste and replace your light bulbs with more energy efficient ones! They all seem like small things, but when you take a step back and look at what you have accomplished by making these small changes, you will be surprised by the progress you made as an individual.
Last year when I lived in the dorms at Oklahoma State it was pleasantly surprising that we had recycling bins on each floor of our dorms and we actually used them. We had more trouble getting the SGA reps who were to empty them every two weeks to do their part rather than using them. Our bins constantly overflowed. I was proud to live on our floor, except, they wouldn't except beer cans because of university policy. Which is understandable, but really, recycling the amount of beer cans a university can go through can put a huge dent in land fill waste.
haha... the one advantage about new york state and beer cans is the fact that fraternities will collect the empty beer cans after a party and then trade them in for cash to fund future events.
At my school however, we have recently been investigating where the recycling that we place in the bins goes. At my high school all the recycling bins would be thrown into the trash. Right now we are trying to ensure that the same thing does not happen at our university.