By Barbara KesslerGreen Right Now

Guess what city just mandated that businesses disclose their toxic chemicals, put a five cent price tag on plastic bags and set up a future ban on the sale of bottled water at city-owned centers as well as plastic take-out food containers?

Portland? San Francisco? They’ve taken some similar measures. But no, the latest municipality to get aggressive with consumer waste is Toronto, Canada’s largest and apparently greenest city.

This week the Toronto City Council set in motion a sweeping effort aimed at reducing the number of plastic disposables - grocery bags, water bottles and take-out cartons - that wind up in the local landfill.

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By Catherine Girardeau
Green Right Now

Despite the derailing economy, California voters got on board for reviving train service in their state November 4th by passing state proposition 1A — a $10 million bond to begin construction of a fully electric rail system running 220-mph trains between San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal and Union Station in Los Angeles.

The bond is a vote of confidence from the public and a down payment on the $40 billion-plus project that plans to run high-speed trains from Sacramento to San Diego. The plan’s boosters say it will create jobs, relieve air and highway congestion, and help the state meet its legislative mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

While detractors like the San Diego Union-Tribune’s editorial board said California’s budget woes make spending billions of dollars on a massive transportation project not only ill-advised, but “potentially the biggest boondoggle in California history”, proponents called the victory a landmark for high-speed rail nationwide.

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By Kelly Rondeau

Move over Seattle, Portland, and Austin and other green heavyweights — make room for some like-minded, newcomers.

Columbus, Ohio; New Orleans, La., Syracuse, N.Y., and Louisville, Kty., residents might not be wearing Birkenstocks and basking under solar tubes. But they are living in some of the growing number of mid-sized, Middle American cities that are making impressive green strides, changing their attitudes and getting smarter about eco-choices.

Syracuse, led by Mayor Matthew Driscoll, is becoming a greener “Emerald City” of New York with its sustainability website, partnerships with area universities and a solid number 17 placement for 2008 on Popular Science’s list of the 50 Greenest Cities in the U

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By Harriet Blake

By now, most people are familiar with the ubiquitous bright green (and blue and pink) totes that supermarkets are touting to replace hard-to-recycle plastic bags.
Many customers dutifully carry them to and from grocery shopping each week, often receiving 3 to 4 cents in return. But what about those folks who are less conscientious?

Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City has a solution: charge shoppers six cents for each plastic bag they use. The mayor’s proposal is a work in progress, but environmental groups are pleased.

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From the Environmental Protection Agency

The 2008 Green Power Leadership Awards were presented in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference, held October 26-29 in Denver, Colorado.

Partner of the Year

Bellingham, Washington, is a coastal community near the Canadian border, rated by several popular magazines as the best place to live in the United States. The community received EPA’s Partner of the Year Award in 2007 and continues to display national leadership in the purchase and support of green power.

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From the Environmental Protection Agency

The 2008 Green Power Leadership Awards were presented in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference, held October 26-29 in Denver, Colorado.

Green Power Purchasing Awards

City of Houston, Texas — The City of Houston’s comprehensive renewable energy plan calls for the purchase of fixed-price green power, which will help to offset the rising cost of conventional electricity. As part of this plan, the city has bought more than 350 million kilowatt-hours of wind-derived renewable energy certificates, enough to meet nearly 27 percent of its annual electricity needs, at a cost lower than traditional electricity. Houston’s purchase ranks among the largest in the Green Power Partnership, placing the city on both EPA’s National Top 50 and Top Local Government lists.

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By Barbara Kessler

Three in four Virginians believe that global warming has been occurred over the past four decades, according to an extensive survey of state opinions, released today by University of Virginia researchers.

A smaller percentage of the populace (39 percent) said that human activity “such as burning fossil fuels” is causing the phenomenon; 33 percent felt global warming was caused by a combination of human factors and natural trends; 20 percent attributed it to “natural patterns” and 8 percent reported they were “not sure” of the causes.

The survey of 660 Virginians, conducted by UV’s Miller Center of Public Affairs and released this week, was devised to better probe residents’ viewpoints on global warming, in light of the fact that states have “taken an unexpectedly central role” in forming climate change policy.

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By Barbara Kessler

Recycling. It works for campaign slogans. Now the government of Florida figures it can work for those accumulating campaign signs as well.

The state is encouraging local entities to come up with innovative plans in hopes of recycling 75% of the signs that line local lanes and thoroughfares in the run up to the election Nov. 4, according to the Environmental News Service.

By encouraging candidates and citizens to recycle the signs instead of trashing them, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection will be working toward its mandate to reduce waste heading for landfills by 75 percent by 2020.

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By Julie Bonnin

Attention all recycling innovators: they city of Houston has launched a nationwide contest designed to create new markets for recycled tree limbs and make use of the mountains of woody vegetation left in Hurricane Ike’s wake.

With enough tree trunks, branches and other tree remnants to fill Houston’s Astrodome nearly four times, the debris- 5.6 million cubic yards — far surpasses what can be used locally for mulch.

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By Harriet Blake

The residents of Hull, Mass., literally have the wind at their back.

Taking advantage of their location on the far east end of the Boston Harbor, the town is making the most of wind power. As its devoted 11,000 residents will tell you, wind energy makes sense. It’s clean, abundant, inexhaustible and local. Today, with wind turbines on either side of town, Hull receives about 12-13 percent of its electricity from wind.

We recently paid a visit to Hull to see how this seacoast community has achieved wind power, an energy source that could be incorporated throughout the United States with the proper resources, know-how and mentality. Wind is a key ingredient in powering America off foreign oil and achieving an emissions-free energy system; its giant turbines, parts of which are made in the U.S., could become symbols of green success.

“I love them,” says Wendy Love, a 16-year Hull resident who works at Weinberg’s Bakery. “When it’s windy, they are louder, but they don’t bother me. If energy costs go high enough maybe the U.S. will become more green like in Europe.”

Geri Calos, manager at Weinberg’s as well as administrator for the Hull Nantasket Chamber of Commerce, says, “The chamber is really into the green movement and working on strategies for more alternative energy.”

Richard Miller, operations manager of the Hull Municipal Light Plant (HMLP), says the town’s people have been very supportive of wind as an alternative energy source. “There has been no resistance on the part of the residents,” he says.

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