So Many Green Efforts, So Little Time: Introducing ‘Picks of the Week’
It’s refreshing that just a few hours of online browsing can open your eyes to so many creative, innovative and hard-working green groups across the country. The only downside is that there are so many good individuals and organizations out there, it’s hard to write an in-depth profile of each of them. So I’m introducing a new feature today called “Picks of the Week,” a roundup of some of the most outstanding green initiatives I’ve discovered over the past seven days.
So here we go:
Sustainable South Bronx, or SSBx, has been working since 2001 to “advance the environmental and economic rebirth of the South Bronx, and inspire solutions in areas like it across the nation and around the world.” Led by Majora Carter, a lifelong resident of the South Bronx, SSBx spearheads such efforts as the South Bronx Greenway Project, which aims to build a bicycle/pedestrian greenway along South Bronx’s waterfront so residents can enjoy the outdoors safely and improve their health with exercise.
Fallen Fruit is a “community activist art project” that’s working to create maps of all the fruit trees growing on (or over) public property. The project began with a focus on Los Angeles but eventually hopes to help create public fruit-tree maps for other cities across the U.S. and around the world. “We believe fruit is a resource that should be commonly shared, like shells from the beach or mushrooms from the forest,” states the Fallen Fruit Website. “Our goal is to get people thinking about the life and vitality of our neighborhoods and to consider how we can change the dynamic of our cities and common values. (Tip of the hat for this one to Eat Drink Better writer Bryan Luukinen!)
New American Dream says its mission is to “help Americans consume responsibly to protect the environment, enhance quality of life, and promote social justice.” Among New American Dreams’ programs: “Break the Bottled Water Habit,” the “Carbon Conscious Consumer Campaign,” an alternative gift registry for “non-material, homemade, second-hand and environmentally-friendly gifts” and an awareness-raising initiative on kids and commercialism.
Also, be sure to check out artist Jasmine Zimmerman’s amazing “bottle house,” a translucent greenhouse made of recycled beverage bottles in an effort to raise awareness of the vast amounts of plastic waste generated in the U.S.
Urban blight is a major problem and has been exacerbated with the glut of homes abandoned because of foreclosure.
Our cities are such sprawling endeavors that it is a wonder why the planning and zoning pretty much stopped at straight streets. Our public transportation since since the 1910s has dwindled and roads are more pervasive than yards.
Take Berlin for example, they still have a subway line that has been running for over a hundred years. We have a lot of cities that abandoned their plans after too many insider deals and people not wanting it to be there to sell cars.
Check out the movie ‘Ticket to Ride’, it explains how GM took local cities’ public transportation infrastructures and then destroyed them. Sad.