The Urban Eco Map of San Francisco reports that my neighborhood is leading the city in pounds composed and is third overall! A wide margin separates the top two zip codes in composting. Is there an award?
As far as cities go, San Francisco is one of the cleanest and greenest in the US. We have great mass transit. Much of our energy comes from clean, renewable sources. We recycle 72% of our trash. And we are well on our way to reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions to 20% below 1990 levels – ahead of the Kyoto Protocol.
Balboa is in solid last place with huge amounts of CO2, energy used and very little recycling. There is no deeper analysis of the data on the site, just numbers. It would be nice if the Take Action page could be correlated to a neighborhood. Just by selecting all the waste action items I was able to get to 100% on the contribution chart, leaving energy and transportation untouched. That doesn’t seem right and inconsistent with the charts.
Thanks for your comments on the EcoMap. Your suggestion to see what actions your neighbors are taking is great. Perhaps we’ll add that to Urban EcoMap v2.0. Did you see yesterday’s announcement about v1.1? We’ve added Amsterdam to the Urban EcoMap and you can compare San Francisco to Amsterdam on the landing page – http://urbanecomap.org.
Interesting! The first thing that comes to mind when comparing these cities is a topographical disparity. San Francisco transportation energy consumption models must factor in steep terrain (grades over 18%), while Amsterdam is so flat it can be navigated by canals.