Green Central Blog

With so many products sold in the U.S. being manufactured in China, it is exciting to hear a step is being taken to combat the severity of China’s global impact on the environment. 

Read Penny Bonda’s article at Interior Design Magazine.

by Kesha Stark

What’s amazing to me is that, despite advanced technology that can produce cars with 30-50 mpg and even much higher, many cars we drive today actually get fewer miles per gallon than cars did in the 1970’s.  The average fuel economy in the United States is a shockingly low 20.2 miles per gallon.  (In Europe, that number is 35.)  One reason for this poor average is that we’re driving SUV’s and big trucks, which average 18 mpg.  Compare that to a 2007 Honda Civic, which gets 33 mpg on the highway and 26 in the city.

Let’s do the math.  Say gasoline costs $2.75 per gallon and you drive 15,000 miles a year.  If your car gets 35 mpg, you’d spend $884 less on gasoline every year than if it got 20 mpg.  Invest that savings at an 8 percent rate of return and in 10 years you will have saved almost $14,000.  In 20 years, you’ll have almost $44,000 and in 30 years you’ll have amassed more than $108,000.  Maybe it’s time for a trade- in?

Find out what mileage you are currently getting.  Visit www.epa.gov/greenvehicles  to look up your car model and see its highway and city fuel economy.

Find a greener car.  At www.greenercars.org  check out the listings of “greenest” cars (as well as the “meanest” ones).

by Sean Keithly

In his 2000 landmark book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell analyzes the process through which transformative ideas effect change over time - gaining momentum until they reach a point of critical mass and are adopted on a large scale. Trends such as green building and alternative energy are examples of ideas that have gained momentum over the past decade and which are clearly headed on a path for large-scale adoption. (more…)

Census 2010 is wrapping up, and personally, I can’t wait to see what the data will say about the last 10 years of development in Seattle. As an illustration, I made a map of the Census blocks in my neighborhood and highlighted the ones with less than 20 residents (shown in tan) according to the 2000 Census. Then I marked buildings constructed in the past 10 years which will show up in the Census for the first time in 2010.

At quick glance, I turned up over 500 new residential units (which could easily represent 700 or 800 individual residents); lots of new people in exactly the kind of neighborhood suited to sustainable development. This is definitely an indication of progress in the right direction.