Where Trees Keep It Cool

Want to live somewhere that makes it easier to be green? You can if you know where to look.

“Cities are on the front lines of climate impact,” says Hilary Firestone of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and interim director of the American Cities Climate Challenge. Those that make Mother Earth a priority give us more opportunities to do the right thing. They care about traffic congestion, public transportation, biking and walking options, renewable energy sources, tree canopies, good air quality and access to healthy food, like farmers markets, says Jill Gonzalez, senior analyst for WalletHub, which ranks the United States’ greenest cities every year on 28 different metrics. Here are five cities that get our green thumbs-up.

EARTHFRIENDLY CITIES

Louisville is known for bourbon, baseball bats (the Louisville Slugger) and a boxer (Muhammad Ali). It’s also a city facing environmental challenges—in 2014, it was deemed one of the fastest-warming cities in the U.S.

Being an “urban heat island” means the city captures the sun’s heat, boosting temps by as much as 10 degrees and trapping air pollutants. One solution? Trees, which capture carbon an` slow warming. The nonprofit organization Trees Louisville offers resi`ents a $30 rebate for each tree they plant (up to three trees per household per year), and nonprofit Louisville Grows gives lower-income neighborhoo`s, which have half as many trees as wealthier neighborhoods, some shade. They plant 1,000 trees a year and help inner city residents install and maintain community gardens. The University of Louisville’s Green Heart project is studying the impact of green spaces on air quality and health and planting trees to see how more trees affect residents’ health.

The city is committed to other cooling solutions too, like installing “cool” roofs that reflect heat (the city offers rebates of $1 per square foot for cool roofing installe`). “They’ve been making their own path forward,” says Katie Walsh of CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project), an international nonprofit that helps cities measure their environmental impact. In fact, Louisville made CDP’s 2020 “A List” of enviro-friendly U.S. cities.

Where Energy Is Clean

As a sunny city by the ocean, San Diego is uniquely positioned to take advantage of renewable energy sources (wind, sun, water). The city ranked second overall on WalletHub’s Greenest Cities list, thanks to air and water quality and the number of green hotels. But San Diego really shines in its commitment to renewable energy. In 2015, it became the first U.S. city to pledge to shift to 100 percent renewable energy by 2035. As of 2019, the city had cut greenhouse gas by boosting the number of electric vehicles in the city’s fleet (adding its first electric street sweeper last year) and installing electrical vehicle charging stations, as well as reducing residential and municipal energy use.

Where Recycling Is Easy

Even though Seattle is one of America’s fastest-growing cities (its population jumped 23 percent from 2009 to 2019), it’s determined to keep trash to a minimum. The city adopted a mandatory recycling ordinance in 2003 and motivates residents to recycle—the more trash you toss, the more it costs ($40.95 per month for a 32-gallon curbside can versus $81.85 for a 64-gallon cart). The city recycles leaves and grass clippings, food scraps, even pizza delivery boxes and turns them into compost.

Those methods have helped the recycling rate jump from 40 percent to 54 percent over 20 years. But the city isn’t done. As of Jan. 1,

2021, Seattle shoppers are required to bring their own bags (or buy paper ones): Single-use plastic bags are outlawed. Another law mandates that all food service businesses from delis to institutional cafeterias use recyclable or compostable packaging. And with a commitment to cut food waste in half by 2030, the city offers sustainable landscape training to help landscaping pros reuse organic waste and conserve water.