Wasteful City

Our fair city of Houston is not exactly known for its environmental conscientiousness. According to a recent survey by Nalgene, maker of the popular water bottles, we rank 22 out of 25 on America’s Least Wasteful Cities survey. Yikes! The study ranked the 25 largest cities in the United States on “23 waste-focused habits of urban Americans” including recycling, use of energy efficient light bulbs, and use of public transportation. Houston’s overall score based on the effective points from all 23 categories was an 879.16, a far cry from the least wasteful city of San Francisco with a 1025.45. However, we did manage to edge out a few more wasteful cities; rounding out the bottom of the list is Indianapolis, Dallas, and Atlanta.

In all honesty, we could stand to make some small strides. A recent letter sent by Mayor Bill White to the residents of Houston shows 43 neighborhoods (involving over 23,000 homes) with a less than 10% set out rate for curbside recycling. That’s very low participation from a little less than 1/5 of the total 162,000 households with curbside recycling available to them. The cost of city labor and gas to drive through neighborhoods with only a few recycling bins in use has forced some low-contributing neighborhoods to be dropped from the program.

On the bright side, Houston did rank 1st in one category on the Least Wasteful Cities survey, “best at saving leftovers to eat again.”

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Get Ahead.