My City is Greener than Your City

My city is greener than your city, na na na-na na! It's no secret here at the Mountains of the Moon office that I'm incredibly immature, but all taunting aside, Sustain Lane came out with their annual list of the greenest cities in the U.S. today, and our home-sweet-home Chicago was not only ranked number 4, but also the number 1 greenest city not on the west coast! You go Chi-town!

To establish the rankings, Sustain Lane researched the 50 largest U.S. Cities and evaluated them on 16 categories of sustainability. See where your city ranks right here.

But before you do that, just so we can brag for a moment, check out these eco-wonderful Chicago facts, courtesy of the folks at Sustainable Lane:

When environmental officials send you a several-pages-long "Bird Agenda" for their city, you know they've got all their little eco-ducks in a row. Long-serving Mayor Richard Daley is committed to making Chicago a healthy and attractive place for all creatures great and small, and for residents and visitors alike. The mayor has had greening on his mind since he first entered office in 1989, implementing progressive and sometimes controversial measures. He's planted about a half-million trees, removed traffic lanes in favor of green medians and bulldozed a downtown airport, putting in its place a 100-acre park. Under the mayor's leadership, Chicago has become known as the "Green Roofs City," with carbon-sequestering vegetation covering more than 4.5 million square feet of rooftop. In September of 2008, Mayor Daley took his commitment to combating global warming a step further: he released an aggressive carbon emissions-cutting plan that includes changing city building codes, installing huge solar panels on municipal properties, and retrofitting low-cost housing complexes to reduce water and energy use.

Not bad, if we do say so ourselves.

Also of note is Chicago's official fashion week, Fashion Focus, which this year includes the Museum of Sustainable Style (MoSS), which features clothing, accessories and furniture that "inspire and respond to current form and function necessities, without compromising our environmental abilities to meet future needs." MoSS runs October 2nd through 5th at Brickermade Studio in Fulton Market. Mountains of the Moon's Sophie Pants and Brooke Top are among that designs that were chosen by a juried panel to be on display.

Now if we can just figure out this traffic congestion thing...

xoxo,
melissa