Marriott Hotel in San Diego

Team Earth is a worldwide sustainability movement for businesses, non-profit organizations, and individuals looking to address five critical environmental issues like climate change, water, health, waste and food. The latest to adhere to the sustainable world vision, hotel chain Marriott has just announced that they are trying to prove their greenness by joining the Team Earth bandwagon.

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Drax, a major energy companies in the UK has revealed that it plans to build three biomass stations in the UK, at a cost of £2 billion. All of the biomass stations will run on biological waste from forestry or industries such as woodchips, straw, sunflower seeds, peanut husks and agricultural products such as sugarcane, hemp or willow.

Drax power station at midnight

As the prices of fossil fuels are continuously on the rise, this effective step will provide an enormous boost to UK’s target of producing 20% of its energy from renewable resources by 2020.

When ready, the three biomass stations will produce 15% of Britain’s total energy, to suffice 2million homes. They will be built in collaboration with the engineering giant – Siemens, with two of the plants going at Hull near Yorkshire while the third venue still remains undecided.

However there is slight concern over the sustainability of these stations because it is being felt that we might “sacrifice” plants for fuel, rather than eating them. With food, soon to be major problem, that’s a tough decision, don’t you think? – via Telegraph

Image courtesy of yorkshiregeek

What are the key elements that would make your city life even better and best of all even greener? Well the guys at SustainLane judge 16 areas of urban sustainability ranging from the (new this year) water quality, to public transportation and environmental policies. The group ranked 50 of the United States’ most populated cities according to their sustainability.

SO what are the most sustainable cities in the US, this year? And the winners are Portland (OR), San Francisco (CA), and Seattle (WA).

I can’t say much about their report but knowing these guys, I suppose their analysis is thorough and they did take into consideration many of the factors that we may forget when thinking about our own city.

Among the winners, we can find the most expensive cities in the US including New York, Boston, San Jose and San Francisco and I suppose it’s for a good reason. But, wait up, because we, Bill Belew (the other guy behind GreenPacks), is living somewhere close to SF so I guess he’d be entitled to comment on the report. And yes, the picture is with San Francisco…

Where do you live and what do you think about your city’s sustainability?

Image courtesy of (nz)Dave