Being my first time to the east side of the nation I have to say it was quite a different vibe from the PNW.
I had always heard that the east side of our nation wasn't the most environmentally conscience part of the world, and I wanted to put that notion to the test!
In order to test to see if an east coast city was green or not, I made it a mission to look out for recycling bins and other indicators of greenness within the city. After spending half a week exploring the city, it was pretty hard to find any recycling bins anywhere!
Most of the time I found single trashcans, like the one below, inside most places.
For the first day and a half, I did not find a single recycling bin ANYWHERE!
But when I took the metro, I finally did find a recycling bin. This bin however was for "Newspapers only."
A little disappointing to say the least.
Continuing the trend of pro-environmental let downs was in a restaurant I ate at near the International Spy Museum, and this one was the most pathetic yet amusing. The restaurant strongly encouraged recycling on its packaging, and even had signs that told customers to "please recycle." Funny enough, there wasn't any recycling bins anywhere. Maybe I was just confused, but the sole-sign for recycling was located above a garbage can.... It says "recycle cans and bottles" but yet there was nowhere in the restaurant to do just that!
Although it was difficult to find green-initiatives within the city, throughout the week there was actually some positive pro-green initiatives that did show in action!
Recycling near the Smithsonian.
Recycling near a park
Some basic stuff, right? There was one really cool idea the city had that needs to be shared and optimized in every city.. Bike sharing, where consumers can rent a bike at stations strategically placed throughout the city, where highly utilized by both citizens and tourist alike.
For being a so-n-so green-minded city, D.C. has a lot of ground to make up compared to the west coast initiatives towns like Bellingham and Seattle have in place. That being said, I thought it was ironic how large and spectacular the EPA building is in D.C.
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