Posted by: John S Kiernan

Eco-friendliness and personal finance are related. Our environmental and financial needs are the same in many areas: providing ourselves with sustainable, clean drinking water and food, for example. We also spend money through our own consumption and taxes in support of environmental security.

In the past year, the U.S. has seen an especially devastating amount of natural disasters. According to National Geographic, 17 storms caused an estimated $200 billion in property damage. Hurricane Maria, for example, left Puerto Rico without power for months and severely hurt the territory’s economy. Experts attribute the high number of hurricanes to unusually warm Atlantic waters, so it’s possible that living more sustainably and using greener energy sources could prevent us from having quite as bad hurricane seasons in the future.

We should all try to do our part to save the world for future generations. In order to highlight the greenest states and call out those doing a poor job of caring for the environment, WalletHub compared each of the 50 states on 23 key metrics. Our data set ranges from LEED-certified buildings per capita to share of energy consumption from renewable resources. Read on for our findings, expert commentary and our full methodology.

1. Main Findings
2. Red States vs. Blue States
3. Ask the Experts
4. Methodology

Main Findings

Embed on your website<iframe src="//d2e70e9yced57e.cloudfront.net/wallethub/embed/11987/ecofriendly-geochart.html" width="556" height="347" frameBorder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> <div style="width:556px;font-size:12px;color:#888;">Source: <a href="https://ift.tt/2H532kY>  

Most Environmentally Friendly States

Overall Rank	State	Total Score	‘Environmental Quality’ Rank	‘Eco-Friendly Behaviors’ Rank	‘Climate-Change Contributions’ Rank
1	Vermont	75.48	1	1	23
2	Oregon	74.23	3	2	20
3	Massachusetts	72.63	5	10	3
4	New York	72.11	4	19	2
5	South Dakota	70.54	6	5	11
6	Minnesota	69.46	2	14	16
7	Connecticut	68.99	9	22	1
8	New Hampshire	68.49	10	18	5
9	California	67.52	43	3	4
10	Rhode Island	66.68	7	28	6
11	Maine	66.63	13	4	17
12	Nevada	64.83	33	8	7
13	New Jersey	63.42	36	12	9
14	Wisconsin	63.40	8	29	13
15	Idaho	63.35	23	11	12
16	Hawaii	62.82	28	7	10
17	Washington	62.65	12	9	22
18	Maryland	62.19	38	16	8
19	Delaware	60.43	25	21	14
20	Michigan	60.38	11	35	19
21	Colorado	56.45	26	15	33
22	North Carolina	56.25	19	32	21
23	Tennessee	56.07	21	41	18
24	Georgia	55.74	18	27	27
25	Pennsylvania	55.17	17	24	32
26	Illinois	55.15	15	31	30
27	Missouri	54.85	14	42	28
28	Arizona	54.79	42	17	25
29	South Carolina	54.27	31	43	15
30	New Mexico	53.13	39	6	36
31	Iowa	52.99	16	20	40
32	Nebraska	52.87	34	25	31
33	Montana	52.35	44	13	29
34	Florida	51.70	24	39	35
35	Virginia	51.05	40	38	24
36	Alaska	50.79	22	36	37
37	Ohio	49.91	46	30	26
38	Kansas	49.77	29	23	41
39	Utah	48.89	30	34	39
40	Mississippi	45.35	20	45	43
41	Arkansas	44.99	45	44	34
42	Indiana	44.60	27	46	42
43	Texas	44.05	48	33	38
44	Oklahoma	40.82	47	40	44
45	Wyoming	40.44	35	37	46
46	Alabama	40.22	32	48	45
47	North Dakota	39.72	37	26	48
48	Kentucky	31.71	50	47	47
49	Louisiana	26.03	49	49	49
50	West Virginia	25.08	41	50	50

 

Red States vs. Blue States

 

Ask the Experts

For more insight into eco-friendliness at the household, government and global levels, we asked the following questions to a panel of environmental and economic experts. Click on the experts’ profiles to read their bios and thoughts on the following key questions:

1. What policies can state and local authorities pursue to make their communities more environmentally friendly?
2. Is there an inherent tradeoff between protecting the environment and promoting economic growth?
3. How might states be affected by the Trump administration's EPA policies?
4. What is the single most impactful thing an individual can do to reduce their effect on the environment?

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• Thomas Ballestero Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of New Hampshire
• Patrick Gurian Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at Drexel University
• Hayley N. Schiebel Assistant Professor in the Center for Urban Ecology and Sustainability at Suffolk University
• Fred E. Foldvary Professor in the Department of Economics at San Jose State University
• Craig M. Kauffman Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon
• Kimberly A. Gray Kay Davis Professor and Chair of Civil & Environmental Engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University
• John Harte Professor of Ecosystem Sciences in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management at the University of California Berkeley
• Soji Adelaja John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor in Land Policy in the Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics at Michigan State University
• Karen Allen Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Furman University

Thomas Ballestero Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of New Hampshire

What policies can state and local authorities pursue to make their communities more environmentally friendly?

Green storm water infrastructure, sustainability curricula in schools.

Is there an inherent trade-off between protecting the environment and promoting economic growth?

Not necessarily. This is a major misperception. Often, as in storm water, greener is not only less expensive in the capital cost, but also in longer-term maintenance costs. The life-cycle costs of green infrastructure outweigh those of conventional with the major added benefits of environmental improvements, plus the creation of significant natural and social capital. There is no silver bullet, and at times, conventional infrastructure is the best solution -- but green should always be explored.

How might states be affected by the Trump administration’s EPA policies?

Not completely evident at this juncture.

What is the single most impactful thing an individual can do to reduce their effect on the environment?

Reduce, reuse, recycle. Avoid plastic products.

Patrick Gurian Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at Drexel University

What policies can state and local authorities pursue to make their communities more environmentally friendly?

State and local authorities can start by making their own operations more efficient. They can reduce the energy use of their buildings by investing in upgrades such as occupancy sensors, improvements to building heating, ventilating, and air conditioning equipment, high-efficiency lighting, insulation, low emissivity windows, and high efficiency elevators.

In many climates, light-colored “white roofs” make sense. In some cases, the use of geothermal heat pumps for heating and cooling may make sense, although the upfront costs are high and it will take a long time to save enough money on utility bills to justify the investment. For particularly large buildings, they might consider allowing private investors (who can benefit from tax breaks) to install solar panels. Large facilities may also be good sites for cogeneration of heat and electrical power.

State and local authorities can require building owners to make utility bill information publicly available so that prospective tenants and property buyers can factor in energy costs when they decide where to buy or rent. This provides an incentive for owners to invest in energy efficiency. Another way to incentivize energy efficiency is for public utility commissions, utilities, and government agencies to work together on incentivizing the adoption of energy efficiency measures. Letting property owners finance energy efficiency investments with loans that are financed by the utility bill savings, an approach called “on-bill financing,” is one creative and efficient way to do this.

State and local authorities can invest in providing public transit options and can work toward the development of higher-density, livable and walkable communities.

Is there an inherent trade-off between protecting the environment and promoting economic growth?

There is no inherent trade-off between environmental protection and economic growth, because environmental quality is an economic good. Properly designed environmental regulations create wealth and improve well-being by avoiding or removing inefficiencies in markets.

Why would anyone think differently? One reason may be that environmental quality is something that is often difficult to monetize and hence, hard to count. A second reason is that, as with any economic good, there are trade-offs with other economic goods. When we spend more money on housing, we have less money to spend on vacation. Similarly, when we as a society spend more resources on environmental protection, then we have fewer resources available for other goods. The specific trade-offs are naturally hard to make and a legitimate subject of debate and contention. While we need to have these debates about how much we should invest in environmental protection, we should not make the mistake of thinking there is an inherent trade-off between economics and the environment. Environmental quality is one of the goods that we value and hence, some resources from our economy need to be devoted to creating and maintaining environmental quality.

How might states be affected by the Trump administration’s EPA policies?

It is hard to keep track of. Probably best that I refer you to some ongoing efforts by the media.

What is the single most impactful thing an individual can do to reduce their effect on the environment?

I wish I knew. I would focus on climate change, the current priority on which broad action is needed. I generally answer this question in three parts. The first are things we can do to reduce our short-term personal impact on the environment. This includes things like driving a smaller car, using public transit instead of a car, taking fewer airplane trips, using a programmable thermostat, installing LED lights in your home, adding insulation, etc. Of these, I tend to recommend changing out incandescent lights for LEDs, making sure that you have a programmable thermostat and that it is programmed appropriately for your typical usage, and checking that computer equipment has appropriate “sleep” settings so it will power down when not in use -- potentially important and relatively painless steps to take. In general, though, I’m pretty skeptical of individual efforts that do not move us toward the large-scale societal action that we need.

That brings me to the second part of the answer, which is to support emerging technologies that offer the prospect of substantial benefits once they are adopted. This may include an electric or hydrogen vehicle, or the purchase of carbon offsets for your emissions. My recommendation here is to purchase electricity from renewable sources. This is generally possible at only a small premium over other sources of electricity. The third part of the answer is that our impact on the environment is largely determined by the infrastructure our society chooses. Accordingly, to reduce our own adverse impact on the environment, we need to be active in seeking societal change. Voting is an important part of this. While many of us have our minds pretty much made up about which party we will back in the general election, making environmentally responsible choices in primary elections may be an important part of reducing our adverse impacts on the environment.

Hayley N. Schiebel Assistant Professor in the Center for Urban Ecology and Sustainability at Suffolk University

Is there an inherent trade-off between protecting the environment and promoting economic growth?

There is certainly a trade-off between protecting the environment and promoting economic growth. Economic growth by very definition is an increase in the output of goods and services. Under the current economic growth scenario in the United States, environmental degradation and a reliance on non-renewable technology and feedstocks are common practice. The United States places an emphasis on fast, throughput technology and this places a heavy burden on environmental systems to keep pace.

We are depleting all of our natural reserves by relying on non-renewable technology including coal, natural gas, petroleum, and nuclear power. While these energy sources are cheaper and our infrastructure is set up to use these fuel sources, we will run out and, in the interim, destroy our planet. Economic development, on the other hand, still focuses on an increase in outputs, but with an emphasis on both equity for the nation and the well-being of the environment. This is the direction we need to move in if we want to be a powerful nation that considers both its people and its place on the planet.

How might states be affected by the Trump administration’s EPA policies?

The President has created a wave of environmental rollbacks and overturns. As of January 2018, 33 environmental rules have been overturned under the current administration, from coal anti-dumping to flood building standards to the Keystone XL pipeline. In addition, 34 rollbacks are in progress or in limbo, such as fuel efficiency standards, offshore oil and gas leading, and limits on landfill emissions. All of these policies are at the federal level. It then becomes a state decision on how best to handle the issue. For example, even though the federal limits on toxic discharge may be increased, Massachusetts as a state can choose to have lower limits than the federal level.

The difficulty that the current administration’s policies pose is threefold: first, it sets a negative precedent to other countries regarding our sentiments on environmental and human health; second, it places humans and our environment at risk and even further at odds over the state of our environment (i.e., the climate change debate); and third, it limits the amount of funding and support states can have from the federal level administration. If Massachusetts, for example, decides to increase groundwater protections for uranium mining against the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s current rollback, it may not receive the monitoring staff or funds required for such a task.

What is the single most impactful thing an individual can do to reduce their effect on the environment?

I think that all of the things that an individual can do to reduce their footprint fall under the category of due diligence. As a society, we are lazy and complacent. There are some small things that you can research on your own to reduce your footprint. This may come in the form of researching where your food is coming from (i.e., is your fish from China or New England?) or researching what the media is telling you (i.e., if 97 percent of scientists agree climate change is anthropogenic, why am I being told it isn’t real?).

People can reduce their meat intake, which one of the biggest contributors to climate change currently. You don’t have to be vegan, but even cutting meat out of one or two meals a week is a major savings in greenhouse gas emissions, waste, and air pollutant emissions. You can get involved in one of the hundreds of cleanup projects and organizations happening around Boston such as Harbor Keepers, New England Aquarium Live Blue Ambassadors, or Eastie Farm. It’s all about research and spending time figuring out where you can and want to make a difference in your life and in your community.

Fred E. Foldvary Professor in the Department of Economics at San Jose State University

What policies can state and local authorities pursue to make their communities more environmentally friendly?

• Enact penalties for pollution and other environmental destruction;
• Implement tolls on freeways and streets to eliminate congestion;
• Reform the property tax to tax land more and buildings less.

Is there an inherent trade-off between protecting the environment and promoting economic growth?

No. Taxes today damage economic growth. A green tax is a charge or penalty on inflicting environmental damage. A "green tax shift" replaces taxes on income and goods with taxes on pollution and land value. We get both more economic growth and a better protected environment.

How might states be affected by the Trump administration’s EPA policies?

There might be more pollution because of fewer restrictions on pollution. States could offset this with their own green taxes.

What is the single most impactful thing an individual can do to reduce their effect on the environment?

• Recycle as much as possible;
• Take public transit where feasible;
• Promote a green tax shift.

Craig M. Kauffman Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon

Is there an inherent trade-off between protecting the environment and promoting economic growth?

There is not an inherent trade-off between protecting the environment and promoting economic growth. This is evident in several respects. First, the Trump administration's own Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a recent report that analyzed the effect of environmental regulations on the economy and shows that environmental regulations have a net boost on the economy. While there are costs for some industries, these are more than offset by savings in other areas (e.g., health care expenditures) that in the end provide a net economic benefit.

Moreover, it is well documented that investing in new, more environmentally friendly technologies can stimulate economic growth. For example, the number of jobs in the solar and wind sector is several times larger than the number of jobs in the coal industry. It is also the fastest-growing area of the energy market. From an economic standpoint, the economy would be better off diverting investments away from dirty coal to clean renewable energy. The reasons not to do this are political, not economic.

Kimberly A. Gray Kay Davis Professor and Chair of Civil & Environmental Engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University

What policies can state and local authorities pursue to make their communities more environmentally friendly?

In general, those policies that promote energy efficiency (the 52 mpg CAFE standards); clean water and clean air; walkable & bikeable communities; affordable housing; enforcement of existing environmental regulations (elimination of lead paint and water service lines); green infrastructure, habitat restoration; promote renewable power (e.g., Clean power plan), reduced fossil fuel use, methane capture, etc.

There are countless policies that promote environmental quality, provide public health protection -- particularly children’s health -- and address climate change that would promote economic growth, community resilience and social equity.

Is there an inherent trade-off between protecting the environment and promoting economic growth?

I don’t think so. I think the two go together, but one certainly needs to register full costs of human behavior -- commerce, industry, etc. For instance, CO2 emissions have a real cost and should be accounted for in production.

How might states be affected by the Trump administration’s EPA policies?

Adversely -- EPA’s rollback of environmental regulations and climate action is exceedingly shortsighted and at the cost of public and ecological health, which does not serve the country’s economic interests or competitiveness in the long run.

What is the single most impactful thing an individual can do to reduce their effect on the environment?

Vote for individuals who support science-based policies.

John Harte Professor of Ecosystem Sciences in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management at the University of California Berkeley

What policies can state and local authorities pursue to make their communities more environmentally friendly?

• Recycling programs;
• Zoning to prevent mega mansions and encourage affordable housing;
• Restrictions on water wastage (e.g., car washing with an open hose);
• Ban leaf blowers;
• Open space preservation;
• At state level, energy efficiency and air quality standards;
• Water and energy pricing to inhibit high household use.

Is there an inherent trade-off between protecting the environment and promoting economic growth?

There is a positive synergy, not a trade-off, between economic wellbeing and environmental quality. But the question refers to economic growth, not economic wellbeing, and there is a trade-off between continuing economic growth in the U.S. and both economic wellbeing and the quality of the environment.

How might states be affected by the Trump administration’s EPA policies?

All of us in the U.S. will be breathing dirtier air, drinking dirtier water, eating more toxic food, living shorter lives, and suffering more from extreme climate events as a result of the Trump administration’s EPA policies.

What is the single most impactful thing an individual can do to reduce their effect on the environment?

The single most important thing an individual can do to help the environment is to vote for political leaders who will protect the environment. The single most important thing an individual can do to reduce their own impact is to have fewer children.

Soji Adelaja John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor in Land Policy in the Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics at Michigan State University

What policies can state and local authorities pursue to make their communities more environmentally friendly?

As I think about the spectrum from environmental friendliness to the active promotion of a green economy, I see numerous policies and strategies that are important. Obviously, strong pollution mitigation, waste recovery, recycling, pollution prevention and anti-littering rules are a good start. However, the posture for the new world is leveraging a state’s green assets to promote green economy. Policies to promote renewable energy deployment are obviously progressive. The promotion of LED lighting in public and private spaces also is.

The more progressive policies are placemaking strategies that leverage a state’s green infrastructure to promote talented people with little environmental footprint and attract clean economic development. For example, Renewable Portfolio Standards can help reduce carbon emission while promoting the wind and solar industries. Cities can utilize rain gardens and smart street lighting to attract the creative class downtown, and trails to promote walkability and bikeability. Old industrial sites can be repurposed as renewable energy parks. The trick is the adoption of state policies that incentivize urban and rural areas, as well as citizens.

Is there an inherent trade-off between protecting the environment and promoting economic growth?

No. I do not see it. I just listed some strategies to promote going green.

How might states be affected by the Trump administration’s EPA policies?

The Obama administration promoted the reduction of carbon emissions through clean renewable energy. It believed in global warming and supported the Paris climate agreement. Trump does not believe in global warming. He seeks to increase fossil fuel use and reduce environmental regulations. He pulled out of the Paris climate agreement. He seeks to repeal many environmental policies and limit the EPA's goal of protecting air and water quality. Trump wants more drilling in national parks and in U.S. waters. He has announced plans to open up more federal land for energy development. All states will be affected. The question is how much. Progressive green states would be the hardest hit.

What is the single most impactful thing an individual can do to reduce their effect on the environment?

The single most immediate thing is to change all lights to LED in the home or office. We need bold institutional leaders for these. The most impactful thing is to have one’s voice heard and ensure active participation in future elections.

Karen Allen Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Furman University

What policies can state and local authorities pursue to make their communities more environmentally friendly?

There are a number of policy approaches that can promote environmentally friendly communities. Right now, there is a lot of ferment around economic incentive policies. This includes things like taxes and subsidies that can reduce environmentally damaging behavior (in the case of a tax) and incentivize environmentally friendly behavior (through a subsidy). Payments for Ecosystem Services is a newer mechanism whereby a user of a particular environmental amenity can purchase an environmental service from a provider at an established price. So, for example, downstream water users might pay upstream landowners to reforest on their land, since that forest provides a water filtration service for downstream users. A well-studied example of such a program is the city of New York paying landowners in the Catskills to protect the watershed.

These policies all sound interesting on paper, and if implemented well, might provide innovative ways to influence behavior. However, other mechanisms of influencing behavior seem to be increasingly ignored, including policies dealing with education and culture. Environmental education has a long history of exposing people to the intricate connection between humans and the environment, and we have plenty of evidence that culture shapes our daily choices. Environmental education can help shape what people in society value, so that they might think twice about their environmentally damaging behaviors. Other types of policies that fall along this continuum include changing community structure to promote environmentally beneficial decisions. For example, creating more bike paths facilitates biking to work while it creates community. Ultimately, robust environmental policy must embrace a variety of strategies and the above are just a few approaches that can affect change.

Is there an inherent trade-off between protecting the environment and promoting economic growth? How might states be affected by the Trump administration’s EPA policies?

At a fundamental level, there is an inherent trade-off between protecting the environment and promoting economic growth. Most empirical data show that as an economy grows, indicators of environmental degradation (after accounting for leakage or displacement of degradation elsewhere) increases. It is relatively simple math -- you cannot grow an economy based on nothing and the resources that power our economy come from the natural world. Economists point out that when a resource becomes scarce, it will be substituted with another resource, but this can only hold at a small scale and for a finite number of resources.

Zooming out, we can observe that the planet has a limited number of resources that are replaced on a time scale that is millions of years slower than the rate at which we are depleting those resources. We might become more efficient with the resources we use, and we can slow the pace at which we are approaching those limits, but we cannot remove them. The Trump administration’s policies have rejected several caps on environmentally damaging behavior in the name of economic growth for a few specialized sectors of the economy, while several industries promising more efficient use of natural resources, or innovative substitutes, are being discouraged. This means that when we do get closer to those resource limits, or the ecological disequilibrium created through pollution and resource extraction of a particular resource becomes too much to bear, we will be behind the curve technologically speaking. As I see it, it is a bit like tying the country’s fate to a 1980’s Apple IIGS while the rest of the world is using iMacs.

I want to add here, however, that I do not believe that this means that there is necessarily a trade-off between protecting the environment and human well-being. Unfortunately, we have allowed economic growth to stand in for well-being in our conceptualization of progress for a long time. We tend to assume as a society that growing an economy will make people better off, while mounds of data demonstrate that this is not necessarily true. There are creative ways that we could start thinking about how to live well within finite environmental limits, and this forms the foundation of the field of ecological economics. However, it will require just that -- creatively rethinking our current social-ecological paradigm and being willing to change how we think and talk about economic growth, well-being, equity, and the environment.

What is the single most impactful thing an individual can do to reduce their effect on the environment?

I think the most impactful thing an individual can do is to be open-minded and willing to learn. Right now, we live in a time where people are digging in their heels and rejecting perspectives that conflict with how they see the world. We have created a system where we spend money, time, and resources as a society to train specialists in a number of fields, only to then discount what they say because it does not fit within a particular worldview. When it comes to the environment, especially regarding issues as contentious as climate change, many people simply do not want to hear the “doom and gloom” and so they shut down and say “it’s not real” or “it is impossible to change, no matter what we do.” This response blocks the creative solutions I mentioned before, and leaves us stuck with that Apple IIGS technology. So, we need to open our minds, be willing to see the problem, and think creatively about how to fix it.

Methodology

In order to determine the greenest states, WalletHub compared the 50 states across three key dimensions: 1) Environmental Quality, 2) Eco-Friendly Behaviors and 3) Climate-Change Contributions.

We evaluated those dimensions using 23 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the highest level of eco-friendliness.

We then determined each state’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its total score and used the resulting scores to rank-order our sample.

Environmental Quality – Total Points: 35

• Total Municipal Solid Waste per Capita: Full Weight (~7.00 Points)
• Air Quality: Full Weight (~7.00 Points)
• Water Quality: Full Weight (~7.00 Points)
• Soil Quality: Full Weight (~7.00 Points)
• Energy-Efficiency Score: Full Weight (~7.00 Points)

Eco-Friendly Behaviors – Total Points: 35

• Green Buildings: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
• Total Capacity of Solar PV Systems Installed per Household: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
• Share of Renewable Energy Consumption: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
• Energy Consumption per Capita: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
• Gasoline Consumption (in Gallons) per Capita: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
• Daily Water Consumption per Capita: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
• Share of “Smart” Electricity Meters: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
• Alternative-Fuel Vehicles per Capita: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
• Alternative-Fuel Stations per Capita: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
• Green Transportation: Full Weight (~32.50 Points)
• Average Commute Time by Car: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
• Share of Recycled Municipal Solid Waste: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
• Certified Organic Farms per Capita: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)
• Corporate Clean Energy Procurement Index Score: Full Weight (~2.50 Points)

Climate-Change Contributions – Total Points: 30

• Carbon-Dioxide Emissions per Capita: Full Weight (~7.50 Points)
• Methane Emissions per Capita: Full Weight (~7.50 Points)
• Nitrous-Oxide Emissions per Capita: Full Weight (~7.50 Points)
• Fluorinated Greenhouse-Gas Emissions per Capita: Full Weight (~7.50 Points)

 

Sources: Data used to create this ranking were collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, American Chemistry Council, United Health Foundation, Natural Resources Defense Council, International Plant Nutrition Institute, American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, Green Building Council, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Department of Energy, United States Department of Agriculture, Information Technology Industry Council, Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Information Administration and U.S. Geological Survey.

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