“Greendex” Ranks America Last
According to National Geographic’s 2010 Greendex survey, Americans scored worst environmental footprints among the world’s top nations. America did make some strides by improving their rankings from last year’s survey. India, Brazil and China received the top rankings of the survey.
So what exactly is this survey and what it is comprised of?
Started just 2 years ago in 2008, the Greendex survey in order to measure the environmental impact consumers choices are having on the environment. The survey began polling consumers from 14 different nations, but now polls 17,000 consumers from 17 different nations. There were initial concerns about the environmental impact that consumers in developing nations have on the environment from the survey’s results. Those same results also indicated that welathier nations actually were having a much large impact on the environment than the others, even though they could be making smarter and more sustainable choices.
There are 4 major cateogires including housing, transportation, food and consumer goods in which the survey measures. The Greendex Score is generated through a complex algorithm based on the consumer patterns retrieved from the results of each consumer within their nation.
If you would like to get much more in-depth results about the survey or its results, be sure to check out National’s Geographic’s Greendex site.
Comments
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June 7th, 2010
Unfortunately its true, no matter how much we promote and advertise a better environment, the countries that are wealthier are always a bigger threat to the nature.
I didn’t realize they had started this project. What a great way to document and understand better how we affect the environment over the years.
Although us Brits aren’t at quite at the bottom of the Greendex list we’re ashamedly very close. Its rather sad. But at least the figures are finally being published in an easy to understand format, it enables joe public to see how bad things are and how slowly things are improving. With this information hopefully more people will feel empowered to do their little bit to help save the environment.
In my opinion this ranking system is a bit misleading. It is leaving the companies and manufacturing plants out of the equation. Yes the richer countries spend more which ultimately leads to more pollution per consumer. Meanwhile it is the factories in certain developing nations that are producing a large amount of the pollution. Who do you blame though? The consumers or the ones producing these goods at minimal costs at the expense of the environment? It’s all one big cycle.