Portland Ranked Among Greenest Cities in U.S.

Thursday, October 12, 2017

GoLocalPDX News Team

The City of Portland is ranked as one of the greenest cities in the country.

According to a recent study completed by WalletHub, Portland is the ninth greenest city in the U.S.

“Apart from employing Americans, clean energy and other “green” practices, such as recycling programs and urban agriculture, benefit the environment and public health, all of which contribute to America’s bottom line, according to many experts. Recognizing those advantages, cities across the U.S. have aligned their sustainability efforts with their economic goals and in turn have received handsome returns on such investments,” said WalletHub.

Portland’s Rankings

69th Best - Environment
4th Best - Transportation
15th Best - Energy Sources
7th Best - Lifestyle & Policy
4th - Highest Bike Score
3rd - Most Farmers Markets per Capita

The Rankings

See the Full Rankings in the Map Below

Source: WalletHub

The Method

In order to determine the greenest cities in America, WalletHub’s analysts compared the 100 most populated cities across four key dimensions: 1) Environment, 2) Transportation, 3) Energy Sources and 4) Lifestyle & Policy.

We evaluated those dimensions using 22 relevant metrics. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the greenest practices and policies.

Although recycling is vital to the sustainability efforts of each city, the types and sizes of recycling facilities vary widely by city.

Finally, we determined each city’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its total score and used the resulting scores to rank-order the cities in our sample. In determining our sample, we considered only the “city proper” in each case and excluded surrounding cities in the metro area.

Environment – Total Points: 40