Connecticut Green Living

WalletHub, a personal finance website, has lauded our state with green praise once again. We've ranked fifth in the union overall for environmental practices, even tops for water quality. Analysts culled data on everything from rate of waste recycling to soil, air, and water quality. While we weren't high on every criterion, our overall rating was superb. Rankings in order were: #1 Vermont, #2 Massachusetts , #3 Oregon, #4 Washington, and #5 the Nutmeg State . The worst rating on the green scale was Wyoming. I got a chance to send some questions to one of their analysts, Jill Gonzalez. Following is a transcript of that discussion: Jill, explain to me, please, what methods you all used to determine these scores and can you quantify them? We compared the states across three quantifiable categories: 1. Environmental Quality, 2. Eco-Friendly Behaviors and 3. Climate-Change Contributions. These categories were evaluated using 20 relevant key metrics. We then calculated the o...

This article originally appeared on Examiner.com, March 26, 2016. March 2,2017 update: Catch the film on Netflix. "What excited me so much about solar is that here is something we can all access and it’s a disruptive technology. Our electric grid was one of the biggest engineering achievements of the last century – and you put a lowly solar panel on your house and you've disrupted that." - Shalini Kantayya Filmmaker Shalini Kantayya has more accolades than a summer movie premiere has papparazi - from finishing in the top 10 out of 12,000 in FOX's "On the Lot" filmmaking competition produced by Steven Spielberg to being a TED and Sundance Fellow. Of course, this analogy only works until you realize that soon, this talented thirtysomething Hartford native will be bombarded by the press and she'll have as many shutterbugs in her face as she has plaques on the wall. The buzz is simple: this is a young filmmaker who gets what needs to be done. We nee...

In its first-ever endorsement, the eight-year-old U.S. Green Chamber of Commerce promotes Hillary Clinton. According to the Chamber's president Michelle Thatcher, the choice was clear even if it wasn't always easy. After all, representing businesses means representing people of various political orientations. "First and foremost, it was a hard decision because we are such a varied membership, so the biggest implication of course we want to make is to have an effect. The numbers are still so close – this is why we put this out there. We put the country even ahead of our own non-profits," says Thatcher. She says that while endorsing Clinton "wasn't on the forefront" of the Chamber's planning, it made sense from a sustainable business perspective, as well as buinesses and practices they promote. "To do otherwise would be extremely risky," she says. The Chamber's endorsement follows the lead of hundreds of nationally prominent organizat...