Let's Add Some Color to the Greening of America

They shouldn't. History shows that low-income communities have always been among the nation's most active recyclers. They've had to be. New York's sanitation department reports that low-income areas generate the lowest recycling rates in the city but also produce among the smallest amounts of waste -- partly because residents reuse items more often and do more of their own recycling.

Even now, in my mixed-race, mixed-income neighborhood in Chicago, scavengers prowl the alleys and dig through dumpsters in search of aluminum cans, steel scraps and appliances that they see as repairable and salable.

And a series of studies over the past decade in New Jersey, California and Scotland has confirmed what grass-roots groups around the United States already knew: When people understand how an environmental program works, how it benefits them and how they can join in, they recycle -- regardless of their ethnicity or economic status.

Stereotyping has also hampered other parts of the environmental movement. People of color make up only about 15 percent of the staffs of government environmental agencies and mainstream environmental organizations, according to a recent study by University of Michigan sociologist Dorceta E. Taylor. "It's this running stereotype Black people aren't interested in the environment," she says. But it's simply not true.

Taylor also found that minorities account for more than three of every four staffers of environmental-justice groups such as the Little Village. Often run on a shoestring budget, these organizations focus on the ways that pollution and lax enforcement hit poor and minority communities the hardest.

Let's be frank: The people most affected by environmental degradation aren't white or well-off. Fifty-six percent of the 9.2 million people who live within 1.86 miles of the country's most serious hazardous waste sites are people of color, according to a 2007 report for the United Church of Christ. Seven in 10 people living near clusters of toxic waste sites are minorities, the report found. Moreover, doctors believe that environmental factors may be partly to blame for the higher rates of asthma, cardiovascular disease, birth defects and cancer found among people of color and low-income whites, according to several studies.

United Nations scientists have reported that unless climate change is countered, it is likely to cause ecological emergencies and dire food shortages, particularly among the world's poorest. If that's not alarming on a moral level, it should be on a political one. Social chaos breeds political chaos, and we've seen how rogue leaders can set up dangerous shops in lawless corners of the world.

Still, we are far from doomsday. In fact, our environmental challenges may offer the best opportunity since the decline of U.S. manufacturing to create jobs in depressed parts of the country.

Recycling offers a great example again. While the practice may have started as environmental activism, it's now a powerful economic force. More than 1 million people are employed by recycling firms, which generate more than $236 billion in annual revenue, according to a 2001 study by the National Recycling Coalition.

Or, consider the urban areas pockmarked with "brownfields" -- plots of formerly industrial, abandoned land that can't be reused until they have been cleared of pollution. There are close to half a million of them across the country, mostly in poor, minority neighborhoods, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Each brownfield costs an average of $500,000 to $600,000 to clean up, according to the Northeast Midwest Institute. That's a hefty tab for state and federal governments to pick up, but consider the return on this investment: Every acre of brownfield redevelopment saves 4.5 acres of undeveloped land, and every dollar invested generates $4.50 to $10 in economic benefits. These benefits include new business development, tax revenue and jobs, according to a forthcoming report by the institute.

Turning brownfields into parks or gardens would also have social and economic benefits. University of Illinois research shows that violence decreases when neighborhoods are greener, probably because trees, flowers and gardens create a greater sense of community and make people feel more relaxed.