As some of you may know, I made the transition this year from working in the Poor People's Movement to working in the Green Movement. This was a long time coming for me. The truth is, I got politicized in 1990, watching Earth Day Specials on Cable TV back home in Pittsburg, Kansas, America. I always wanted to go Green, but it didn't happen, professionally, until I joined Clean Water Action here in Pennsylvania.

Other writers on here probably can do a better job of summing up areas of Green Progress and Green Problems in the last year, but I'll do my best to highlight some of what I have seen during my time here.

1) Recycling. We've come a long way, baby. In 2008, we could, finally, throw it all in one bin. I still kind of feel weird doing it that way. My recycling bin feels more like a garbage can that way, but what the heck? It's way easier.

Then, last week, recycling went weekly. You don't need to remember if you lived in a Blue or Green Zone. Whatever your trash day is, you can also put out your recycling. Hopefully, making it so much easier will lead to larger and larger participation. I'm stunned when I look at the difference between my trash and other people's on my block. Of course, they have families and I'm solo, but still.

The Recycling Alliance, though, is pushing a vision of Zero Waste. Cities like San Francisco have a public composting program, for example. Why can't we?

2. Stormwater. Maybe you didn't realize it, but we all pay a fee for the City to manage stormwater. Every inch of concrete creates a problem during any sort of rain. Water used to go into the ground, but there's not enough ground for it to go into here in cities. Our streets would all turn into rivers if it wasn't for our stormwater management systems. Plus, all that water gathers up the spilled oil, gas and many other pollutants that we leave on the concrete, and it adds up.

We all pay for stormwater management in our water bills, but it's getting really expensive. Starting soon, commercial water customers will pay more if they have lots of paved space. More paving equals a higher stormwater charge. If you mitigate it with porous pavement, digging some up or other tactics that slow the stormwater from getting into the system, then you pay less. In other words, those who create the biggest Stormwater problems are charged the most.

Among those freaking out about the change, longtime Eco-Buddy, Sunoco, has realized that it has an unbelievable amount of impervious surface out there and is creating an unbelievable problem (which will lead to an unbelievably larger bill - let's all shed our tears now. Okay, we're done.).

3. Transit. There's probably nothing we can do about the fact that we have a transit system that assumes that you'd rather live in the suburbs and that Center City is the only place anyone would really want to go to, but I can say this: kudos to SEPTA for finally figuring out that gas prices might actually persuade people to give regional rail and subways a try. The PR campaign finally got started last year. The silence was deafening from SEPTA during the last gas price shock, in 2005, but this time they got their act together and it seems to have made a difference. Hopefully, some people will have gotten accustomed to getting some trashy novel time in on the trains and won't go back to their cars, even now that prices have dropped again.

Areas where we need work:

Trash. This is the trashiest big city in America. It's gross. People don't understand that the trash isn't just unsightly, it's outright unhealthy. The trash we leave around ends up in our stormwater system which ends up in our waterways. In some ways, that means it ends up in our drinking water supply. Gross, gross, gross.

Baltimore has made a difference on trash and pet waste with an aggressive public education campaign. Philadelphia needs to go further. I suggest trash cops with power to shoot on sight. Okay, maybe not shoot on sight, but ticketing would be a good start.

Parking. I hate the PPA. I just had to mention it. If there were some way that paying more for parking financed alternatives to driving, I'd like it. Hell, I'd like it if paying more for parking paid for ANYTHING, but I guess I'm just whistling Dixie.

Natural Gas Drilling. We are all doomed. Have I mentioned that? We are totally doomed. There's an industry coming into our state that has the potential to trash waterways from here to Ohio, and the overwhelming majority of those they are going to trash flow, ultimately, nastily, through Philadelphia.

My organizations motto that "we all live downstream." That's true. And Philadelphians live really, really downstream. This industry is moving like a freight train loaded with gold. It's the best opportunity for new business our state is going to see for a while, which would be awesome if it wasn't just so very, very nasty.

Natural Gas Drilling is coming and it probably wouldn't be wise to stop it, but we could set some good parameters on it so that the land and water won't be totally wrecked.

Philadelphia should exercise its legislative and economic clout to make sure we aren't all drinking saltwater mixed with who-knows-what.