Pittsburgh was once famously described by Boston writer James Parton as looking like ‘hell… Pittsburgh was once famously described by Boston writer James Parton as looking like ‘hell with the lid off’ when he visited the city in 1868. The combination of steel mills and smokestacks, manufacturing centers and general grime obviously didn’t leave a good impression, and even today Pittsburgh has a hard time living down the reputation of being the ‘Smoky City,’ full of pollution and waste.

So it’s nothing but good news to hear that in a survey released by the drink-container company Nalgene, Pittsburgh was ranked the 14th overall least wasteful city in a survey of 25 major metropolitan areas across the United States.

The survey randomly sampled residents of different cities around the country and included questions about personal behavior related to sustainability and recycling, such as whether individuals use a rain barrel, use reusable grocery bags or turn off the water when brushing their teeth.

Pittsburgh’s rankings went from fourth in the country for use of reusable containers in place of disposable food storage items, to 25th for driving a car for trips less than two miles from home. The top scoring city in the survey was San Francisco, which placed first in many of the categories, including recycling glass and plastics and not using cars for short trips.

Although the survey certainly isn’t too scientifically rigorous, it shows a growing movement toward sustainable behavior across the country. It’s good that, even though not everyone is perfect, a vast majority of people seem to be making small steps toward becoming more environmentally friendly.

And the fact that former industrial centers like Pittsburgh, Detroit, which ranked 13th, and Cleveland, which was 16th, have managed to clean up their acts and increase their efforts toward sustainable behavior can be seen as nothing other than positive.

But this doesn’t mean that the people of Pittsburgh, or of any city at all, should feel complacent and enjoy their slightly-more-sustainable lifestyles. Instead, we should be concerned with increasing the presence of sustainable behavior, waste reduction and recycling in our everyday lives.

Surveys like this should really be seen and used as something to galvanize people into action. For instance, many of the items on the survey were almost trivially small — remembering to turn lights off when you leave a room, buying secondhand clothing and electronics or avoiding bottled water in favor of purification pitchers and water coolers.

Not many people can honestly say that turning off the lights or not running the sink while they brush their teeth is a major inconvenience to them, but these are the sorts of behaviors that, over time and across a large population, can have a substantial effect. And for those ready to have a larger impact, options like composting, using a rain barrel or taking public transit can be even more significant.

So while we can enjoy being ranked comparatively well, we should also keep in mind that our behavior and attitudes should only improve from here. With some effort, maybe we can manage to beat out Detroit in the next survey.

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