This may be one of Germany’s most sustainable cities. So what is Freiburg doing right?

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By Alisha McDarris, Adventure.com. 

Excerpt: ...transforming Freiburg into the sustainable beacon it is—with its passive homes (homes designed to make the most of natural light and heat), solar plants, and emphasis on public transportation—has been very intentional.... it’s been a destination driven toward innovation, from championing renewable energies like solar and wind, to reducing vehicular traffic with functional public transit and encouraging cycling—Radstation near the central transit station houses hundreds of bikes in an automated storage center—all of which has earned it the nickname, ‘Green City’. ...In Freiburg, the public transit system, consisting of trams and buses, is designed so that no residence is more than 400 meters from any public transport stop—it makes the car I drove into town feel utterly irrelevant. Indeed, I didn’t use it again until it was time to leave the city and return home. And that’s the point. ...there are incentives which encourage citizens to make more sustainable choices, for example encouraging parents to use cloth diapers instead of disposables, and offering discounts for residents who compost their green waste—which is often sent to wood-fueled heat and power stations where it’s fermented and converted into electricity.... 

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