Eco-friendliness and personal finance are related. Our environmental and financial needs are the same in many areas: providing ourselves with sustainable, clean drinking water and food, for example. We also spend money through our own consumption and taxes in support of environmental security.
In the past year, the U.S. has seen an especially devastating amount of natural disasters. And the U.S. was home to three of the world’s costliest disasters in 2018. Two of those were Hurricane Michael and Hurricane Florence, which racked up $16 billion and $14 billion in damage, respectively. Experts attribute the high number of hurricanes to unusually warm Atlantic waters, so it’s possible that living more sustainably and using greener energy sources could prevent us from having quite as bad hurricane seasons in the future.
We should all try to do our part to save the world for future generations. In order to highlight the greenest states and call out those doing a poor job of caring for the environment, WalletHub compared each of the 50 states on 27 key metrics. Our data set ranges from LEED-certified buildings per capita to share of energy consumption from renewable resources. Read on for our findings, expert commentary and our full methodology.
