Green Zones

Picture a Green Zone as a community transformed–from a highly polluted, economically depressed neighborhood into a vibrant area with green business practices, a healthier environment and a stronger economic future.

The environmental justice battle has traditionally been fought “smokestack by smokestack”—community activists fighting to block a new power plant in a neighborhood already overwhelmed by pollution, or to shut down a chrome-plating plant adjacent to a school. The fight against individual polluters will go on, of course, but the Green Zone concept is an affirmative approach to reduce and prevent pollution—one that looks at the overall environmental and economic health of a community.

The definition of a Green Zone varies from community to community, but there is a common concept: a Green Zone designation provides a local framework to protect the environmental and economic health of a community heavily affected by local pollution.

An entire city could be designated as a Green Zone; or a Green Zone’s boundaries could be defined by those of a particular area within a city where residents live with heavy concentrations of pollution.