A green roof on top of Chicago's City Hall.

Folks living in North America (even folks reading Listicles) hear a lot about how much better Europe and parts of Asia are handling the imminent environmental apocalypse. However, it’s not entirely true. We’re building wind farms, we’re investing in high speed railways, and we’ve got some cities that are doing everything they can to lead a lazy nation into a more sustainable future.

On which topic, TreeHugger offers this helpful listicle outlining 5 Green Advances in U.S. Cities. Of course each of these green initiatives are only implemented in one or a few cities, and other urban centers are slowly starting to follow their cue. Incidentally, we’re very jealous of people in San Francisco and Minneapolis (and Ottawa) because they have curbside compost pick-ups.