Portland Fair Trade

Portland is a rare gem of a city. Lovingly nicknamed the Bridge City, Rose City, PDX, and Stump Town, Portlanders love to share why Portland is the place to be. Portland has been named numerous times in travel magazines as one of the best cities to live, from its artsy culture to tech savvy inhabitants. So what really sets Portland apart? Is it the location, the people, or the atmosphere? Well, most Portlanders would say it’s all of those. For a more practical look at what makes Portland unique here is what we have found: Portland is green.

Local Motion

With a thriving public transportation and biking system, Portland is among the top cities actively reducing green house gases each day. The city offers street cars, buses, and an air tram, giving way to 43 miles of railroad transit to the surrounding suburbs. The transit system encourages city dwellers, visitors, and shoppers, to make use of the public transportation by offering zero-pay rides within the downtown area, called “Fairless Square.” Passengers simply hop onboard a bus or street car, ride to their next destination within the city center, and hop off—no pay necessary. As the top rated city for bicyclists, Portland’s biking community raises its own economy. In the mornings a rainbow of vibrantly colored bike commuters rush over the bridges into the heart of the city. An extensive system of bike lanes and newly added street signals create a city aware and respectful of all modes of transportation. Portland’s next move to improve city biking, is the implementation of cycle lanes used commonly throughout European cities. The city plans to slowly experiment with the cycle lanes before making complete overhauls. Read more about cycle lanes in Portland here.

Locavorism

The movement to eat local products and ingredients has become a somewhat mainstream idea in Portland—eating locally, supporting local economies, and reducing green house gasses. Farmers markets in Portland offer weekly gathering, collecting, and exchanging of local veggies, meats, desserts, and breads. In almost every neighborhood Portlanders can stroll outside their doors to a farmers market (Check out this extensive list of Portland farmers markets). Portland restaurants, from cheap to high-price,  have embraced the local food movement by only using local ingredients. Among this group is Hot Lips Pizza, who even offers a list of the origin of their ingredients online. Portland’s ability to use local products probably tops that of most other cities, located in the lush Willamette Valley, giving way heather harvesting, to world-class wines, and local fisheries, beef, pork, and lamb producers. Aside from this Portlanders love to boast about their local breweries and distilleries such as Bridgeport Brewery.

How Do Portland Fair Trade Retailers Fit In?

With such a large and growing culture of conscious-consumers and city dwellers, the fair trade community feels right at home in Portland. Now, to make that community grow, so others look to our city and see that Portlanders not only support their local economies and sustainability, but, also, those whose products the city imports.

To see how Portland’s sustainability matches up to that of other cities, check out this research.

Tags: Green Portland, Locavorism, Portland Fair Trade, Portland Farmers Market, Portland Local Food, Portland Oregon, Portland sustainability, Portland transit, Portland Transportation

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 24th, 2009 at 7:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.