Coffee Drinking Good For The Environment

What if we told you that drinking coffee could save the world? You'd think we were off our rockers, but thanks to the results of a new study, a correlation has been found between America's top coffee-drinking cities and eco-friendliness.

By GreenraystudioAlex Upshur (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Specifically, the cities with the most coffee shops are also the cities with most businesses that have adopted environmentally-friendly practices. The study looked at a sample group of 728 cities with populations of 50,000 people and that most of the coffee-concentrated areas are out west. Not surprisingly, six of the top ten cities are in Washington State. Santa Monica is the java shop "hub" so-to-speak while Seattle (Starbucks's place of origin) was the green. Here is a definitive list of the finalists:

Top 10 coffee-drinking cities in the U.S.:

1. Santa Monica, CA - 5.1 coffee shops per capita; 3.6 GA score
2. Redmond, WA - 4.9 coffee shops per capita; 4.3 GA score
3. Everett, WA - 4.5 coffee shops per capita; 3.9 GA score
4. Medford, OR - 4.4 coffee shops per capita; 4 GA score
5. Vancouver, WA - 4.2 coffee shops per capita; 4 GA score
6. Sarasota, FL - 4.1 coffee shops per capita; 2.4 GA score
7. Seattle, WA - 4.1 coffee shops per capita; 4.4 GA score
8. Auburn, WA - 4 coffee shops per capita; 3.7 GA score
9. Minneapolis, MN - 3.9 coffee shops per capita; 3.5 GA score
10. Bellingham, WA - 3.9 coffee shops per capita; 4.2 GA score

Image courtesy of infogroup