Chicago’s greenest person?
Tempo went hunting for the Chicagoan who has the lowest carbon footprint. We found him: Ken Dunn, who rides his bike year-round, eats homegrown vegetables and otherwise leads a sustainable lifestyle.
By Nara Schoenberg | Chicago Tribune reporter September 23, 2008
Ken Dunn, who is considered the greenest person in Chicago, eats discarded or expired food that he stores in his refrigerator. (Tribune photo by Zbigniew Bzdak / September 2, 2008)
How green is Ken Dunn?
Greener than the social worker who last year commuted 16 miles a day by bike in the dead of winter.
Greener than the woman whose rooftop solar panels generate so much electricity she donates the excess to Commonwealth Edison.
Greener than the Chicago apartment-dweller who composts his own urine and excrement.
And in an age when Hollywood celebrities are flaunting their hybrid cars and brandishing their reusable shopping bags, Dunn, who grew up on a Kansas farm, whittled down his carbon footprint the old-fashioned way: by riding a beat-up old bike, air-drying his clothes, eating the vegetables he grows in his backyard and heating his home with a wood-burning furnace.
