Recycling is the new buzz word in prisons and I’m not talking about the recycling of inmates. Today’s prisons are going green.

Prisons around the United States are busy establishing organic gardens, composting, collecting rainwater, recycling uniforms and creating alternative energy sources such as wind turbines and solar panels. Combined, these efforts will definitely go a long way to reducing each prisons enormous annual carbon footprint. And in the end, who knows, it could be a way helping inmates learn new skills that might reduce the chance of them being recycled back to prison once they are released (the reincarceration rate is abysmal in the United States).

Creating sustainable, energy efficient prisons also reduces costs, something that is extremely important given that the rising prison population is costing the government billions of dollars (and prison is often a for-profit enterprise).

Recently, 6,200 solar panels installed at the Ironwood State Prison in Blythe, California send enough energy back to the grid to power 4,100 homes a year. And one prison in Indiana installed a wind turbine that generates around 10 kilowatts of energy an hour, saving the prison over $2000 a year.

And yet.

To celebrate the greening – both environmental and financial – of the prison system seems an uncomfortable compartmentalization of our existence. The prison system is one currently rife with controversy – and discrimination.

Is this the kind of green we can consider growth?

Image: Mikee Showbiz