EnvironmentLA - The City's official site for information about projects and programs that are making Los Angeles more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power - LADWP offers environmental Green LA programs, including Trees for a Green LA, Energy Efficiency for a Green LA, Solar Energy for a Green LA, Electric Vehicles for a Green LA, Green Power for a Green LA, Recycling for a Green LA and Educational Services for a Green LA.
Green LA Action Plan - The City's official plan to improve energy conservation, transition to renewable power sources, and change the ways citizens commute to work and school.
US Green Building Council-LA - A resource for agencies, municipalities, professionals and companies interested in sustainable, green buildings.
Hollywood’s feature films are greening up their productions thanks to the Producers Guild of America (PGA) Green Committee. Founded in 2008, the committee is reaching out to productions worldwide, reducing their carbon footprint and leading the industry in the fight against climate change. They are replanting trees, keeping Styrofoam out of their catering services, and recycling costumes, paints, props and fabrics.
Officials gathered in a tiny corner of Utah yesterday to celebrate a new age of energy production that will carry the power of the wind to where it is needed most, in this case, to population centers in California.
The occasion was the opening of the “Milford Wind Corridor Project,” which is expected to generate enough electricity to power about 45,000 Southern California homes.
Eco-LA is “Taking It All Off For… ART/3”
The Eco-LogicalART Gallery, 4829 W. Blvd, LA, CA, 90019 (just east of La Brea)
Oct. 10- Nov. 8, 2009. Curtain drop at 7 p.m.; Opening 6-10 p.m.
Peter Schulberg and the nonprofit Eco-LogicalART Gallery announced that “Taking It All Off For ART/3” will premiere Oct. 10th, 2009 at 7 p.m. The exhibit features a “live” curtain drop to reveal a 14-foot by 48-foot art piece painted on a recycled billboard and installed directly over the Eco-LA Gallery. Now called “Second Saturday at Eco-LA” once installed, the art over the gallery will be seen 35,000 times daily and over 1 million times by months end.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that it will become increasingly fashionable, practical and accepted to do away with your perfectly coiffed green velvet, water-sucking, chemically dependent lawn…and replace it with…a vegetable garden!
I’m not saying the neighbors will rush into your newly composted, tomato and potato plot with tambourines or anything, just that they might not file a homeowner’s association complaint.
There are just too many trendsetters in this arena for the concept of literally laying down roots to not take hold.
Remember the Eat the View campaign? A modest kitchen gardener in Maine and his like-minded buddies pushed through a petition with some 100,000 signers convincing the Obamas to convert some turf to veggie gardening at the White House. The presidential garden, although still surrounded by fields of grass, has been warmly watched by veggie gardeners and struck just the right note in this year of economic hardship.
You’re thinking you should have a green wedding, go local with the food, maybe order some sustainable, um, items….
Truth is, you’re not really sure what a green wedding entails. Local greens for the rehearsal dinner? Elephant poop name plates? Pistachio bridesmaid’s dresses. Argh!
You can go as far as you want, or you can go all out, says green guru Sarah Shewey, founder of Pink Cloud Events, a full-service, LA-based events company that specializes in green affairs.
Los Angeles County has more businesses than any other county in California that stand to benefit from the state’s leadership on climate change, according to a first-of-its-kind map of green businesses in California released today. The map was released in conjunction with an Environmental Defense Fund report outlining how the Los Angeles area can leverage its environmental leadership to create economic opportunities.
The California Green Economy map features more than 2,200 businesses statewide in four categories — energy generation, energy efficiency, green building and transportation — that are likely to grow as California transitions to a low-carbon economy.
Watt Plaza, a twin 23-story office tower complex encompassing 900,000 square feet in the heart of Century City, has been awarded Gold LEED Existing Buildings Operations and Maintenance (EB O&M) certification by the U.S. Green Building Council, making it the first office building in Los Angeles to achieve this distinction in this category.
The USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service says it will add to California’s air quality resources. With the grant, California has received a total of $20.9 million from NRCS to help farmers and ranchers reduce air quality emissions from off-road mobile or stationary agricultural sources.
The primary goal of this new portion of the Environmental Quality Incentives Program is to help farmers and ranchers attain the standards set by the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. Producers in the 36 California counties that are currently not in compliance with one or more of these standards are eligible for the program.
“These funds should help California producers comply with local and state regulations,” Dave White, chief of the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, said in a statement. “We believe agriculture can be on the leading edge of setting a cleaner, greener example for protecting the air we all breathe. We’re doing what we can to help in that pursuit — technically and financially.”
White was named chief of NRCS in March. With approximately 12,000 employees and an annual budget in excess of $3 billion, NRCS is the nation’s leading agency in conserving natural resources on private lands.
Montage Beverly Hills, the 201-room luxury hotel that opened November 2008 in Beverly Hills, has earned Gold certification under the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED for New Construction rating system.
This is the first certified ultra-luxury hotel in Southern California for LEED for New Construction and one of only four Gold certified hotels worldwide designated by this third-party benchmarking system designed to encourage the design, the construction and the operations of more sustainable buildings. Montage Beverly Hills is also the first newly constructed mixed-use hotel and residential project to be LEED certified as a single development, denoting it as a high performance building that is a responsible, efficient and healthy place to live and work.
“We’re gratified to have created and be operating Southern California’s first hotel and residential project to obtain Gold level certification,” Alan J. Fuerstman, founder and CEO of Montage Hotels & Resorts, said in a statement.
Tesla Motors announced it will opening a sales and service center in London, the first of three European stores that the electric vehicle manufacturer plans to launch this year.
The London facility will open this spring at 49-51 Cheval Place in the Knightsbridge district.
Tesla says it is scouting sites in Munich and Monaco. The company, based in San Carlos, Calif., plans to delivering cars to European customers beginning in late
Do not underestimate the excitement of Earth Day. Trust us. There is a lot to look forward to this year – the Green Apple Festival and Earth Day Network are making sure of it.
The two organizations have teamed up to put together the largest Earth Day festival in America. The event will take place April 17 to 19 (the weekend before the official Earth Day on April 22) and features simultaneous service events in ten major cities across the nation including New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.
Learning not to waste – whether it’s food, electricity or water – is not only good in these economic times, but even more important, it’s beneficial for the environment.
The Nalgene Least Wasteful City Study, released this week, ranks the country’s 25 largest metropolitan areas on wasteful behavior. San Francisco led the group with the least wasteful habits, while Atlanta ranked at the bottom.