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.
President Barack Obama today ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to review its previous refusal to allow California and more than a dozen other states to raise emissions standards above and beyond the national standard. The Bush administration had denied the requests.
“Instead of serving as a partner, Washington stood in their way,” President Obama said. “The days of Washington dragging its heels are over.”
And in what he called “a down payment on a broader and sustained effort to reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” President Obama directed the Department of Transportation to establish higher fuel efficiency standards for carmakers’ 2011 model year. The standard, known as Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE), was established in 1975 in the wake of the Arab Oil Embargo.
Every day at work, you are surrounded by waste that could be easily converted into social nutrition for your community. Have you ever counted all the broken or outdated computers, monitors, printers, phones, desks, and chairs gathering dust?
Many innovators are turning their trash into food by partnering with nonprofit groups with expertise in preparing used items for community distribution. Electro-Motive, a LaGrange, Illinois–based manufacturer of electric-diesel locomotives, took a novel approach to a recent company-wide upgrade of its computers. Instead of throwing out 700 old computer workstations, the company donated them to Chicago’s Computers for Schools, a nonprofit that refurbishes computers for local school systems. And when executives discovered that the recycling program was popular with employees, they organized a three-day recycling drive. Employee enthusiasm was so high that organizers created a follow-up event for the general public at Chicago’s United Center. Between the two events, more than 80,000 pounds of computer and office equipment were collected.
This week, for the first time in the United States, an auction was held allowing power plants to bid against each other for the right to spew carbon dioxide into the air.
The goal, of course, is to reduce atmospheric carbon by finding the best way of putting a price tag on it for polluters. Ten Eastern states — Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont — have formed the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (or RGGI, pronounced “Reggie”) to coordinate their efforts by placing mandatory overall caps on emissions levels, then auctioning off allowances for CO2 emissions that can be traded between companies. As a result, companies will have a financial incentive to clean up their own act as quickly as possible.
Old computers do not have to end up in the landfill and in Texas, they won’t. Thanks to new legislation (House Bill 2714) that took effect Sept. 1, all computer makers are now responsible for recycling their products.
Texas is the fourth state to have such a law, says Jeff Jacoby, staff director with the nonprofit Texas Campaign for the Environment (TCE), which was one of the bill’s main advocates. The other states are Minnesota, Maine and Washington.
Companies such as Dell,Hewlett Packard and Apple, as well as mom-and-pop operations, are required to provide free and convenient recycling to their customers, or they will not be able to sell computers to anyone in Texas, under the law.
