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.
Greenpeace followed up the release this week of its latest Carting Away the Oceans scorecard with a friendly and fishy demonstration outside Trader Joe’s stores in San Francisco.
Greenpeace members, two of whom dressed as orange roughy and others who parodied Trader’s by wearing Hawaiian shirts mimicking the store’s trademark uniform, handed out information on why its important to select and buy seafood that can be replenished and also asked prospective customers to sign petition postcards to privately held grocery company.
When you fish for seafood at your local grocery, it can be difficult to tell whether you are supporting sustainable fishing practices.
Was the snapper you selected caught using legal, sustainable fishing practices? Should you even be buying it? Is the Chilean Sea Bass you just purchased on the “Red List” of jeopardized marine species? Does the grocery you’re patronizing buy seafood certified by the Marine Stewardship Council?
Green-minded visitors to northern Colorado should consider a tour of the New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins. New Belgium, best known for its Fat Tire Amber Ale brand, is one of the most environmentally progressive breweries in the world. The brewery has used wind-powered electricity since 1999, and green-design methods have been incorporated throughout the company. I visited the headquarters on a recent trip and discovered that many aspects of company life are dedicated to sustainability.
New Belgium sponsors a charity bike-and-music event called “Tour de Fat” in eleven cities in the United States, including Austin, Chicago, Minneapolis and Portland, that encourages people to trade their car for a bike, at least for a day. At Tour de Fat events, beer is served in compostable cups, and performers take to a solar-powered stage. (A Tour de Fat schedule is online.)
Opening this week at New York City’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the exhibition “Design for a Living World” explores possibilities for ecological sensitivity in a realm of top-tier design work — from fashion star Isaac Mizrahi to artist/architect Maya Lin — in which conspicuous over-consumption is often the rule.
Sodexo, a food service and facilities management company responsible for millions of cafeteria meals across the country, and students at Ithaca College recently joined together to green the college’s dining operations.
Count the city of Houston among the growing number of municipalities and groups gathering up old stuff — to keep it out of the landfill and recycle it for new uses.
In this case, Houston is now accepting donations of construction and home materials, which will be made available to any nonprofit organization at no charge.
Want to spend the summer restoring a wildlife habitat on the Dolores River? There is a camp for that. Or would you prefer learning first-hand how to cultivate a thriving organic farm? There is a camp for that, too.
With more than 5,000 overnight camps and more than 1,400 teen tours across the nation, there is a camp to suit the interests of almost every child. But we’re not talking basic glue noodles to paper, play tether ball and call-it-a-day sort of camps. We’re talking traveling the world, adapting to foreign cultures, nurturing wildlife and embracing conservation.
And the best part is these summer options are incorporating green practices and green teachings into every aspect of their programs.
It can be a challenge to update an historic building, let alone transform it into a model of green modernity. Rattling pipes crowd walls that need new duct work; old fixtures adhere stubbornly to aging walls and facades retain character, but heating and cooling - not so much.
Still, the historic Heathman Hotel in downtown Portland has recently undergone two green upgrades, and is determined to become a model of sustainability, while sacrificing none of its landmark historic elegance.
The 81-year-old Heathman, like most vintage urban hotels, has been through many nips and tucks over the decades. It got its first green redo about three years ago with the renovation of the guest bedrooms and living areas and the addition of a new heating and cooling system. The project, which won financial incentives from the Energy Trust of Oregon, and included switching to CFL light bulbs, proved enlightening: The changes trimmed energy usage by 20 to 30 percent at the 150-room hotel.
“My return on investment, we realized that in less than two years; a year and half for the HVAC investment,” said hotel general manager Chris Erickson. “It was a wise idea and now as we move into the future, it’s all straight to the bottom line.”
Every Tuesday night at 7:00, Jean Ponzi steps behind the microphone as the host and producer for her weekly environmental talk show, “Earthworms,” where she interviews local, regional and national guests on the topics of sustainable living and being environmentally conscious on St. Louis’s community radio KDHX. The show has been running for 21 years and Ponzi has been talking about going green long before it was the cool thing to do.
“For nearly 20 years, the topics I care about were marginalized in our society - then in 2007 green got ‘in’. Many sources are now repeating the kinds of messages I delivered as a minority voice for years,” Ponzi says. This new popularity helps her to deliver a much deeper message about the human interconnection with Earth’s resources, she explains: “I am able to talk about what our species needs to learn to coexist in healthy, sustainable relationships with every other kind of living thing on Earth.”
“Over the years, Jean has presented conversations with countless authors, researchers, teachers and other experts, and it is amazing to me how much information she conveys each week in such an entertaining manner,” said Larry Weir, operations manager for KDHX. When not behind the radio mic, Ponzi’s job is to educate the people and businesses of St. Louis how to drop their wasteful ways in exchange for a sustainable lifestyle.
The multi-edged issues facing the travel industry as it moves toward becoming more green are not hard to envision. First, there’s that sticky matter of getting there - by jet? by car?
There’s a certain built-in, un-green aspect at the core of tourism.
But that said, there are many ways travelers can be less consumptive and more supportive of eco-friendly practices. They can stay at conservation-minded hotels; places that don’t wash your sheets automatically every day; that serve local food and arrange low-impact tours for guests.
Online travel company Travelocity has taken its first steps toward helping consumers find and patronize greener destinations by launching an eco-friendly directory. The Green Directory aims to help travelers sort the green from the “green washed,” and so far features more than 200 hotels and resorts many of which already claim to be carbon neutral, according to the company.
The Ethisphere Institute, publisher of the quarterly Ethisphere magazine, today announced a list of what it calls the “Global Sustainability Centers of 2020.”
Listing ten large and ten mid-sized cities (a population of 600,000 was the dividing line), the report honors municipalities who have built “strong and principled foundations” and long-term city planning.
Marin County dairy farmer Albert Straus started moving toward a “slower” way of doing business back in 1994, when his family-owned farm, Straus Family Creamery, became the only organic dairy west of the Mississippi.
Straus, whose organic ice cream will be scooped out at the Ice Cream Pavilion at Slow Food Nation, has been producing organic milk, yogurt, butter and ice cream under the family name ever since. Straus grew up on his father’s conventional dairy farm in Marshall, California, a town so small it had a one-room schoolhouse, on the shores of Tomales Bay in western Marin County, 60 miles north of San Francisco. He joined the farm as a partner in 1977 and made the risky, but prescient decision to transition the operation from conventional to organic in the early 1990s.
“Someone approached me about doing organic milk for ice cream,” Straus said in an interview in a makeshift conference room above his dairy. “I had no clue what it was. It took me three-and-a-half years to figure out what “organic” meant. No one else was doing it. There was one small co-op in Wisconsin, Organic Valley, but that was it.”
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Greenpeace members, two of whom dressed as orange roughy and others who parodied Trader’s by wearing Hawaiian shirts mimicking the store’s trademark uniform, handed out information on why its important to select and buy seafood that can be replenished and also asked prospective customers to sign petition postcards to privately held grocery company.
