Prototype Issue
Eco Roundup
By Kate Lutz
(page 1 of 2)It's funny how a concept so necessary to the future health of our planet can get so played out. Although it seems like going green is a trend, the positive implications it has on the environment is essential.
Leaf Through This
How do the eco-conscious find the goods and services that speak to their lifestyle? They let their fingers do the walking—through Greenopia, LA’s very own guide to living green. With more than 900 listings on environmentally conscious businesses—from beauty salons, dry cleaners and furniture stores to maid services, pet stores and wedding planners, this is the one-stop guide to buying green.
Greenopia’s founder, Gay Browne, realized the need for such a guide after searching for green businesses that could help her build her environmentally friendly home.
Ferris Kawar is director of new products and sales at Greenopia. “Many consumers are savvy eco-grocery shoppers, or they may drive a hybrid car, but a lot of times that’s where it ends,” Kawar says. “People just don’t have time to research what products and services are available. When a person uses this book, it becomes clear how many ways you can contribute to a local green economy.”
Greenopia worked with experts to create baseline criteria to rate a vendor’s greenness. All entries receive a “leaf” rating of between one and four leaves, indicating their eco-friendly status. “To get awarded one leaf, a product or service has to be at least 25% green,” Kawar says.
Members of the Greenopia team went door to door interviewing businesses from the Valley to West LA, Pasadena and San Pedro to learn which products and services have the green edge. Kawar discovered eco-friendly merchants few people knew about, and often found them struggling to keep their businesses going. Since being featured in the guide, some have expanded threefold and others have gone back to the guide to find out how to improve their green rating for the 2008 edition.
“It’s the greening of the LA market, one purchase at a time,” Kawar says. www.greenopia.com
Keeping Ocean Waste at Bay
There is a new international travel destination—the Isle of Plastic. Twice the size of Texas, this bizarre mass of plastic and trash resides—and grows—north of Hawaii where the North Pacific currents meet. Some of it floated there from the California coast and from as far away as Russia; some of it was transported there by ships that go dump in the night.
But the plastic-waste problem in our oceans looms much closer to home: An estimated 3.5 million tons of trash floats directly off the California coast, threatening the local marine life that ingests the material.
Sarah Abramson is a staff scientist at Heal the Bay, a nonprofit environmental group based in Santa Monica. Abramson asserts that more than a million seabirds, 100,000 marine mammals and countless fish die in the clutches of our plastic-waste stream.
Enter the California Ocean Protection Council, a 2-year-old state agency that passed a landmark resolution in February on reducing and preventing marine debris. With the help of 25 state and national environmental organizations, Heal the Bay amended the resolution to incorporate timelines and target reductions.
Ocean environmentalists are now backing a five-bill legislative package—known as the Pacific Protection Initiative—designed to enforce the resolution. The Pacific Protection Initiative is co-sponsored by Heal the Bay, Environment California, Californians Against Waste and San Diego Coastkeeper. According to Abramson, the passing of this initiative would pave the way for a ban on plastic packaging that contains toxic chemicals; laws against industrial polluters; a ban on the use of polystyrene (Styrofoam) in food and beverage containers at state facilities; and a requirement that all single-use food packages be either compostable or recyclable.
“It’s the greening of the LA market, one purchase at a time.”—Ferris Kawar
The final vote on the Pacific Protection Initiative is in August. “Now is the time for local citizens to weigh in and support these bills,” Abramson says. “Anyone who wants to keep this plastic island and our trash stream from growing can contact their district representatives and encourage them to support these bills.”
For information on the status of the initiative and on how you can support it: www.healthebay.org/currentissues/ppi/default.asp
Fight the Power
The city of Vernon, an industrial hub southeast of LA whose motto is “Exclusively Industrial,” is looking for a new energy fix. Its planned solution? A 943-megawatt natural-gas-fired power plant almost twice the size of Dodger Stadium.
“Another greenhouse[gas]emitting power plant is not the solution in this era of climate change,” says Robert Cabrales, a community organizer with the California social-justice organization Communities for a Better Environment, whose Southern California headquarters is in Huntington Park. “We want Vernon to build with renewable energy and follow the state mandate for increasing the renewable portfolio by 20% by 2010.”
According to estimates cited on CBE’s website, the proposed plant would release nearly 900 tons of air pollution and 147 tons of particulate matter annually.
More than 50,000 people are employed in 1,000 city factories, warehouses and related businesses in Vernon. Many of these workers live in neighboring communities whose residents are already experiencing health problems related to Vernon’s industrial and traffic pollution. One hospital, in Huntington Park, serves the entire region.
Discussion