Greeninteractshere

By: Noel O'Connor, Content Writer

I won't lie. I hate how I'm one of the millions of people in Los Angeles who have to commute to work five days a week because I know how bad it is for the environment. Every time I see the smog settling in over the Valley I think to myself, "You're not doing your part to help the earth." I consume about a tank of gas a week. That's 12-13 gallons. I know that may not seem like much, but I bet the earth would disagree with you.

I live in a community where I can pretty much get anything I need within three miles: there are banks, stores, coffee shops, restaurants and the beach. So, to honor my car and the earth, I do my best to keep the car in the garage for the entire weekend and walk everywhere. However, in order to do this, I have to plan my big grocery-shopping day before the weekend. I used to do this on Saturdays, but for the past six months I've taken the time after work on Fridays to do my big shop. This is not only more convenient (think of how many people spend their Friday night grocery shopping -- if you go where I go, not a lot), it frees up my weekend to not have to deal with lines, crowds or driving.

I might not be able to walk to a movie theatre, but I can walk to the beach and soak in the environment that I'm trying to save. Two days of not being in my car may not seem like a long time, but it feels like a vacation to me. Plus, I save money on gas for the week.

I think it's become easy for people in Los Angeles to just get in their cars and drive somewhere that's easily within walking distance. Things may not be as compact as New York City here, but we are in a city. Whether you live in Venice, Silver Lake or Sherman Oaks, make note of the places you can walk to and give your wallet, your car, and the earth a weekend break.

By Erin Moyer, Content Manager

Being green is about the little things, at least in my life. We can't all afford to make our homes 100% eco-friendly, or build them from the ground up to incorporate the latest in green technology. So, for the majority of us, it's about the small, yet impactful choices we make on a day-to-day basis.

I'm a girl that likes to shop. I don't discriminate on the type of shopping... grocery shopping, clothes, furniture, antiques, etc. Being the shopaholic that I am, I've collected numerous plastic and paper bags from stores, and I try my hardest to reuse every single one of them. But sometimes the pile gets so overwhelming that I just have to toss them out. And the answer to your question is yes, I shop THAT MUCH.

The last time I had to throw out a pile of bags, I got to thinking. One of my favorite beach bags has always been my monogrammed bag from Lands' End. Their large open tote bag can carry A LOT! So, I figured this was the perfect excuse to order one in every size, different colors of course, and use them at the grocery store and the mall.

I always keep at least one of them in my trunk to grab at any given point. After all, some shopping trips are completely spontaneous. And the nice thing about a lot of stores these days is that for a small amount of money, they sell their own canvas or reusable bags at the checkout counter. So, even if you don't want to bring your own bag to the store, for an extra dollar or so you can still chose to be eco-friendly, and not use plastic or paper bags that will most likely wind up in your trash.

See? It can be easy... and fun... to make a little change that can have an impact!

By: Robb Fritz, Homepage Editor

If you're a dedicated carnivore like myself, it's a difficult prospect to give up eating hamburger, steak, pork chops, etc. Trust me, speaking as a one-time vegetarian who caved one summer at the smell of a steak on the barbecue, I know. But the fact remains that probably nothing a person can do on an individual level has as much of a positive impact on the environment as cutting back on the amount of meat they consume.

Meat production puts an incredible strain on the world's land resources -- using up to 30% of the Earth's entire land mass either directly or indirectly -- and actually has more impact in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases it pumps into the air than even petroleum-fueled transportation. When major agri-business is clearing the rainforests (which is itself enormously damaging for the environment) they're doing it largely to make room for meat production. In terms of water use, it takes 2500 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat. And then of course there are the ethical issues -- not to mention dietary and quality considerations -- surrounding the conditions under which most livestock is raised and killed in order to provide the meat consumed worldwide.

I used to get tons of catalogs for stores I've shopped at once, maybe a few times and sometimes from stores I've never even walked into. Considering many of these catalogs are monthly and some are quarterly/seasonal you begin to see a lot of paper coming into your mailbox and right into (hopefully) your recycle bin. Now, wouldn't it just be better if you didn't receive the catalog to begin with? Wouldn't you rather just receive an updated email when a new sale has launched on the stores website? Well, if you're trying to cut back on paper waste or answered "Yes, YES, YYEESS!" to either of the prior questions, then CatalogChoice.org is for you!

Catalog Choice is a free service that lets you communicate your mail preferences to companies. Choose which catalogs you no longer wish to receive. Reduce the amount of unsolicited mail in your mailbox and go paperless. Sound good? Go to https://www.catalogchoice.org/signup" to get started!

In honor of this year's Green Week at NBC I want you all to mark your calendars for Thursday, December 17th. This is the third annual Day Without a Bag!



I support a local organization here in Los Angeles called Heal the Bay and they started this event as a response to plastic waste. According to HTB, Los Angeles County alone uses over 6 billion (with a "b"!) plastic bags a year. And only about 5% of plastic bags are recycled in Los Angeles!

Not to mention the environmental impact of plastic. Here are some tidbits from HTB (you can find more at www.healthebay.org/nobagday ):

1. Plastic lasts hundreds of years or longer in the environment without biodegrading.
2. Plastic is often not economically efficient to recycle, and is mostly shipped to third world countries.
3. The world's largest ocean garbage dump in the North Pacific is currently estimated to be 5 million square miles, larger than the entire United States, where densities of bits of plastic trash have tripled during the last decade. In some parts of the North Pacific, there is six times as much plastic by mass as there is plankton.
4. Styrofoam and plastic bags (which resemble jellyfish or sponges) are mistaken for food or prey by seabirds, marine mammals, fish, and sea turtles.


A turtle ingesting plastic. Photo: Ron Prendergast, Melbourne Zoo. (From Heal the Bay website)

So on December 17th, you will likely be holiday shopping or grocery shopping or maybe just running normal errands. Bring your own bags when you shop! Keep a stash in the trunk of your car and take them into the mall or the market with you. If we can spread the Day Without a Bag to other communities across the nation, imagine how much plastic waste we can save! Hopefully, it will just become habit to bring a reusable bag with you -- making every day a Day Without a Bag!

To learn more about environmental issues on a national level, and to find ways to make a difference in your everyday life, visit The Natural Resources Defense Council's website and click on the tab that says Green Living. Giving up plastic bags is just one example of how simple it can be to make a positive impact on our earth!

- Carole Angelo, VP Content NBC.com

One of my favorite ways to do a little part for the planet is to compost. I began this venture because I wanted to make the plants in my garden a little happier. I also thought that in the process of helping my garden grow, it would be cool to lessen the trash that I put out in the street or squish down the sink pipes each week. Yeah it may be a little gross on first contemplation, but there are ways to manage it so it isn't such a messy endeavor. What I do is have a little airtight bucket under my sink in the kitchen. Each time I cook a meal that involves vegetable ends that get cut off, egg shell leftovers, or coffee grounds from my coffee maker, I take those leftovers and put them in my little bucket. When the bucket is full I take it out to my backyard and in the corner of the yard I dump it in a compost bin. The city of LA offers really affordable bins that are $20 on sale if you go to their workshops.

Check out this site:
http://www.lacity.org/san/solid_resources/recycling/services/compost.htm
To get one on the cheap and begin your road toward happy plants in your backyard.

But why is composting great, besides helping your garden out? Did you know that of all the trash that we humans output, 25% is comprised of yard waste and food scraps. That is about 63.5 million tons of waste per year in the United States alone. And through recycling your organic waste each year, you are joining a force of people who are preventing the release of approximately 49.7 million metric tons of carbon into the air --about the same amount emitted annually by 39 million cars!

So now that you are all siked on it, you might wonder what exactly goes in a compost bin? Anything plant based is great! I have found that you can put stuff like flour in or bread or pasta, but I wouldn't recommend it. The flour and breads tend to create a weird consistency. Stick to vegetables, fruit peels, egg shells, coffee grinds, tea bags, Halloween pumpkins and paper towels. Paper towels are a great thing, but if you have some cleaning fluid chemicals on them, then skip it. You don't want to put any chemicals in your compost if you can avoid it. And then there is the obvious stuff in your yard like leaves and dirt and grass clippings. Those are all great. You want to try and get a lot of variety in there. So once you have your big compost bin at least halfway full, it is a good practice to overturn the soil every couple months so that everything breaks down faster.

There are a couple things to steer clear of when creating the perfect compost soil for your plants...Do not ever put meat products in (not including egg shells). Fish, chicken, pork and cow meat will attract some nasty bugs including maggots that are not good for compost and also emit a smell so rotten and horrible, you will want nothing to do with composting ever again. So be sure to never put meat in your compost bin. Do not put tree branches in your compost. They take way too long to break down. I would also stay away from leaves from trees like magnolias, or rubber trees (where the consistency of the leaf is thick and waxy with lots of fibers). These kind of leaves take forever to decompose and you would be waiting a couple years before they would break down.

So there you have it in a nutshell. To learn more about starting a compost, check out some of these sites:
http://journeytoforever.org/compost_make.html
http://www.gardenguides.com/how-to/tipstechniques/planning/compost.asp

Happy Gardening!

Maybe it's just that I grew up in Los Angeles. Or have a few hippie relatives ("Remember, don't flush when we visit Auntie's house!"). Or that I just like tote bags. But I've found it pretty easy to adopt some simple green habits that can go a long way in the big picture of being nice to Mother Earth.

In case you haven't noticed, it's totally chic to bring your own bags to the grocery store and other retailers. See my handy blog post from last year's Green Week for more info on that hot topic. Just keep a few bags in your car for those spontaneous shopping stops. Another seemingly no brainer is to turn off the hose and pick up a broom to clean that back patio or front driveway. Not to mention that sweeping is a total calorie burner. At my house, it also counts as "playing with the dog" because our pug stands on the piles of leaves trying to actually catch the broom! Makes you want to come over to visit, doesn't it?

Which leads me to lint. Cleaning the lint trap after every dryer load can actually save you money! Think of all the tote bags you could buy! Some of my aforementioned hippie relatives used to have clotheslines to dry their clothes outdoors. It's a great option if you have the space and the weather, and the prairie dress to wear while you're hanging laundry, but personally, I'm not there yet. I'll just keep cleaning the lint trap, thankyouverymuch.

Lots of Angelenos are brave and ride bikes to work. Or this thing called the Metro. I hear it's a rail system that actually can get you from place to place in Los Angeles, but I'm not sure I believe it. I mean in San Francisco, sure. New York, of course. But LA? Since many of us will always be dependent on our independence, and the rest of us are scared to ride a bike in traffic, there is the carpooling option. My husband and I work in the same building. In the same department in fact. I'd love to tell you that we carpool to work together every day. That would make me smart, and you "green" with envy I'm sure. But we don't. Most days we can't for a variety of reasons, most of which involve off-campus meetings or video shoots or other glamorous Hollywood-type things. But you should lead by example and find people to carpool with. Seriously, maybe you'll inspire me.

Volunteering. It's the quintessential civic activity. Cleaning up a park, helping out in a soup kitchen, or being a child's mentor are all great ways to spend your time. But let's be real. If you think it's just about selfless altruism, it's not. There's a quote in an Avenue Q song that goes "when you help others, you can't help helping yourself" -- and truer words have never been spoken. Donating your time and energy to something worthwhile makes you feel good about yourself. And ultimately, it's that feeling that keeps you coming back. It's a virtuous cycle.

So what's in it for you?
•    Perspective. Helping out in your community gets you out of your bubble and connected with the people around you.
•    Self-discovery. By opening yourself up to new experiences, you might learn something about yourself in the process.
•    Self-satisfaction. It's not a bad thing! Helping others boosts your self-esteem! Embrace those feelings, but make sure you're actually making a difference

Why else should you consider putting in some volunteer time? Well, the benefits to others aren't so bad either. These include helping often resource-strapped organizations fulfill their missions and improving the conditions of other people as well as your surroundings.

So how do you get started? Personally I find these websites particularly helpful.
•    http://servenet.org/
•    http://www.volunteermatch.org/

They provide a quick and easy way to look for opportunities near you. You can also check with your workplace to see if they have employee volunteering programs. Here in LA, NBC Universal has set up a couple of activities for us during Earth Week, including a beach clean up in Santa Monica and tree planting in Griffith Park. 

 

Are you trying to create the perfect garden at home? If the answer is yes, then check out this fun item you can pick up for free at your local coffee shop!

Used coffee grounds. That's right, I said used coffee grounds. Back in my days working at Starbucks, I used to get requests all the time for our bags of used coffee grounds. At first, I thought there were actual people out there who tried to re-use coffee grounds to make coffee at home. Turns out, some of our smartest customers were using the grounds for fertilizer in their gardens. Not only did it save them money – no more bagged fertilizer at the local gardening store – but they also ended up with a garden smelling like fresh, rich coffee.

Let's play pretend for a second and say I have my own garden, to accompany my Malibu beach house that I share with Ryan Gosling (hey, I said PRETEND). I would head down to my local café and ask them for their coffee grounds.

Your barista will thank you for it. Trust me, nothing is less fun than carrying 40 pounds of wet coffee grounds to the garbage dumpster in the back of the shop. You will be doing them a favor, as well as yourselves.

If you do take my advice with the coffee grounds, it's always nice to pay your barista back with a nice basket of tomatoes, squash or eggplant that was freshly picked from your vegetable garden. Makes the barista feel appreciated for doing their part in helping you save the environment.

So, there you go. Used coffee grounds make excellent fertilizer, it's free, it helps the environment by recycling the coffee, and you are able to grow fresh organic vegetables from the comfort of your own home, AND your barista gets a basket of fresh vegetables as a thank you gift for helping you out. Everybody wins!

I'm a big advocate of urban exploration – walking around and exploring new neighborhoods. It's the perfect green activity for the weekend. You get exercise, cut down your carbon footprint, and get to know your neighborhood.

As a recent transplant to LA, I came with reservations of my ability to explore without a car. Coming from the east coast and living in cities with widespread access to public transportation, I was pretty spoiled. However, to my surprise, LA can be a very pedestrian friendly city. And with the weather perfect year 'round, it's easy to plan a day to do it. Some of my favorite walking neighborhoods include West Hollywood, Silverlake, Beverly Hills, Downtown and Hollywood. All you need to do is check a bus or metro route and get on your way.

In general, here are some tips for planning a good walk:

· Bring water. Use a reusable bottle (duh).

· Wear comfortable shoes. I can't stress this enough. I once did a walk around Paris in loafers. I was hobbling like Quasimodo by the end of it.

· Aimlessly wander, but bring a map. Serendipity is fun, just be aware of your surroundings.

· Enjoy an urban oasis. Try to integrate some urban green spaces in your itinerary.

· Bring a camera. You never know what you're going to see.

I've found two websites that can plan a good walk:

Google Maps. They've recently introduced a function that gives you directions on how to get somewhere on foot.

Walkscore (http://www.walkscore.com/rankings/Los_Angeles). This website has a Google maps mashup that rates how walkable a neighborhood is and provides points of interest in the surrounding area.

For the really ambitious, here's the itinerary if you decided to walk from LA to New York.

At a rate of 3 miles an hour, 24 hours a day (apparently, it doesn't understand the concept of sleep), Google estimates that it would take about 38 days and 3 hours to walk the 2,800 miles. Good luck keeping up the pace through the Rockies.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&saddr=los+angeles&daddr=new+york+city&sll
=40.720136,-74.010944&sspn=0.029273,0.063171&ie=UTF8&dirflg=w&z=4

Phillip Javellana
NBC.com Intern