21st Annual EMA Awards Video
Watch highlights from the 21st Annual Environmental Media Awards.
EMA School Gardens
Nicole Richie participates in an EMA School Gardens event.

Eco-Vocab: CSA

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CSA: Short for Community Supported Agriculture is a system whereby weekly boxes of fresh, often organic, seasonal, local fruits and vegetables are delivered from a community of local farmers straight to the consumer. A CSA connects consumers with the people who grow their food while strengthening local food systems.

Buying a CSA membership means entering into partnership with a local farmer. The member buys a subscription at the beginning of the season. This cash infusion allows the farmer to pay for seed, water, equipment and labor in the early season when farm expenses are high and farm income is low. In return the farm provides its members with a box of fresh picked seasonal produce each week.

Click here to find a CSA in your neighborhood.

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EV Car Drivers in LA Differ From the Rest of the Country

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According to the LA Times, people who drive electric vehicles in Los Angeles generally travel farther and charge more often in public and at off-peak hours (when it’s cheaper) versus those that drive an EV in other parts of the country. This is certainly good news for people in LA who are hesitant to buy an electric car because of range anxiety.

Ecotality oversees the EV Project, a $230-million deployment of electric-vehicle charging infrastructure funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy to aid the rollout of electric vehicles and conduct research.

About 4,600 of a planned 8,300 residential chargers and 1,600 of a planned 5,000 public chargers have been installed through the EV Project since 2010. To date, more than 26 million of an anticipated 100 million miles of driving data have been analyzed in 18 major cities, including Seattle, Dallas, Nashville and Los Angeles.

Owners of electric vehicles report their usage to Ecotality who then tally the data and analyze patterns. Based on L.A. data for the first quarter of 2012, Leaf drivers charge away from home 24% of the time, versus 19% nationally. They travel about 28.1 miles between charges versus 27.4 miles nationally and arrive at home with more depleted charges than EV drivers in other cities. Continue reading →

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Vermont Becomes the First US State to Ban Fracking

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Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin signed a bill into law this week that officially bans fracking in the Green Mountain state. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of drilling and injecting fluid into the ground at a high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks to release natural gas inside. The problem with fracking is that it has the potential to contaminate ground water, as well as add tons of pollutants to the air.

According to the Huffington Post, Vermont’s ban may be more of a symbolic gesture though since there is believed to be little to no natural gas or oil beneath the surface in Vermont. Still, being the first state to officially ban the practice makes a strong statement.

In other states where fracking occurs, critics have stated that the practice contaminates drinking water wells of residents living near the drilling operations, but natural gas industry officials dispute those claims.

Shumlin said the increased amounts of natural gas obtainable through hydraulic fracturing were not worth the risk to drinking water supplies. In the coming generation or two, “drinking water will be more valuable than oil or natural gas,” Shumlin said. Continue reading →

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How Much Do We Actually Recycle in California?

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A lot. According to CalRecycle’s Biannual Report of Beverage Container Sales, Returns, Redemption, and Recycling Rates, released last week, Californians recycled over 16 billion beverage containers in 2011. For a state that is home to 38 million people, that number seems pretty impressive. California continues to lead the nation in total quantity of bottles and cans recycled.

According to the report, 4,504,934,972 aluminum cans were purchased from July to December in 2011 with 4,276,266,506 of those cans getting recycled – that’s a 95% recycling rate!

The overall recycling rate for the first half of 2011 was 86% The second half calendar year recycling rate was lower than the first half at 79%, which is consistent with the trend observed over the life of the recycling program. Continue reading →

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Greening Business for the Green Consumer

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From left to right: Joe Baratelli (Rubin Postaer and Associates), Debbie Levin (Environmental Media Association), Magali Delmas (UCLA), Steve Boyd (Tern Bicycles), Mark Gold (UCLA).

EMA President Debbie Levin recently participated in a discussion hosted by the UCLA Center for Corporate Environmental Performance to talk about corporate sustainability and the growth of the ‘green consumer’.

Joining the discussion were Magali Delmas, Professor of Management at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the Anderson School of Management, Joe Baratelli, Executive Creative Director at Rubin Postaer and Associates, and Steve Boyd, General Manager of North America at Tern Bicycles, a leading manufacturer of folding bicycles.

The speakers discussed several topics such as who are green consumers, what are they buying, and why? According to Magali Delmas in just 20 years, U.S. sales of organic food and beverages have surged from $1 billion (in 1990) to nearly $27 billion (in 2010). Continue reading →

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London is On Track to Host the Greenest Olympics Ever

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With the 2012 Olympics just months away, London is on track to hosting the most sustainable Olympics of all time. According to the Pre-Games Sustainability Report released in April, progress is being made to ensure a very green Games comes to fruition.

The April Report highlights five major areas where new standards for sustainability have been set:

  1. The Olympic Park: The most sustainable Olympic Stadium ever built was completed according to high sustainability standards. The Park itself is the largest new urban parkland in Europe for 150 years. It is already developing a mature landscape, and the cleaned up and reprofiled river valley is providing both new wildlife habitat and significant flood alleviation – early examples of lasting legacy benefits.
  2. Carbon management: London 2012 is the first summer Olympic
    and Paralympic Games to measure its carbon footprint over the entire project term. By using the outcomes of the footprinting assessment to inform decision-making, they’ve radically improved their ability to avoid, reduce and substitute carbon emissions associated with delivering the Games.
  1. Sustainable transport: The commitment to delivering a public transport Games means nine million ticket holders will experience sustainable events like never before from the way they travel. The Active Travel program, launched in October 2011, aims to achieve one million extra journeys by walking and cycling in London each day of the Games.
  2. Food Vision: London 2012 is the first Games to specify stringent sustainability requirements for its catering operations. All caterers are signed up to the Food Vision standards and are ready to serve 14 million sustainably sourced meals. Continue reading →

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Hawaii Becomes the First US State to Ban Plastic Bags

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Hawaii recently became the first state to ban single-use plastic bags throughout the entire state. The new law will ban all non-recyclable paper and non-biodegradable plastic bags effective July 1, 2015. 2015 seems like a long time away, but it’s a step towards progress.

“This is really getting people to change their behaviors and that’s one of the most difficult things to do frequently and we hope people are going to understand that,” says Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle who signed the ban last week.

According to EcoWatch, the ban was not done by the state legislature, but instead by all four County Councils—a great example of local activists and decision makers addressing the serious issue of plastic pollution.

We applaud Hawaii for being the first state to ban plastic bags and hope that their actions will set the stage for other states to follow.

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5 Green Ways to Shop at the Grocery Store

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Kermit the Frog wasn’t right about one thing – it IS easy being green. Small simple deeds go a long way, you don’t have to be perfect at your attempts, and every little bit counts! We’ve put together a short list of 5 simple green ways to shop at the grocery store. Follow any one of these (or better yet, all of them) and you’ll be on your way to living the green life!

  1. Bring your own bags. This is so easy to do. At the same time, it’s just as easy for us to get caught in an unplanned trip to the store and not have any bags. Avoid this scenario by keeping those reusable bags everywhere – in your car, in your bicycle basket, next to your keys, etc.
  2. Buy things with little packaging. If you have a choice between two products, one wrapped in plastic and cardboard and more plastic, and one with minimal packaging, choose the one with the minimal packaging. It took less energy to create and will leave less of a carbon footprint. Plus, minimal packaging creates less waste.
  3. Shop the perimeter. In food writer, Michael Pollan’s 7 Rules for Eating, he advises that you stay out of the middle of the grocery store. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store near the loading docks, where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad. Continue reading →

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