Green L.A.: The Big Enviro-coalition you've never heard of

In a way, becoming an environmental activist in L.A. is easy. The city certainly has no shortage of enviro groups. Love the beach? Join Heal the Bay. Like clean air? Try Breathe L.A. Miss trees? Plant a few with TreePeople. But if you think all these things are important, the huge number of environmental groups vying for your attention can get overwhelming. You might start wishing these organizations would consolidate themselves somehow, so you don't feel like you're choosing between clean air and clean water.

Enter Green L.A., a coalition of 50 or so environmental and community-based organizations in L.A, working to shape city policies. According to Jonathan Parfrey, director of Green L.A., the coalition basically came together when Mayor Villaraigosa got elected, because many groups saw the new mayor's enviro-commitment as an unprecedented opportunity to push the city into a greener direction. After all, back in 2005, Villaraigosa said  "Let's dare to imagine Los Angeles as the cleanest and greenest big city in America." So enviro and community-based groups linked arms and launched Green L.A. in Dec. 2005 to take Villaraigosa at his word.

Why haven't you heard of Green L.A.? For one, the organization doesn't have a website -- yet. For another, Villaraigosa's own plan for greening L.A. is also confusingly named Green L.A. But more to the point, Green L.A. the coalition works mainly with the city, not with grassroots organizing. According to its brochure, Green L.A. provides "environmental guidance and expertise to the City of Los Angeles in an exciting model of collaboration between decision-makers and advocates, helping to inform City policies and programs."

To that end, Green L.A. has formed collaborative work groups, each with a couple co-chairs from environmental and community organizations, as well as advisors that serve on City of L.A.'s commissions. At the moment, Green L.A. has formed five work groups:

• Energy: Pushing city agencies to become carbon neutral, increasing energy efficiencies throughout the city, working with the Department of Water and Power, etc.
• Transportation: Pushing for bus-only lanes, developing both a pedestrian and bike master plan, etc.
• Water and Urban Ecosystems: Working with the L.A. River revitalization plan, the Million Trees L.A. initiative, the parks initiative, etc.
• Cumulative Impacts: Addressing environmental justice issues and improving health in disadvantaged communities.
• Port of LA: Working with the city and the ports to reduce air and water pollution, etc.

In addition, Green L.A.'s working on five specific projects:

• Green purchasing for the city: Making sure products bought by the city are environmentally-preferable ones (i.e. 100% post-consumer recycled paper vs. paper made by clear-cutting rain forests).
• Green business certification: Encouraging businesses to incorporate environmentally-sound practices. (i.e. encouraging restaurants to compost food waste) The city of Santa Monica, for example, has a program like this in place.
• Green building.
• Zero Waste Plan, also known as SWIRP (Solid Waste Integrated Resource Plan): Finding ways to reduce, reuse and recycle, thereby diverting our trash away from landfills. Green building: Encouraging environmentally-friendly building practices.
• Public participation: Getting people involved both in pushing the city to go greener and in making environmentally-friendly changes on a personal level.

This last point's an important one: While Green L.A. may be most concerned with working directly with the city, one of its major projects is to get the public involved in environmental issues. To that end, I'd say Green L.A. really needs a website! After all, it's rather difficult to find out about and get behind a coalition that few have heard about, and even fewer can find out about.

Then again, Green L.A.'s goal isn't to work directly with the general public; the coalition works with its participating organizations so that they can better reach the public. So to get involved, you'll still want to get in touch with the individual environmental organizations. Hopefully Green L.A. will put together a list of them on its website, once it's created, making it easier for the would-be individual environmentalist to take green action.

Photos of Green L.A.'s brochure by Siel

Comments

[Wes]

This is obviously going in the right direction. Government is incapable of doing anything without non-profits showing the way. There is only one thing missing that I believe to be very, very important. That is to start changing the permitting process for new construction and major renovation to required adherence to the Architecture 2030 challenge.

Anyone who has watched Architecture 2030 founder Ed Mazria's recent webcast understands just how serious the problem of global warming really is and why architecture plays such a critical role.

[Siel]

That would probably fit under the green building project. Sorry -- I accidentally deleted that bullet point, then added it back in -- You must've read the post between the 2 versions :P