 >> Speed date environmentalists. A Green Speed Dating event happens on Sunday, 6:15 p.m. - 9 p.m., at The Hideout, 112 W. Channel Rd., Santa Monica.
>> Take a staycation in downtown L.A. Eric Richardson of blogdowntown wonders, however, whether downtown L.A.'s public transportation system is up to the task, especially for those evening hours and the weekends.
>> Get rid of those vinyl shower curtains -- and vinyl in general. "Vinyl shower curtains sold at major retailers across the country emit toxic chemicals that have been linked to serious health problems, according to a report released today by a national environmental organization."
>> Start a no-dig garden and grow your own food using "a low-water, sustainable technique." Farmer Pat Marfisi practices what he preaches in the Hollywood Hills: "I haven't watered in 10 days," he says. "This is what I want people to know: You can have beauty and abundance without a lot of water."
>> Grow your own alfalfa sprouts using cheesecloth, clean pantyhose, or other alternatives.
>> Follow the trend and get on the bus.
"The MTA released its May ridership numbers for its buses and rail
lines and ridership on the rail side was up six percent over May 2007
from 7,192,173 in May 2007 to 7,625,541 this past May."
 For a primer on current environmental concerns -- alongside lessons in sociocultural, architectural, and political history around the world -- pick up Alan Weisman's book, "The World Without Us."
I read this book after watching "Your house without you," a short animation that shows just how long a typical U.S. home would last if humans suddenly disappeared. That times 100 is what "The World Without Us" looks at, examining what seemingly-indestructible edifices will quickly disintegrate without our presence -- and what material legacies will remain of human life long after we disappear as a species.
What will remain: A lot of plastic. "The World Without Us," in fact, features an interview with Capt. Charles Moore, whose discovery of the "Pacific Garbage Patch" -- a huge area in the ocean covered with plastic debris -- prompted the current Junk raft trip, which departed Long Beach for Hawaii on June 1.
Frighteningly, every bit of plastic we've ever created -- save the small amount that's been incinerated -- still remains, according to the chapter titled "Polymers are forever." Even more frightening is the fact that plastics, instead of biodegrading, are simply breaking into smaller and smaller bits -- and getting ingested by smaller and smaller organisms. And because plastics act as sponges for toxic substances such as DDT and PCBs, the potential for bio-accumulation of these poisons as they work their way up the food chain really gets scary.
Not all of "The World Without Us" is so doom and gloom. In fact, because the book covers so much ground -- from the history of the Hagia Sophia to today's virtual water trade in Kenyan flowers -- "The World Without Us" sometimes reads as a compendium of bits of sociocultural histories you've always wanted to learn more about but never got around to exploring on your own. Do you know why wild African animals have survived alongside humans while so many U.S. species went extinct when European settlers arrived? Are you familiar with VHEMT -- The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement? Reading "The World Without You" will educate you about the things you never even knew you were curious about -- and perhaps make you a better Jeopardy player in the process.
Even as it points out some man-made ecological disasters, "The World Without You" doesn't get preachy or push a strong environmental agenda. More than anything, "The World Without You" gives us a glimpse of both the fragility and resilience of life on Earth -- a nature that humans have proved quite adept at destroying, but also a nature that will long outlast the human species. In the end, the book paints a history and future of the Earth that's not so human-centric, and correspondingly, encourages a more humble perspective of our role on this planet. What you end up doing with that perspective is entirely up to you.
 I've covered some very unexpected recycling programs on this blog, ranging from "upcycling" juice pouches to "artcycling" produce stickers. Now here comes another recycling opportunity that'll be beloved by anyone who switched to a Brita filter to reduce plastic waste from all those one-use water bottles. The Take Back the Filter campaign wants your old Brita filters!
The filters won't actually be recycled into new filters or other new products. Instead, they will be used as a visual showcase of sorts in order to persuade Clorox, owner of the Brita Products Co. in the U.S., to provide a recycling option for consumers who use their products. After all, Europeans are able to recycle their filters. According to the Take Back the Filter campaign website, "the original European Brita GmbH company has created a take-back recycling program for its filter cartridges."
 So far, the campaign's attracted many supporters -- including the Bay area chapter of Sierra Club, which wrote a letter to Clorox (PDF) urging a filter recycling program. Beth Terry of Fake Plastic Fish, who initiated the campaign, even dressed up as a Brita filter to participate in the popular Bay to Breakers event in San Francisco.
There is actually a way for you to reuse at least part of your Brita filter, as this Instructables article -- "How to refill a 'disposable' Brita brand water pitcher filter with activated carbon" -- points out. The process isn't exactly easy, however. "All that you will need is an old cartridge, some activated carbon, a polyethylene plug, a sharp utility knife or Xacto knife," reads the beginning of the article, as if most households have activated carbon laying around. Excepting the old cartridge, I have none of those things, much less the optional 1/2" drill motor and 1/2" drill bit.
So for now, I'll be sending my used Brita filters to the Take Back the Filter campaign. You can mail them to Take Back The Filter, 5245 College Avenue, Box #815, Oakland, CA 94618.
And if you feel so moved, sign the "Take Back the Filter" petition -- and maybe even write a letter to Clorox executives. Filter buyers are, after all, Clorox's repeat customers. Let your consumer demands be known.
Image and photo courtesy of Take Back the Filter
 You don't have to be vegan to love vegan food, as evidenced by the popularity of Real Food Daily. The Santa Monica branch of RFD's even taken over the space next door (I think it used to be a Chinese restaurant) and is in the process of putting in a new bakery.
Sadly, while I'd love to have someone prepare nice vegan meals for me daily, I can't afford to eat at RFD every day. Which is why I was excited to discover Vegin' Out, a local vegan food delivery service, at the Room 367 event last month. Vegin' Out was sampling out a very tasty vegan jambalaya.
How would you like healthful, local, organic food cooked and delivered to your doorstep? Vegin' Out does just that -- and pretty affordably too! For $100, you can sign up to get 9-10 fresh vegan meals delivered to you (free delivery in the L.A. area; $15 for DHL shipping elsewhere).
 Founded in 1999, Vegin' Out's co-owned by Tim Boissy, a nutritional chef, and his brother Dan Boissy. Vegin' Out gets much of its produce from the Santa Monica Farmers' Market; about 75% of the ingredients in Vegin' Out's trans fat-free meals are certified organic.
So last week, I tried out Vegin' Out's service. Monday morning, I received a few entrees, a few side dishes, soup, and most importantly, almond shortbread cookies!
My favorite dishes were the tofu cordon bleu over wild rice and the vegetarian chili, both of which I feel I could eat every day (at least for a few months). The side dishes -- like the carrots in creamy garlic sauce, cauliflower with braised tomatoes, and spring succotash -- were pretty tasty too.
There were a few duds too, however. The country garden spring soup was rather bland, for example -- though I did end up eating all of it. The main oddity about my delivery was the large number of carrots used in the dishes. In addition to the three servings of carrots in creamy garlic sauce, there were small pieces of carrots in the chili and soup, as well as larger pieces in the pepper steak mushroom stroganoff. I do like carrots, but a girl's got her limits! Brian L. Patton, Sales & Marketing Manager for Vegin' Out, did assure me this was an anomaly for the week.
Luckily, each week's delivery includes a preview menu for the next week -- and customers can specify if they'd like to omit one dish to double up on another. This option's one I could use to avoid too much of any one veggie as well as avoid veggies I don't want -- i.e. broccoli -- altogether.
 While I liked the food, I did have some qualms about Vegin' Out's packaging. All the food's delivered in plastic one-use packaging (recyclable, but still) -- encased in a plastic bag to boot. Patton says that the biodegradable packaging they've tried didn't work as well, and thus are sticking to the current plastic containers "until we find the ideal option." Switching out the bags, however, is at the top of our priority list," says Patton. "We're currently weighing out our options for that ... either reusable or biodegradable."
The plastic packaging's really an issue for me, because it'd suddenly bring up my use of those clam shell things from maybe one a week to seven or so! Of course, for people who buy a lot of pre-packaged prepared foods anyway, switching to Vegin' Out deliveries might actually cut down on their plastic consumption.
I think I'll hold off from using Vegin' Out's services until they at least get rid of the plastic bags -- which are soon going to be banned in my town (Santa Monica) anyway. Hopefully that day will come soon; the vegan orange chocolate chip cookies on next week's menu sound really yummy.
Vegin' Out. (310) 574-9405
The plastic-bottle raft Junk set sail from Long Beach yesterday, and is now making its way to Hawaii. If you weren't there to see it off from the Long Beach Aquarium, watch this informative 4-minute video recap of the well-attended event. Then avoid disposable plastics like the plague!
 Junk -- a raft made of 15,000 plastic bottles, a repurposed old Cessna 310 airplane, and other odds and ends -- set sail from Long Beach today to make its 6-week trip to Hawaii.
The trip, put together by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, is intended to to raise awareness about the devastation wreaked on our oceans by our one-use plastic habit. We have a "Pacific Garbage Patch" in the Pacific that takes up an area twice the size of the U.S., as Anna Cummins of the AMRF wrote about a couple weeks ago.
A big crowd showed up to bid adieu to the intrepid sailors, Marcus Eriksen (right, holding up a sample of the "plastic soup" from the "Pacific Garbage Patch") and Joel Paschal. Many local enviro orgs, including Heal the Bay and Surfrider Foundation, came to commend the sailors' efforts and wish them luck. Students from Santa Monica High School presented the crew with a braided plastic bag rope.
Follow the journey online via the JUNK blog, which will be updated regularly with info and images during the trip.
Long Beach's ocean water itself could use some de-plasticking and a general cleanup. Lots of plastic bottles, potato chip bags and other debris floated around Junk raft's starting point.
Photos by Siel
 Nowhere would a plastic bag monster be so popular as at a Heal the Bay party. Earlier tonight, Heal the Bay -- a nonprofit dedicated to cleaning up SoCal beaches -- threw its 17th Annual Bring Back the Beach Benefit Dinner party.
And people were lining up to take pictures with the plastic bag monster, who became a bit of a celebrity!
The event brought out a big crowd to the Barker Hanger at the Santa Monica Airport on a beautiful, if a little windy, day. I randomly met Jack Sahl, director of environment and resource sustainability at
Southern California Edison, an eco-initiatives person at Warner Brothers, then ran into the usual westside eco-peeps like Andy Lipkis of TreePeople. 
 Everything from a guitar signed by Maroon 5 to a Ford Escape Hybrid was auctioned off while people tucked in "an organic and sustainable menu" catered by Patina
Restaurant Group while sipping on local beers and "sustainable" but
not organic certified wine from Kunde Estate Winery. Amy Smart, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (left), and Ingo Rademacher all took part in the ceremonies.
In general, the event itself was very eco -- aside from all the driving people did to get there (I received a free parking pass but no biking instructions; in the end I eco-cabbed it). Heal the Beach's little brochure for the dinner -- printed with soy based inks on 100% post-consumer recycled paper processed chlorine free -- bragged that the event used neither single-use serviceware nor bottled water.
 Strangely, each gift bag given to attendees contained a plastic (#1) bottle of water -- something Anna Cummins, also at the party, pointed out to me. To be fair, the stuff isn't just plain water -- it's organic certified "Bone Water," (right) meaning that the concoction also includes evaporated cane juice and other juices, oils, and flavors -- as well as calcium and other "nutrients" that make the "water" taste a lot like a less-sweet but still synthetic Gatorade.
Heal the Bay's dinner brochure included a plastic warning educational page of sorts, which said this about #1 plastic: "Unfortunately, studies indicate that with repeated use, PET containers may release di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, an endocrine-disrupting compound and probable human carcinogen." 
Granted, the info mainly advises against reuse of #1 plastic bottles, but in general, Heal the Bay is no fan of plastic. I mean, most disposable water bottles are made of #1 plastic, which Heal the Bay bragged about avoiding -- outside the gift bags. Plus the nonprofit's leading the fight against plastic bags.
Of course, Heal the Bay has to make a lot of compromises -- something I wrote about when the L.A. County Board of Supervisors' decision on plastic bags came down. Bone Water wasn't even the only plastic bottle issue of the night. Heal the Money must've also gotten money from FIJI water -- because that company got a page in the dinner brochure.
The entire evening was full of conundrums such as these. The Escape Hybrid -- auctioned off for $30,000+ going directly to Heal the Bay -- has better mileage than other SUVs, but it's still an SUV made by un-eco Ford. Both the Paul Mitchell and Murad products included in the gift bags have some eco-properties -- but are preserved using parabens. Even the gift bags themselves are reusable totes -- but appear to be made of pesticide-intensive conventional cotton.
I'm not saying Heal the Bay was wrong to accept these sponsorships or products, necessarily. I'm just pointing out the quandaries to say I don't envy the jobs of the people who work there. Sure, I really do have a bone to pick with this Bone Water thing -- but every environmentalist has her pet peeve, and every little compromise the nonprofit makes must bring forth a cacophony of complaints --
Junk -- a raft made with 15,000 plastic bottles -- is ready to set sail! Last week, Anna Cummins wrote about the Junk voyage's effort to call attention to the frightening plastic pollution in the oceans -- and now you're invited to the bon voyage party:
When: Sunday, June 1, 2 p.m. - 3 p.m.
Where: Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific, 100 Aquarium Way, Long Beach
Meet Dr. Marcus Eriksen and Joel Paschal -- both of Algalita Marine Research Foundation -- before they set sail on their 6-week journey from Long Beach to Hawaii. Then follow their progress on the Junk blog!
 L.A. tap water's won critics' taste tests, and tastes better than a lot of bottled water, IMHO. But for those who're convinced that bottled water tasted better than tap, a new to-go reusable water bottle's on the market that promises to make "ordinary tap water taste like bottled water."
The Fit & Fresh Liv Pure Bottle tries to change the taste of tap water via its filter, which reduces chlorine by 50%. That reduction probably won't be enough for the chlorine-phobic folk who install filters even on their shower heads, but it may be satisfactory for some who really feel their water palate's chlorine-sensitive.
Made of #4 plastic (LDPE), the Fit & Fresh Liv Pure Bottle is BPA-free. Each filter can handle 75 gallons of water -- equivalent to 500 regular-sized disposable water bottles. Replacement filters can be bought where the bottles are sold: Linens ‘n Things, K-Mart and online.
So if you drink filtered water at home, but tend to buy bottled water too to drink while on the go, Fit & Fresh Liv Pure Bottle might help you cut back on your plastic consumption.
Of course, as with Brita filters, the filters themselves are not recyclable. There's actually a movement afoot to get Brita to take back and recycle its filters. Apparently, the original European Brita company has a take-back recycling program for used filters; the Clorox-owned Brita Products Co. in the U.S. does not. Maybe both Brita and Fit & Fresh will be persuaded to think about the entire life cycles of their products soon. More on that later.
 On the same day Anna Cummins wrote about the crazy "huge bowl of dilute plastic soup" in the Pacific, guess what we were doing in SoCal? Dumping thousands of plastic ducks into the ocean.
The thoughtless dumping was actually for a good cause: The 16th Annual Duck-A-Thon, a fundraiser for Community Care Health Centers. But as Patt Morrison writes in L.A. Unleashed: "In our part of the Pacific Ocean, there's six times more plastic than plankton -- six times. Along the North Pacific shores, a hundred thousand sea mammals are killed every year from gobbling plastics that they thought were edible. The plastic poisoning of the oceans isn't getting better, and the once-amusing spectacle of tides full of yellow rubber ducks isn't helping."
Maybe Anna's crew will run into some of these duckies on her Junk trip next month.
What I'm wondering right now is whether or not these duckies contained scary phthalates, as most rubber duckies do. Yes, the "California Toxic Toys Bill" banned phthalates from children's toys sold in California, but that law doesn't go into effect until January 2009. Phthalates are "endocrine disruptors linked to problems of the reproductive system, including decreased sperm motility and concentration in men and genital abnormalities in baby boys," according to the environmental nonprofit Environmental Working Group.
I have a call in to the Duck-A-Thon people to find out more. In the meantime: Don't want plastic duckies unceremoniously dumped into our oceans? Here's Duck-A-Thon's contact info.
Photo from Duck-a-Thon.org
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>> Speed date environmentalists. A Green Speed Dating event happens on Sunday, 6:15 p.m. - 9 p.m., at The Hideout, 112 W. Channel Rd., Santa Monica.
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