'Entourage’s' Adrian Grenier and Peter Glatzer SHFT Hollywood green

When "Entourage" star Adrian Grenier was introduced to indie film producer Peter Glatzer a number of years back, their mutual commitment to eco-friendliness and sustainability compelled them to work together. They put together the show “Alter Eco” for Discovery’s Planet Green channel in 2008, a reality show about folks moving the needle on sustainability. The pair saw a hunger for solutions, but realized they needed a new platform that could grow as they grew. SHFT was born.

Yes, SHFT.com is a website, but Grenier and Glatzer have already proved it can be more than that. It’s an honest attempt to move ideas into the culture. The “Watch” section has five original video series that continue to expand, including the “Eat LACMA” series on food and community, and “Lighten Up,” about green touring strategies for bands on the road. Like “Alter Eco,” the shows are about beautiful people making a difference. But the site is also a pretty impressive resource for sustainable products as varied as electronics and art, and a connection to lifestyle news and information.

SHFT is creating an entity that’s pretty rare for famous Hollywood types: a community.

“We’re looking to permeate the culture and change the perception of what it means to be environmentally friendly,” Grenier says by phone from New York. “Because, for so long, it’s been a marginalized cause. But we don’t see it as a cause. We see it as a way to improve your quality of life.”

Glatzer, speaking from L.A., takes it further: “The notion of ‘environmentalism’ was just antiquated and anachronistic to the world we live in now. To think of environmentalism as a movement or a separate category of things that we do that are Earth-friendly is not the way to think about it. It has to be folded into the fabric of our lives and into the small choices that we make every day.”

In October, the site manifested briefly as a pop-up gallery and shop on La Brea Avenue, something the pair has been doing in New York for years at Christmastime, and the opening was packed with people pawing over the bikes, art, furniture and housewares. The products on the website are made real at these events, and SHFT may soon develop a bricks-and-mortar entity in partnership with a mainstream retailer.

Mainstream, by the way, is where they want to be. These are people who make movies and TV, so of course the first thing they did was make a show. And they are still making shows. But “Alter Eco” confirmed that Hollywood is mostly allergic to this kind of thing, and for good reason: do-gooding is not (usually) hot media.

“Media is very tricky because it thrives on conflict,” Grenier acknowledges. “Really, the environmental notion is the opposite -- it’s something that is full or harmony and goodwill amongst people and collaboration, so it’s difficult to dramatize.”

Glatzer thinks the ideas just have to be worked into the groundwork of everything they make. “I watch movies all the time, like ‘The Descendents,’ for example, Alexander Payne’s new film. It really does have an environmental component to it that isn’t overt at all. It’s an appropriate dollop of environmentalism,” he says.

“If it’s a background, context-setting thing, great, but otherwise, I don’t know,” Glatzer adds.

None of this, by the way, is overtly political. They’re looking to change the culture through everyday choices.

“We like market-driven solutions,” says Glatzer. “As much as we’d love to see policies change and see the public sector do various things that we’re actually quite passionate about, having consumers be aware of what their options were was one of our big goals. And to make it fun.”

“Yeah, I found that my snarky, condescending glances at people, when I walked around the set, were totally ineffective,” chuckles Grenier. “I find that being able to take someone by the shoulders and say, ‘Hey, check out SHFT,’ or ‘Do you want to come to this pop-up store?’ is much more enjoyable for the both of us.”

Speaking of which, their first SHFT brand product? A red wine made in Paso Robles, SHFT House Wines. Because, yeah, it’s organic and all that; but it’s also a party in a bottle. Available on the site in the coming weeks.

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Photo: Adrian Grenier, left, and Peter Glatzer at the opening of the SHFT pop-up gallery and shop on La Brea Avenue in October. Credit: Brent Harrison for Guest of a Guest L.A.

Hewlett-Packard tops Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics

Hewlett-Packard Co. has claimed the No. 1 spot on the Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics released Wednesday. The Palo Alto-based manufacturer of printers, computers and other consumer electronics scored 5.9 out of a possible 10 points on the 17th iteration of the guide from the international environmental organization.

Hewlett-Packard took the No. 1 position due largely to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from its own operations as well as its suppliers, and a procurement policy that excludes paper from companies linked with illegal logging and deforestation. Computer maker Dell Inc., based in Round Rock, Texas, took second place, and also scored well for its greenhouse gas emission reductions and paper policies. 

Nokia Corp., the world's largest manufacturer of cellphones, based in Finland, fell to third place from the No. 1 ranking it held for more than three years. According to the guide, Nokia reduced its carbon emissions only 18% in 2010 -- far short of its 50% goal.

Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif., was ranked fourth, winning maximum points for e-waste and sourcing  minerals from countries that do not trade with insurgent rebel groups. In 2010, 70% of Apple's personal electronics products were recycled. It also scored well for creating products that are free of polyvinyl chloride and brominated fire retardants.

Research In Motion, the maker of BlackBerry smartphones, scored last out of the 15 companies included in the guide. According to Greenpeace, the company does not have a clean electricity plan or a target to increase use of renewable energy. Its products are also energy inefficient, the guide said.

All of the consumer electronics companies Greenpeace researched were ranked in three general categories -- energy, green products and sustainable operations -- each of which was broken down according to more detailed criteria such as clean-energy advocacy, product energy efficiency, avoidance of hazardous substances and use of recycled materials. The information reported in the guide is publicly available and provided by the companies.

"When people say they want green electronics, these are the things they care about," said Casey Harrell, a Greenpeace information technology analyst and co-author of the guide. "They want the products to be as energy efficient as possible. They want them to be recycled and not go overseas. They don't want to be contributing to conflict."

The current guide is the first in which Greenpeace has incorporated companies' paper policies and use of so-called conflict minerals that often come from countries in conflict.

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Photo: Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics rating. Credit: Greenpeace

Malibu elementary school opens zero-waste campus

The students at Muse School CA in Malibu canyon will no longer throw their spent glue sticks and granola bar wrappers in the trash. On Monday, the nonprofit private school for children age 2 through 12 unveiled a new zero-waste sorting unit that not only recycles valuable commodities such as plastic, glass, metal and paper, it reuses broken electronics and office materials and upcycles pens and other classroom castoffs that aren't recycled through the city's curbside system.

A sign at the school's entrance lists the many items the school actively, if politely, disallows, including plastic bags, plastic bottles, plastic straws, noncompostable takeaway containers, styrofoam and single-use plastic utensils, plates and cups.

In their place, the school provides refillable stainless-steel bottles to all students, faculty and staff. School lunch is prepared from scratch using organic and locally raised foods -- 30% of which will eventually be grown on site -- and all food waste is composted on the school grounds.

"I have visited so many platinum LEED school buildings, and you walk in and there are plastic bottles and toxic cleaners and plastic straws. Muse is really about going 100% of the way," said school co-founder Suzy Amis Cameron, mother of five and wife of "Avatar" director James Cameron.

Cameron, 49, co-founded Muse with her sister in Malibu in 2006 and relocated it two years later to Topanga Canyon, "but there was only so much we could do having landlords," she said. "The vision was always there," but it wasn't until she and her husband bought the Malibu Canyon property from another school in 2010 that its 22 acres could be transformed into a facility that was truly sustainable inside and out. And not only in its day-to-day operations as an educational institution.

As the campus was created, Cameron worked toward 100% landfill waste diversion with sustainable design consultant Darren Moore and his Canoga Park company, Ecovations Lifestyle. All of the buildings on the Muse campus contain at least some materials that were salvaged from existing structures, including doorway trim reclaimed from the wood siding of torn-down buildings and a play structure repurposed from a water tank. 

All of the wood chips in the garden were ground up from wood that was torn from other buildings and run through a chipper. The garden's xeriscaped planters are ringed with broken concrete, also found on site.

But the most difficult aspect of Cameron's zero-waste remodel was what she found inside the buildings before they were deconstructed.

"It was as if a smart bomb had gone off. There were half cups of coffee, paper everywhere. That was really the beginning of some very difficult philosophical questions," said Cameron, who struggled with proper disposal of phthalate-laden plastic toys and two-stroke garden equipment, and how to get rid of outdoor pests without chemicals.

Cameron worked with a recycler that specialized in plastics with phthalates. She had the two-stroke weed whackers and leaf blowers disassembled into parts that were then used for the school's robotics program. To rid the grounds of rodents, she hired a falconer, who now lives on site and unleashes his hawk on the grounds to dine on squirrels. The school is home to house cats and is also dotted with owl boxes, inviting both types of predator to hunt mice. Cameron said the rodent population has been reduced 90% as a result.

But the centerpiece of the zero-waste school is how the students interact with it. For that, sustainable-design consultant Moore devised a five-bin collection area that emphasizes reuse first. The first bin is for anything that can be reused or repurposed. The second is for pens, glue sticks, cereal boxes and whatever else the school has agreed to upcycle into other products through Terracycle. Only then are objects considered for recycling. A fourth bin is for e-waste, and the fifth, and final receptacle, is for trash, which the kids themselves dispose of after weighing it to see how close to their zero-waste goal they've gotten.   

The next step is to install solar and move the school to net zero energy, said Cameron, adding, "Give me a couple years." 

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Photos: A building constructed from reclaimed materials at Muse School CA; the 5-bin sorting system; James Cameron, Suzy Amis Cameron and their kids at Muse School CA. Credit: Brandon Hickman / Muse School CA

Laguna Beach hotels to recycle all soaps -- a first in U.S.

Laguna Beach welcomes more than 6 million visitors annually to its sandy shores. Now visitors who stay in the beachside city's 22 hotels and lodging establishments will be inadvertent participants in a citywide effort to recycle all of the soaps, shampoos, hair conditioners, lotions and bath gels that are left over after a night's stay.

Starting Monday, Laguna Beach becomes the first city in the nation to have all of its hotel properties with more than 20 rooms participate in Clean the World -- a Florida-based nonprofit that provides recycled hotel soaps and hygiene products to those in need. Montage Laguna Beach, Pacific Edge Hotel and Best Western Laguna Brisas are among the 18 participating hotels, along with four of the city's six bed and breakfasts, for a total of 1,229 rooms.

In an average year, with an estimated 75% occupancy rate, Laguna Beach hotels generate 336,000 bars of soap and a slightly lesser number of shampoo, conditioner, bath gel and lotion bottles, all of which were previously thrown in the trash. Working with Clean the World, those hygiene products will be reclaimed by the housekeeping staff and set aside in a separate receptacle to be shipped to a Las Vegas processing facility. The bars of soap are cleaned of hair and paper, sterilized, ground into pellets and pressed into new bars of soap that are distributed to non-governmental organizations in 45 countries that do not have ready access to soap.

The bottled amenities are likewise reclaimed. If they're full, the bottles' exteriors are sterilized and redistributed to homeless shelters and soup kitchens inside the U.S. If the bottles are 25% empty, the plastic is recycled or potentially upcycled for use in other products.

Founded in 2009, Clean the World has 1,200 partner hotels across the U.S. and Canada, 126 of which are in California, including the Disneyland Hotel, Disney’s Grand Californian Resort & Spa and Disney’s Paradise Pier Hotel in Anaheim. Since joining the Clean the World Hospitality Partnership Program in July, Disney's three Southern California resorts have collected 3,152 pounds of hotel soap and 2,212 pounds of bottled amenities such as shampoo.

Clean the World charges hotels 65 cents per room per month for the service. Of the 4.6 million hotel rooms in the U.S., Clean the World recycles the hygiene products for about 6% of them, said Shawn Seipler, who co-founded the nonprofit in 2009.

At the time, Seipler was a business executive and on the road four nights a week.

Recycling center mired in controversy

Burbank officials have set a self-imposed Nov. 15 deadline to hammer out a deal with a new operator for the city’s recycling center — even if the prospective newcomer was selected by the current contractor who is accused of making almost $33 million in fraudulent claims.

City officials cut ties with Burbank Recycling Inc. in March after the state alleged the firm submitted millions in fraudulent recycling claims. Under the terms of its contract with the city, Burbank Recycling is permitted to choose its successor. If the city agrees, it gets $150,000 to cover the expenses of transferring the operation, Public Works Director Bonnie Teaford said.

In this case, both parties agreed on the chosen successor, Burrtec Waste Industries Inc., a Fontana-based recycling operator that has a clean record and is financially sound, according to Burbank officials.

In Long Beach, a Halloween maze with a 'green' twist

You don't have to be wasteful to be spine-tingling.

That’s the message of a haunted maze in Long Beach where the corn stalks were fashioned from reused packing materials, the walls were made from salvaged shipping pallets and discarded tarps and the spooky stilt man's crutches were once destined for the dumpster.

Perhaps the creepiest item at the DIY Haunted Maze was a decrepit old dentist's chair that someone had thrown out. For Halloween, it was the focal point of a room where a sadistic dentist tried to elicit blood-curdling screams from visitors.

The neighborhood attraction in Long Beach put a "green" spin on Halloween by using 90% recycled materials. The organizers, a group of college students, also designed the free attraction to be an outlet for those tight for cash in the down economy.

Though foraging for materials was partly a pragmatic exercise for the cash-strapped students, it was also designed to make a point about how much of what goes to waste can be reused.

"If you see something on the side of the road and want to be creative, pick it up and do something with it," said Katie Transue, 26, a biology student at Long Beach City College. "You can turn trash into anything, honestly. You clean it up and you can turn it into an experience like a massive haunted house if you want."

She and about half a dozen other students scoured street corners and dumpsters over the last few months to round up enough materials to put together the 2,500-square-foot maze, which twisted its way through the yard of one of the student's parents. It had 10 themed rooms -- a graveyard, a spooky barn and an abattoir among them -- and was manned by 12 characters in costume: scarecrows, clowns, zombies and a gas mask-wearing "Biohazard Man."

"If you're afraid of something, it's in our haunted house," Transue said.

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Plastic water bottle-makers sued by California over green claims

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Plastic water bottle-makers sued by California over green claims [Updated]

This post has been updated. See below for details.

California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris filed a lawsuit against three companies Wednesday for allegedly making false and misleading claims about their plastic water bottles' recyclability and biodegradability. The lawsuit is the first to enforce California's environmental marketing law, which  makes it illegal to label a plastic food or beverage container as biodegradable because plastic takes thousands of years to break down naturally and may never do so in a landfill.

According to the lawsuit, Balance and AquaMantra plastic water bottles, marketed by ENSO Plastics in Mesa, Ariz., falsely claim the bottles are both biodegradable and recyclable. The labeling states the bottles contain a microbial additive that helps them break down in less than five years. The lawsuit says the microbial additive doesn't accelerate the breakdown process and also compromises the bottles' recyclability because the microbial additive is considered a "destructive contaminant" by the Assn. of Post Consumer Plastic Recyclers.

In 2008, California banned the use of the terms "biodegradable," "degradable" and "decomposable" in plastic food and beverage container labeling. Senate Bill 567, going into effect in 2013, will expand the 2008 law to all plastic products.

An email request for comment to ENSO Plastics' public-relations department did not receive a response as of publication time.

[Updated 1:40 p.m., Oct. 28: ENSO released a statement Friday in response to the lawsuit. “Our industry is young, and we are still improving standards and dispelling false beliefs," ENSO president Danny Clark said. "Our products perform as we claim, and we have the data to prove it. The situation in California is a lack of education and misunderstanding new technologies; this is not an issue of false claims. We will take this opportunity to bring legislators up to speed with ENSO technologies and the value they bring to the environment.”]

[Updated 3:01 p.m., Oct. 28:  The L.A. Bureau of Sanitation also issued a response Friday afternoon. "Development of new materials, for packaging and otherwise ... [is] often made without regard to the recycling infrastructure in place, resulting in incompatibility or outright non-recyclability of the new material," said Enrique Zaldivar, director of the bureau. "The Los Angeles Recycling Program urges the material manufacturing industry to work with the recycling (and composting) industry to avoid misrepresentations to the public on the recyclability of products."]

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Photo: AquaMantra water bottles. Credit: AquaMantra.com

Glendale considers ban on plastic bags

The city of Glendale is considering a ban on plastic bags similar to ordinances adopted in Los Angeles County and several cities throughout the state.

The law would affect more than 2,000 stores by January 2012. It would ban plastic bags and require retailers to levy a 10-cent surcharge per paper bag, the Glendale News-Press reported.

"The negative impact to the environment as a result of these bags motivates us to ban plastic bags," said Public Works Director Steve Zurn, adding that officials envision a rule that prevents all retailers, from grocery to drugstores, from using plastic bags.

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Photo: Andy Keller (of a company called "ChicoBag") stands on Temple Street in downtwon Los Angeles covered with plastic bags during a rally supporting a proposed ban on plastic bags last year. Credit: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times

Costa Mesa classrooms made of recycled shipping containers

The Waldorf School of Orange County last week dedicated environmentally friendly classrooms crafted from recycled shipping containers.

Waldorf, a nonprofit private school, used the containers to expand its 2350 Canyon Drive campus near Fairview Park. The additional space, according to a news release, will allow the school to serve pupils from pre-K to 12th grade.

School officials called the design "Eco Classroom Architecture." The project won the Costa Mesa Planning Commission's 2011 Costa Mesa Green Design Award. Costa Mesa Planning Commissioner Rob Dickson plans to help dedicate the building.

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Photo: Rendering of the new campus. Credit: Times Community News

Auto shredder to pay $2.9 million to settle toxic waste case

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control and Los Angeles district attorney's office announced a $2.9-million settlement Thursday with an Anaheim scrap metal company over allegations that it improperly handled hazardous materials.

A judge has accepted the agreement, which resolves complaints that the owner and operator of SA Recycling and Simms Metal West violated hazardous waste and air pollution laws by continuing operations after an air pollution control system was damaged by a May 2007 explosion at its Port of Los Angeles site.

At the time of the violations, the company was operated by Sims Hugo Neu West, a subsidiary of Sims Group Limited, which acquired substantially all of the recycling operations of Hugo Neu Corp. in October 2005.  Sims Group merged the metal recycling operation with Adams Steel in 2007, creating SA Recycling, LLC.

The facility shreds automobiles, household appliances and other metal-based waste.

"We continue to deny that any of these allegations occurred," company spokesman Michael Bustamante said Thursday. "We're happy to put this behind us for the sake of the company and for the sake of the community."

The Department of Toxic Substances Control estimated that about 4.4 tons of unspecified "material" was released into the environment during that period.

State regulators have turned their attention to auto shredders and scrap processors, which crush and compress motor vehicles, consumer goods and other items for recycling, but leave behind residue dubbed "auto fluff," consisting of glass, rubber, fiber, engine fluids and plastics, among other substances.