Latest from Emerald City, my enviro-blog at LAtimes.com
>> Cooks Double Dutch: Eco-friendly diner suits all diets. Vegans and meat-lovers unite! At Cooks Double Dutch in Culver City, you can order a PETA-friendly Tempeh Reuben sandwich while your ethical omnivore friend nibbles on a Homemade Free Range Beef Burger.
>> Q&A: What to do with un-green cleaning products. Kelly asks: “If traditional cleaning products (ie: 409) are so bad for the environment, what should I do with them if I want to throw them out and start over with green ones?”
>> Santa Monica a step closer to banning plastic bags. Santa Monica will likely see fewer plastic bags floating around its streets and beaches soon. The Santa Monica City Council voted to draft an ordinance banning one-use plastic and biodegradable plastic-like bags in city businesses.
>> Environmental justice: Going green’s not just for yuppies and hippies. Can’t afford to go green? Environmentalism’s seen by some as a rich, elitist group — what with the $100K electric sports car Tesla and the $1,799 eco-ish Macbook Air getting a whole lot of attention. But many of our urban environmental problems, such as industry pollution, strike the poor and underprivileged the hardest.
And a linky post:
>> A.M. Greenlist: Ships, trucks, bikes, and the Metro.
>> A.M. Greenlist: Offsets get popular for Hummer owners
>> P.M. Greenlist: Biofuel madness
February 28th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
As is par for the course, SM city council put the plastic bag ban on hold and will vote on it at some future time:
“The proposed ordinance was supposed to be discussed Tuesday night, but the issue was set aside for another meeting.”
They are so very good at pretending to be green it’s silly.
February 28th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Dude, they voted on it on Tuesday. It passed. The vote really was just delayed 1 week b/c they ran out of time at the last meeting.
February 28th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
No ban passed - they agreed to agree to draw up an ordinance that then has to be passed. SM is a greenwashed city; I write to them all the time about stuff and all I ever get back is “we are working on it”. I live here too, it really makes me angry. Take for instance their “water reduction” program - it’s a farce. Their water manager told me (when I asked about enforcement) to tell on my neighbors and issue them pamphlets because they did not have anyone to actually enforce the ban. The CC likes to act like they are doing something, but nothing ever really changes. Remember that gas-blower ordinance? Almost every gardener in SM still uses them. Store owners still wash the sidewalk with a hose. The pizza place on the Promenade still serves drinks in styrofoam cups.
If they actually enforced all these things they brag about, the city would actually be green. We don’t even have recycling bins in public parks. It’s a sin. San Francisco knows how to do it right.
February 28th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
That is how things work. First, you decide to draw up an ordinance, then you pass it. But since we already know what’s going to be in the ordinance, passing it is pretty much a formality. It’s exactly how the styrofoam ban passed.
And yes, it’ll be another 6 months to a year after the plastic bag ban ordinance passes to when it goes into effect. Government’s slow, but that doesn’t always mean it’s greenwashing.
It’s a lil odd imho to be so neg about the Santa Monica thing, considering the voluntary reduction plan that that LAC board of supervisors passed –
I haven’t tried the water issue, but you can call the city whenever you hear a leaf blower — They do actually send the cops to make it stop.
February 28th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Siel - It’s not being negative, it’s being honest about what our city actually does. When I called about the water ordinance and compliance, they sent me a packet and told me to walk around the neighborhood giving them to landlords, because “they don’t have time to do it”. So what is the use of having an ordinance? To look good to the public, that’s why.
There is no guarantee that the ban will pass on the bags - everyone thought it was a sure thing in LA too, but then the Grocers Union got involved. Voluntary reduction means nothing; they are not going to reduce voluntarily - in a year or so, every store will still be using the same amount of plastic bags as they did last month. This could happen in SM as well.
The Styrofoam ban is not being enforced either - am I supposed to report every place I eat that still uses it? Why have a law if we have to do the work of the government? I do have better things to do than track who is not complying with water, sytrofoam, leaf blower, etc. laws and report them to the city…who should be doing this on their own if they were truly concerned. It’s like the homeless problem - they say they are concerned, they pay a homeless czar $250K a year, yet the population keeps getting bigger and bigger and more and more sick. Since I don’t own a car and walk everywhere during the day, I would be on my cellphone to the city all day reporting homeless, water, styrofoam and leaf-blower criminals.
And don’t get me started on a “LEED-Certified” parking garage and the removal of the trees from 2nd and 4th. :-)
I am just saying that if a city wants to be green, they need to actually BE green, not just make laws and ordinances and then not enforce a single one of them.
March 1st, 2008 at 10:33 am
I think deriding city policies just when we’ve made a step forward — as opposed to saving that derision for when it’s actually messed up — counts as being negative. For most enviros, when a city takes the next step toward banning plastic bags, that’s good news. For you, it seems to be a cue to start condemning the city for not having done it already. Dude, there’s a PROCESS. You can’t pass an ordinance without writing it first.
The water issue, like I said before, sounds ridiculous, and it sounds like something we should be writing our councilmembers about. It looks like they’re taking an all-carrot (as evidenced by the grants for drought-resistant landscaping), no-stick (as evidenced by lack of enforcement of existing water laws) approach.
But you seem to have taken that issue and extrapolated it to every aspect of the city, from styrofoam to homelessness. First of all, the styrofoam ban just went into effect less than a month ago! Do you really expect perfection from day one? In addition, I have to say that every eatery I’ve been to since then has NOT been using styrofoam. Where are these places you speak of?
And assuming they exist — I actually DO think it’s a bad idea to spend taxpayer money on hiring people to go bug every restaurant, when most have already complied with the ordinance. I think it DOES make more sense to rely on reports from residents — which BTW, is not hard to file. A one-min phone call or email does it. In the time you spent ranting here about how the ban isn’t enforced, you could’ve easily contacted the people in charge of enforcing the ban — and seen how that turned out before writing off the efforts.
A city requires the involvement of its residents to perform better. You say that the city would be “doing this on their own if they were truly concerned” — but this just makes me wonder if you are truly concerned since you seem to feel you shouldn’t have to take any action toward these ends. I’m not saying that the city has no responsibility — I think it def. needs to ACT on the concerns that residents bring up (and it seems they failed to do so regarding the water issues). But I don’t think the fact that the city has responsibilities absolves the responsibilities of residents.
I also think you’re not really plugged into what the city’s doing to address the homeless population — Many steps have actually been taken since I wrote that post, all of which you can read about by following the city council’s meetings. Perhaps you could write a more serious, detailed, and less hyberbolized post about what exactly is your issue with how the city is currently addressing homelessness. I agree that the homelessness situation is far from perfect — but I also think that it’s a huge problem that’s difficult to address, and I also have doubts that homelessness will ever “disappear” despite our best efforts — even if I do think the situation can be improved by a lot. In any case, if you could educate us as to what exactly you think the failings are and back them up with research and examples, I think we could all benefit from it — much more so than the “Santa Monica just sucks and it’s greenwashing” type of unsubstantiated ranting.