Originally written on Sept. 2, 2005, this post is constantly updated and occasionally reposted at Siel’s whim.

Put down The Secret. Here’s the green Angeleno’s guide to the good life:

Eat & Drink

1. Get caffeinated. Drink coffee that tastes better and does good. Find your local organic fair trade coffee shop — or if you must go to Starbucks, take the Starbucks Challenge.

2. Dare to eat a peach — a fresh juicy one from a local farm. Enjoy the tastiest, most eco-friendly fruits and veggies possible — without going out of your way.

3. Get your protein. Opt for grass-fed, free range, organic, and local meat, milk, and eggs, stick to sustainable seafood, and go easy on the highly processed veg meats.

4. Do happy hour. Find out how to green your drink — from beer to wine to shots to cocktails and beyond.

5. Indulge in dessert. Eat ice cream, sorbet, and chocolate. Fair trade and organic options are easy to find now –

6. Learn to cook. Take a local, organic cooking class. There’s bound to be one suited to your diet and lifestyle.

7. Treat yourself. Dine out at an eco-friendly restaurant — or get organic meals delivered to your doorstep.

8. Lose the junk. Try an eco-friendly diet — or just get motivated to get the scary crap out of your body.

Get Around

1. Take a walk — It’s sunny out! Easiest way to get walking more often: Live in a walkable spot. But wherever you are, discover one-mile-radius living.

2. Bike it. My pink townie saves me lots of money and parking hassles — and the Los Angeles biking community’s helpful and friendly.

3. Ride easy — whether on bus or rail. Some bus routes will actually get you to your destination faster and cheaper than in a car, especially if you account for the driving time spent looking for parking — and the money spent paying for it.

(more…)

16 Comments

Thanks to the high price of organic arugula at Whole Foods, green living still makes people think of an expensive lifestyle. In reality though, living green — which mostly means living smartly and efficiency — saves green. Green LA girl readers who pack homemade lunches in reusable containers, vanquish vampire power, and shop pre-loved fashions save money through efficiency, not green sacrifice.

But for those who missed those posts — or simply want all the money-saving green tips in a neatly bound format — there’s a new book called Shift Your Habit: Easy Ways to Save Money, Simplify Your Life, and Save the Planet. Written by Elizabeth Rogers, who also co-authored The Green Book, Shift Your Habit’s basically a book chock-full of money saving eco-friendly tips, organized into neat sections for the green frugalista.

With sections on the home and garden, work, kids, pets, and even fashion and beauty products, Shift Your Habit tries to cover all bases — and to show you the money. Pack waste-free lunches, for example, and you could save up to $400 a year. Grow herbs on your windowsill, and you can shave $50 off your annual grocery bill. Shut off your computer after you finish reading this post — and you’ll see the difference on your electricity bill.

The biggest money-savings tips will be most useful for people who own their own homes. After all, while planting a shade-providing tree can cool off your home sans energy-sucking AC units, most apartment dwellers don’t exactly have the freedom or room to give a fruit tree a place to set down roots. And for renters like me whose utility bills are included in the rent, the money savings from energy-efficient living won’t show up in your wallet — though you’ll still be doing the planet a lot of good.

Longer-time environmentalists will likely be familiar with most of the tips, but a few creative new ideas still shine through — like picking lip colors that can double as blush and organizing collective walk breaks at work for a fun socializing-meets-exercise habit (plus savings on a gym membership). All those tips are interspersed with helpful charts like one that explains different green certification logos, quick tips on everything from picking out green luggage to getting clothing stains out, and recipes for DIY products like homemade green cleaners and organic facial scrubs.

What struck me while reading Shift Your Habit is the fact that green living, in many ways, has to do with shifting away from working so much to living more. Right now, many of us work long hours and skip vacations to earn money — a habit that leaves us so tired that we use the hard-earned money to buy short-term conveniences. Shift Your Habit hints at a different kind of lifestyle where you might work a little less — while doing things you can enjoy that require less cash. Wish you had more time to try new recipes? Then forgo the styrofoam-encased, unhealthy takeout dinners — and the overtime worked to pay for it — and learn to cook a whole chicken — down to boiling the remains for broth — that can feed you for days!

Shift Your Habit lands on bookshelves tomorrow, March 9.

Image via shiftyourhabit.com

1 Comments

Wish you could magically turn all that ugly junk mail you don’t want into gorgeous, letterpress stationery you need? You now can — almost magically — through a cute Chicago letterpress company called Tweedle Press.

That’s right — Pack up the junk mail and other paper in your recycling bin, mail it off to the Windy City, and you’ll get back beautifully-designed, 100% post-consumer (that consumer would be you!) recycled content letterpress stationery and business cards — tinted in the shade of your choice, flecked with flower petals of your desire, and printed with veggie-based inks via a hand-cranked press!

I know — it sounds too good to be true — but Tweedle Press’ owner Nina Interlandi Bell makes it possible through her personal recycling service. This is one serious green letterpress expert — with a quirky, whimsical style — whose website details all her many eco-friendly practices — down to her human-powered presses.

Of course, reincarnating your discarded paper goods doesn’t come cheap — but Tweedle Press’ prices aren’t any higher than those of most boutique letterpress companies, which don’t offer an added personalized recycling service. A 50-sheet set of personalized letterpress stationery (with envelopes) handcrafted from your junk mail costs $260, while a similarly-made set of 100 letterpress business cards can be yours for $210. Just want pretty paper sans the printing and design work? For $47, you can turn 8 to 10 ounces of unwanted junk mail into 10 gorgeous sheets to use as you please.

Since shipping paper does have a sizable carbon footprint, Tweedle Press’ service is most eco-friendly for Windy City residents. That said, keep in mind that the paper you put in the recycling bin in Los Angeles isn’t recycled in L.A. — or even in California. The stuff all gets shipped across the ocean to China, to be shipped back as new recycled goods to be sold as slightly eco-friendlier paper products at a store near you. Recycled is a lot greener than buying new — but it’s not without its own carbon footprint.

That’s why we should all be reducing our junk mail as much as possible! Whittled down your junk mail enough that you don’t have paper to recycle? Tweedle Press also offers readymade letterpress cards, stationery, coasters, and bookmarks — like the ones pictured above — made with 100% recycled, 30% post-consumer paper.

Earlier:
>> Stop junk mail: A Complete guide to getting just the mail you want
>> Copper Willow: Gorgeous green letterpress holiday cards from Culver City

Photos courtesy of Tweedle Press

4 Comments

>> An NYU student turns expired condoms into rubbery dresses. According to Ecouterre, “She’s actually worn these outfits in public. (Definitely NSFW territory.) Laughter and disgust are the usual responses, she notes, but some people actually compliment her style.” Earlier: Win a lifetime supply of green-themed condoms.

>> Nonprofit L.A. Shares prevents premature landfilling of perfectly usable stuff — by hauling away unwanted electronics and supplies from local businesses and giving them away to nonprofits and schools. L.A. Shares executive director Bert Ball plans to expand the nonprofits work with toiletries, cosmetics, sports equipment and musical instruments, according to the L.A. Times. Find out more at L.A. Shares’ website.

>> Ignore expiration dates, says Nadia Arumugam in Slate:

Not only are expiration dates misleading, but there’s no uniformity in their inaccuracy. Some manufacturers prefer the elusive “Best if used by,” others opt for the imperative “Use by,” and then there are those who litter their goods with the most unhelpful “Sell by” stamps.

Image via Ecouterre

0 Comments

Some of my favorite notebooks are made by Papergeist Books, a cute Florida-based company that crafts unique notebooks and planners out of vintage record sleeves and one-side-used paper. The one-of-a-kind $22 notebooks don’t fit everyone’s budget, however. If you’ve got more time than money on your hands, you can create your own post post consumer, Papergeist-esque notebook with a little help from Instructables (via Lifehacker)!

The photo-illustrated guide by Instructables member WhyIsThisOpen is for creating a VHS Spiral Bound Notebook that basically requires you to buy a brand new notebook and simply replace the cover with a VHS cover cut to size. But you can green up this project by taking apart a used spiral notebook for the spiral spine, and folding or cutting up one-sized used paper for the notebook’s innards.

Making this project post post consumer will also require a lot of hole punching, since you’ll need to punch up all the one-side-used paper in addition to the upcycled VHS cover. But in the end, you’ll have a 100% post post consumer notebook made with all reused materials!

And remember — That VHS cassette itself can be partially upcycled too. Take out the ribbon and use it to decorate gifts with retro bows and frills.

Image via WhyIsThisOpen / Instructables

0 Comments

Got too many T-shirts and not enough scarves? Then turn T-shirts into fun scarves with the help of this DIY video from Threadbanger. Megan Nicolay from Generation-T illustrates how to turn ho-hum T-shirts into decorative scarves — no sewing machine required! (via The Oko Box)

Watch to see how Megan transforms a single T-shirt into a fringe scarf — just with a pair of scissors. Then learn how to make two more — one requires a tiny bit of sewing — in this 5-minute video.

Have a lot of T-shirts waiting for upcycling? You might want to check out Generation T’s books — Generation T: 108 Ways to Transform a T-Shirt and Generation T: Beyond Fashion: 120 New Ways to Transform a T-Shirt — for more ideas.

Earlier: Pre-loved T-shirt totes: DIY — or buy eco

0 Comments

Love the holiday gifter but hate the gift — and maybe even temporarily love the gifter a little less due to the hideousness of the “gift” you got? We’ve all got our horror gift stories — but we need not jettison the unwearables and unusables and unlook-at-ables into the landfill. Here’s how to turn those abominations into new admirable gifts and creative endeavors, reducing waste while having a little fun:

1. Put it on Etsy and submit it to Regretsy. If you haven’t discovered Regretsy yet, you’ve been missing out on a lot of horrified laughter. This site — with the tagline “Handmade? It looks like you made it with your feet” — proudly features the ugliest and scariest of goods put up for sale by people who fancy themselves crafters. We’re talking handmade destroyed jeans — a.k.a. extremely old dirty jeans with holes containing a disembodied knee, no less! — to an eco-intentioned but just grotesque crapeau made with upcycled prune juice containers.

I know what you’re thinking: Regretsy’s fun, but how exactly will a website pointing out how ugly my “gift” is actually help me get rid of the gift? Believe it or not, quite a number of items that make it onto Regretsy sell quite well! April Winchell, Regretsy’s creator, told Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog she loves it when the fugly items sell: “People send me emails and say, ‘I sold a painting, so revenge on you.’ But that’s what I wanted the whole time!”

So why not try Etsy-Regretsy-ing your “gift,” maybe offering it for just the price of shipping? Putting an item on Etsy to simply get it featured on Regretsy is gaming the system a bit, I suppose — but the sheer scariness of items like the masturbating dinosaur wall art already makes me think some Etsiers must be deliberately dabbling in craftwrecks….

That dino sold, BTW. So did the crapeau! Did you get it for Christmas?

(more…)

4 Comments

I warned you not to get suckered in by Black Friday sales and encouraged you to spend less on crappy gifts this season — so hopefully you won’t be burdening your loved ones with any of the top 10 worst Christmas gifts this season!

But in case you forgot to forward on my posts to your friends and family, here’s a tip for how to deal with really, really bad gifts you get this season: Throw a Save the White Elephant party!

That idea comes courtesy of BBMG, an eco-minded marketing company that’s running a “Save the White Elephant” campaign this season. The idea: Keep your unwanted “gift” out of the landfills by finding it a new home — by regifting it to someone who does want it.

Of course, you don’t want to take this “one girl’s trash is another’s treasure” thing too far by forcing “gifts” like the Eyebrowed Lorgnette (right) to an unsuspecting friend. That’s where the party idea comes in. This way, every party attendee knows that all the gifts are “gifts.” Sure, it’s possible that a partier will actually want one of the “gifts”; otherwise, the unwanted items can at lease serve a one-time function as holiday party favors that remind everyone not to buy crap in the coming year before, um, getting “donated” to Goodwill?

0 Comments

In his book Ecological Intelligence, Daniel Goleman argues that even organic cotton T-shirts aren’t necessarily very eco-friendly, since they can still be shipped all around the world to be sewn together in sweatshop conditions before being chemically-dyed in a polluting facility. Of course, conventionally-grown cotton T-shirts still fare much worse under eco-scruitiny — especially those grown and made in China.

Just how ecologically damaging those “all-natural” T-shirts are has been laid bare, thanks to a feature article in the latest issue of Miller-McCune magazine. In “Can China Turn Cotton Green?” Chris Wood takes a close look at a study conducted by the International Institute for Sustainable Development in Winnipeg, Canada, that drew from an international network of experts to look at the whole cotton T-shirt manufacturing process.

As you may have expected, environmental problems caused by the common cotton T-shirt ranges widely, from irrigation-based farming practices that strain water supplies and damage ecosystems, to overuse of chemical fertilizers, to water pollution from dye wastes:

Only about 10 percent of dye wastes are recycled, and about a third of the rest flows directly to the environment. In provinces like Xinjiang, this waste is a major contributor to industrial and municipal pollution so severe that nearly 1 in 4 of China’s 1.3 billion people drink contaminated water every day.

Beyond China, the article gives some broader insights into the international cotton market. For example, did you know that conventional cotton from Africa’s made with a lot less chemical fertilizer and pesticides than that from China?

The researchers found that the use of agrichemicals differed widely among major supply regions, with China’s own farmers dosing their fields with six times more fertilizer and pesticide than growers in sub-Saharan Africa. American farmers and others in Brazil fell somewhere in the middle.

And did you know that because of corporate consolidation, “the power to influence change” in the cotton-textile chain lies with a “relatively small number of increasingly global participants”? For example, Wal-Mart and Kmart account for a quarter of all the clothing sold in the U.S.! Combine the power of those big players with the many challenges of enforcing environmental policies and guidelines through “local governments whose incentives are dominated by economic development,” and green concerns can get pushed aside. In addition, government subsidies given to cotton farmers in the U.S., China, and European countries tends to harm small producers by lowering cotton prices, giving little incentive to invest in greener practices.

The news isn’t all doom and gloom. Chris’ article also points to some suggestions from the study — ranging from shifting to less-irrigation-based, more rain-fed farming and downsizing cotton farm subsidies to consumer pressures for greener trade and greener products — that could help green up cotton T-shirts, whether grown and made in China or elsewhere.

If you’re a would-be conscious consumers, read “Can China Turn Cotton Green?” for a great primer on cotton and the cotton trade — that’ll help you make better purchasing decisions by learning to ask better, more meaningful questions instead of simply buying a cheap T-shirt on a whim.

Photo by Johnnie Utah

0 Comments

If you expect eco-holiday shopping to be not just green but also chic, then don’t be put off by the rather gaudy flier put out by the Conscious Holiday Gift Bazaar! Because while the flier designers seem a bit behind the times, the shopping event itself seems quite timely. Conscious Holiday Gift Bazaar promises “holiday gifts for the soul” — including a free organic vegan buffet to the first 200 attendees!

When: Sat., Dec. 12, 10 am – 8 pm and Sun., Dec. 13, 10 am – 6 pm
Where: LAX Hilton, 5711 W. Century Blvd., Los Angeles
Cost: $5, or free with a new, unwrapped toy to benefit the Family Services Agency Of Burbank and Sojourn/Ocean Park Community Center.

Stop by for unique green holiday shopping, local and organic food, and live music — plus a Winter Solstice Concert & Party on Saturday night, happening from 8 pm to midnight. Unfortunately, information as to what green companies and products will actually be at the event are scant as of now — but I’ll try to get more details before the actual day of the event.

0 Comments