Here are the wonderful new green LA girl bloggers whose work you’ve been reading:

Nisha Namorando Vida is an independent researcher and writer.  Her projects include researching the impacts of development economics on local and global patterns of inequality; building Local to Global Life Works, a project that organizes democratic policy planning events; and researching how to live symbiotically with our planet.  

Nisha is an avid cyclist and cook.  She is involved with many Los Angeles area nonprofits, writes for green LA girl and localblu.com, and is currently working with the filmmakers of the GMO Film Project.

Email Nisha at namorandovida@gmail.com.

April Gilbert is a Capricorn vegetarian currently working toward her B.S. in Sustainable Management through the University of Wisconsin (online). An actress under the  name Hazel Dean, after her Great-Grandmother, she has guest-starred on the TV shows “The Cleaner” and Disney’s “Even Stevens.”

In 2008 April co-created Pan Global Allied Enterprises, a production company focusing on low cost entertainment, where she gets to express her creativity through writing, acting and editing.

April’s blog, Sustainably Small, focuses on and shares ideas about living a life that is more fulfilling, betters our communities, and is in harmony with our environment. April lives in Los Angeles with her cat, Pee-wee Herman.

Email April at gilbert_april_dawn@student.smc.edu.

Sarah Fonseca holds a BA in Environmental Studies and works as an environmental and property condition consultant for a Commercial Real Estate Due Diligence firm in Santa Monica. She started with the firm in New York City and moved to Los Angeles five years ago to head up their west coast office.

In her free time, Sarah independently researches sustainable food production, sustainable nutrition, and holistic wellness. She’s an enthusiast of good food, hiking, and yoga. You can find her as a frequent host of the west side LA Green Drinks.

Email Sarah at sarahfons@gmail.com.
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Contact these women directly about green events about town you feel they’d be interested in, based on their posts online.

Photos courtesy of Nisha, April, and Sarah

Green Festival is finally coming to Los Angeles! I’ll be speaking at the big two-day eco-event,- and 8 lucky green LA girl readers will each get a pair of free tickets to hear me talk — and somewhat less importantly, to enjoy all the other festivities too :)

Put together by Green America and Global Exchange, Green Festival Los Angeles will feature a giant exhibit hall with more than 300 booths, many speakers and workshops, an organic food court, an organic beer and wine garden, eco-film screenings, yoga and movement classes, green business seminars, and more.

When: Sat., Oct. 29 and Sun., Oct. 30
Where: Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles
Cost: $10 — or free to the winners of this giveaway!

I’ll be speaking on a panel called “Blogging For Good,” along with fellow bloggers Laura Klein of Organic Authority, Karl Burkart of MNN, and Jerry James Stone of Discovery Channel. We’ll be on the Media Revolution and Green Cinema stage on Sat., Oct. 29 at 4:30 pm!

Comment by Friday, Oct. 21 to get into the drawing, which’ll happen Oct. 22 (more info on freebies here). U.S. addresses only.

Image via Green Festival

So resist that urge to unsubscribe from my email and RSS feeds! I’ll be back after Labor Day, greener and beachier than ever. In the meantime, have a great long weekend –

That’s why I love attending the BlogHer Conference every year. Besides the general fun of meeting bloggers whose work you admire (and who read your blog) this particular conference puts women front and center — which really sets it apart from many blogging and tech conferences that are dominated by male speakers and presenters.

Plus, since I happen to be the green section editor for BlogHer, I get to meet — or see again — all the great environmental bloggers whose posts I’ve been reading all year. The conference has gotten greener and greener over the years — with paper-free programs, zero-waste meals, filtered water stations, and a lot more.

So right after I finish this post, I’ll be heading down to San Diego. Planning to be there too? Find me at these events:

BlogHer 5K. Get some free, natural outdoor exercise — Run this fun route (PDF) with me bright and early on Fri., Aug. 5 starting at 6:30 am.

Our Food Future: Kids, Cooking, and Health. This Friday afternoon panel will feature one blogger I’ve been admiring for a long time from afar — Mrs. Q of Fed Up With School Lunch, who’s been eating — and photodocumenting — the same sugary, over-processed, factory-farmed animal product-filled school lunches her students have to eat at school every day.

The Swag Exchange. Lots of companies attend BlogHer — and give out a lot of free stuff in the gift bag, at the expo, and pretty much everywhere else around the conference too. Saying no’s my first line of defense, but the stuff that I still don’t want that end up in my possession (i.e. more reusable bags) gets dropped off at this spot before I leave — for donation, recycling, or use by another BlogHer attendee with different wants and needs than myself.

Of course I’ll be at a lot of other panels, sessions, and parties too — so if you see me, do say hello!

After 20 years of addiction, I’ve finally quit coffee — and developed a raging addiction to green tea.

The addiction swap-out, apparently, means great eco-benefits. According to GOOD, a cup of coffee requires 37 gallons of water to make (from growing the coffee, etc.) — while a cup of tea requires just 9 gallons.

That isn’t why I quit coffee though. Though GOOD’s chart compares somewhat similar choices we make in everyday life, I don’t think the lower water use option is necessarily always the choice you “should” make. If it were, we should eat oranges (13 gallons) and shun apples (18 gallons), and always opt of beer (20 gallons) over wine (31 gallons). A healthy, eco-friendly diet, though, requires variety — and in my opinion, a fun factor that makes room for individual taste. Picking fair trade coffee — or an organic apple — seems to me more eco-effective than always going for tea or oranges.

But now I really am always going for green tea over coffee. Why? I finally realized coffee was making me a more anxious, less even-keeled person.

I’d been drinking coffee daily since sixth grade, so I thought my anxiety levels and daily energy highs and crashes were just part of my nature. Coffee was just a normal, daily habit — a morning routine I looked forward to. Until recently, I started each day with three cups of French-pressed organic fair trade coffee — and couldn’t function without it. In fact, when I started my personal green blog, its main focus was coffee — fair trade, organic coffee, to be specific. I did lots of coffee reviews, interviewed movers and shakers in the fair trade coffee world, achieved some eco-notoriety for co-starting a Starbucks Challenge for fair trade coffee, and gave advice on drinking the most eco-ethical cup of coffee.

But about a year ago, when I complained about low-grade anxiety, low energy in the afternoons, and some trouble falling asleep at night, a doctor recommended that I try cutting back my daily habit to just two cups of coffee.

So I did. The result? I still felt my energy dip in the early afternoon, but I felt less anxious and I slept better! In fact, I felt so much better that whenever a friend mentioned anxiety or mood swings or insomnia, I waxed lyrical about how much cutting back on caffeine helped my sense of well-being.

Oddly, this did not spur me to explore actually quitting coffee altogether.

I think part of the resistance was that I’d tried to quit coffee before — and failed rather miserably each time. Usually, these attempts to quit were linked to some sort of bigger lifestyle change that sparked my interest — that forced me not only to go cold turkey on all caffeine, but totally revamp my diet or some other big aspect of my life (one especially tortuous stab at the Master Cleanse comes to mind).

Needless to say, those “change everything” dealios gave me horrible caffeine withdrawal headaches and just made me feel crappy altogether. It’s been an extremely slow process, but through the years I do seem to be finally accepting the fact that I generally do better when I try to make gradual changes over time, instead of attempting to alter everything in one go as I’m often tempted to do.

If you’re like me, my method of finally quitting coffee successfully might work for you.

My attempt to go from the now 2-cup habit to zero began when I decided to do the Crazy Sexy Diet cleanse — in a sane manner that wasn’t too shocking to my body. That cleanse recommended, among other things, quitting coffee — but also preached moderation and going at your own pace.

Around the same time, I read Robin Barooah’s post at Quantified Self about how he quit coffee due to the “growing suspicion that coffee was causing mood swings and crashes that are bad for my overall sense of well-being.” His quitting method? A very gradual and exact self-devised program that required a lot of measuring — and some unfortunate coffee waste:

I made the same amount of coffee each day, using a vac-pot. Although I didn’t measure caffeine content, I did control many factors including grind, age of beans, water temperature and water/coffee contact time. From this controlled pot of coffee, I used measuring cups to discard an additional 20ml per week.

He quit successfully — and found his concentration improved to boot!

So instead of going cold turkey, this time I decided to channel Robin’s anal retentive methodology — minus the coffee waste. How? I counted beans. I started with 100 beans every morning, cutting back five beans every few days and reducing the amount of water I put in the French press. Finally, I had about 15 beans left in my coffee jar — with which I made my last weak shot or so of coffee.

The next day, I drank a cup of black tea instead — without suffering a caffeine withdrawal headache. I had about 20 bags of black tea stockpiled in the apartment, mostly begotten as friends or as samples for review. Those finally got quaffed. Then I moved onto the green tea — I also had about 20 bags of those to get through.

After those were gone, I went entirely caffeine-free, starting my days with herbal tea. I even proudly told a number of organic tea companies to not send any more caffeinated tea samples, because I’ve quit caffeine — to which they replied with congratulations and herbal tea samples.

That caffeine-free streak lasted less than a month.

It ended when I read some nice things about green tea’s many healthy properties — things I had certainly read before, but this time, could use as an excuse to enjoy some caffeine in the morning. I guess I’m just not ready to part entirely with a caffeine habit yet — because I don’t see a reason to kick caffeine entirely. The switch from coffee to green tea has definitely lessened my mood swings and energy crashes — and I’m happy with the results as they are.

Perhaps twenty years from now, I’ll find a reason to quit green tea. For now, I’m slowly becoming a green tea connoisseur — so expect to see more fair trade, organic green tea reviews here.

One thing I’ve discovered so far: Back when I drank coffee, green tea never seemed to “do” anything in terms of a caffeine kick — the effect of the brew seemed no different than just water. Now, I not only feel the caffeine jolt — but also can feel the difference in the caffeine levels of cheaper, paper tea bag coffees and the more expensive, premium silk satchel bag or loose leaf coffees. The latter definitely gives you more of a kick!

Have you quit coffee — or tried to? What’s your story? And do you have a green tea to recommend?

Photo by Lynne Lowe/Flickr

>> Living plastic free is the new green. NPR interviewed my friend Beth Terry of My Plastic-Free Life about weaning herself oil — and I thought this sentence was especially cute: “Terry works hard at her elusive dream of oil-lessness.” What is your elusive eco-dream? Earlier: Why disposable plastics are bad for your health.

>> Furoshiki for your hoodie. Transform your hoodie into a computer sleeve, backpack, and more. (via Ecouterre) Earlier: Furoshiki.

But first, about the event. The Women of the Green Generation conference is an all-day affair, featuring not only the usual speakers and panels, but also eco-spa treatments, an “ask the experts” forum, a mini eco-expo of sorts featuring green goods, short eco-films, and more. Plus, attendees organic food and drinks all day — including a light breakfast, a lunch catered by Large Marge Sustainables, and a closing reception.

This is one green event where women take the center stage. Speakers include raw food chef Ani Phyo, author of “Gorgeously Green” Sophie Uliano, Rachelle Carson Begley of “Living With Ed” fame, Zhena Muzyka of Zhena’s Gypsy Tea, and many others — like myself!

When: Sat., May 14 from 10 am to 7 pm
Where: Marrakesh House, 6310 Tompkins Way, Culver City
Cost: $35 in advance, $50 at the door.

I’ll be on the 11 am panel titled “Marketing 911 – What you don’t know could hurt you,” which will tackle marketing techniques for green businesses, with an emphasis on social media strategies. Other panelists are Venice’s Whole Foods Market marketing director Kelly Layne, Tracy DiNunzio of Recycled Bride, and Susan Neisloss of Working for Green. Susan Emmer of Farmacy Agency will moderate.

Hope to see you there!

Earlier: Women of the Green Generation: Eco-business networking for L.A. women

Photo by CarbonNYC

Okay — The bald spot’s really tiny. It’s a small patch where about 30 strands of hair grew — and in fact, are growing again, replacing the follicles that were snipped — for the environment.

Why? That lock went to a little science experiment the Sierra Club’s running. Basically, the green nonprofit’s asking Americans across the country to give up a lock of hair — and send it in to get tested for mercury.

So a few weeks ago, I went to a Sierra Club event at Primrose Organics Salon in Los Angeles to get my hair snipped at the root — and sent to the Marine Extension Service at the University of Georgia’s Brunswick Station. Then I waited for three weeks with bated breath.

When people think of mercury, they think of seafood — and food safety issues. As nonprofits like Environmental Working Group have pointed out, mercury in fish is a big problem — since a single can of Albacore tuna will put the average woman over the FDA’s recommended limit for mercury for an entire week. Is Sierra Club suddenly joining EWG and Monterey Bay Aquarium to urge people to eat safer seafood?

Well, yes and no. Certainly, this campaign draws attention to the fact that a lot of seafood contains alarming amounts of mercury. But what Sierra Club’s pointing out with this campaign is that the mercury in the seafood comes from a human-made source — coal plants. That’s right — Coal-fired power plants put tons of mercury pollution into the air each year — which inevitably gets into our waterways when it rains. Once in the water, mercury gets turned into a very toxic form — methylmercury — by aquatic organisms. Fish then eat up this mercury — then in turn get eaten up by us.

Many people today don’t even realize this is why so much of our food is mercury-tainted. If we want safer seafood, we need to shut down more coal-fired plants — and that’s exactly what Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign aims to do. The popular campaign to get coal out of our energy supply has students stripping to their skivvies, Angelenos dressing up in strange costumes, and comedians impersonating coal.

The hair tests were also a part of the campaign — intended to draw an even more personal connection between pollution from coal-fired power plants and human health. And since I and some of my friends all got scissored for the cause, the connection got really, really personal. Yesterday, I got a panicked call from one of my friends. “I’m in the red zone!” she cried. Apparently, she’d gotten her mercury test results — and didn’t like the findings. “I don’t even eat that much fish!”

I ran to the mailbox to see if I’d gotten my results. Sure enough — I had a thick envelope from Georgia!

Luckily, as you can see above, my news was better than my friend’s. I credit my low mercury success to entirely nixing canned tuna from my diet (I actually did this to avoid BPA from the cans, but I’m sure it had a mercury-lowering effect too), and obsessively opting for safer seafood choices in Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Guide.

Concerned about mercury? I suggest you too opt for safer seafood. This safe seafood chart (PDF) by Neil Banas, which puts both sustainability and health-related info for seafood into a simple grid, makes safer seafood shopping easy. But if you look at that chart, you’ll notice that only a handful of seafood options fall into the “eco-good” and “toxins ok” sqare — limiting your options if you’ve got a hankering for a more varied seafood diet.

Want more seafood to be safer in the future? Get involved in the Beyond Coal campaign to stop the mercury problem at the source.

Update: How to get your hair tested for mercury for $20

Earlier:
>> An Undie run against coal — and a roll against coal in Los Angeles
>> Shop, cook, and eat to avoid health risks: Get scared into dining well
>> Fish and mercury: Jeremy Piven does the FDA’s public education work

Regular blogging will resume Wednesday.

I’ve gone soap free. I like it. And I’m not alone.

Okay — I’m not entirely soap-free, but I’m definitely very soap-lite. But before I get into the details, here’s the story. It all started with a little curiosity, when I read Sean Bonner’s soap-free story on BoingBoing. The local L.A. blogger revealed he’s been soap and shampoo-free for a year — aside from his hands, which he still washes with soap — and enjoying softer, healthier skin, a dandruff-free scalp, and more manageable hair — while smelling sweet too!

That story went viral — at least among environmental bloggers — and soon, two dirty-clean challenges entered the blogosphere. GOOD asked its readers to replicate Sean Bonner’s challenge for a month, basically saying bye bye to all hair and skin products. I wasn’t ready to go that far, but the girlier green beauty site No More Dirty Looks kicked off a less hard-core challenge: To go soap-free — with exceptions for the face, hands, and private parts where soap would still be allowed — for at least 5 days.

If you’re asking why anyone would go soap-free, here are the reasons that have attracted curious minds and bodies. Most obviously, there’s the financial savings. No soap means no need to buy soap! Then there are the health and environmental reasons. Many soaps are made with a whole lot of chemicals, fragrances, and antibacterials that aren’t good for you or the planet.

That leads to the third reason to try a soapless lifestyle: The potential for a better-looking you. Take away those weird, artificial chemicals, and your body might heal itself from unsightly problems like flaky dry skin or greasy dandruff — and leave you with healthier, better-looking, easier to manage skin and hair.

Sound too good to be true? It did a bit to me — but I decided to give the soap-free challenge a personal try anyway. Besides wanting to keep an open mind, I wondered if less soap could mean less dry winter skin. Although I only use gentle, organic, eco-friendly soaps, this unusually cold winter in L.A. had been drying out my skin — an annoying phenomenon I’d been dealing with by constantly putting on body lotion and cream. Those efforts had been working, but I was going through a lot of lotion. Could taking soap away from the equation simply lessen my need for lotion?

So I took More Dirty Looks’ soap-free challenge. I washed as usual, just soaplessly — except as allowed by the challenge, I did use soap or cleansers for my face, hands, and privates — and also let myself use soap lather to shave. Still, that meant I was using like a tenth of the soap than I was going through previously.

Three weeks later, I have to say I’m really liking my new almost soap-free lifestyle.

My skin’s less dry. As far as I can tell, I don’t smell. People have gone from not commenting on how I smell when I used soap — to still not commenting on how I smell now that I’m sans soap. I threw a party for 35 of my favorite girls — and everyone seemed to be mingling happily, sans nose plugs.

Were my friends just being polite? “Do I smell different?” I asked my boyfriend, without telling him the reason for the query. After a lot of sniffing he declared I smelled clean and a bit sweeter than usual — and demanded to know why.

The next morning, with no prompting from me, he showered sans soap.

To be clear, my new soap-free lifestyle’s quite different from Sean Bonner’s. He basically did away with all skin products, with the idea that his skin would balance itself out. I only did away with the soap, with the idea that my skin would get a little less dry. I still smooth on a shea butter-based body cream on an as-needed basis.

Would my skin just learn to moisturize itself better if I cut off the moisturizing regime? I’m not sure, and I’m not willing to try — at least not until the summer, when my skin’s less dry. The fact that I already know my skin’s drier in some times of the year than others, however, makes me think that I’m unlikely to ever go completely moisturizer free.

I have, however, gone almost soap-free and moisturizer lighter — and am happier as a result. Not all who tried the challenge have been totally converted, however. Kim at Our Daily Green tried going soap-lite — even roping in her teenage daughters into the challenge. The result of a week or so of soaplessness?

My family did agree that we felt a little itchy. I’m relatively sure that is more a function of the hard water (and we always are a little itchy, just not paying as much attention and trying to decide if there was any effect of the soaplessness)….

I think ultimately the point of the experiment was to show us that we don’t need soap as often or in the quantities we think we do. There is no doubt I love a good lathering up. I’m not prepared to give up my artisan soaps however, now I see that smearing it on my skin repeatedly day after day is not NECESSARY to good hygiene.

Have you ever tried going soap-free or soap-lite? What has your experience been?

[crossposted on Blogher]

Photo by squigglycircle