So back in June 2007, I bought a set of drawers from Ikea but lost one of those lil metal thingie that would’ve held a drawer together. Luckily, reader Don let me know that I can get another one free at Ikea.

Yesterday — aka 14 months later — I finally made the trip to get the damn thing. As of today, the drawer actually works like a drawer’s supposed to.

In celebration, some fun Ikea stuff, both green and not:

>> Ikea instructions for Dick in a Box, which was nominated for an Emmy.

>> Ikea Hacks! A blog devoted to creative adaptation of Ikea products.

>> Once upon a time I took the bus from Santa Monica to the Ikea in Burbank. It was stressful. Afterwards I drank wine in a hard-earned Ikea glass.

>> Not too long after that trip, I found out that Ikea lamps work best with Ikea CFL bulbs.

>> 2 months from now, IKEA will nix all disposable plastic bags. In a show of how cheap Americans really can be when something shows up as a line item on their receipts, IKEA reports that, since it started charging customers 5 cents per bag, disposable plastic bag use has gone down more than 92 percent in U.S. stores. So in Oct. 2008 IKEA’s gonna force that last 8 percent to reduce and reuse.

Second image from top via kottke

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Question: I am looking for a place that would accept a large amount of Styrofoam. We have recently purchased about 700 computers and are looking for a company that would take this styrofoam off our hands. Any information or guidance you could provide is sincerely appreciated. David

Answer: Your best bet is to use the Recycler Locator at the LA County’s SmartBusiness Recycling web site. Created specifically to help businesses recycle more, the Recycler Locator will let you do simple searches for companies that’ll take various recyclables off your hands.

While handy, the Recycler Locator isn’t perfect. Case in point: A search for styrofoam will turn up 0 results. The word you have to use is “polystyrene,” the generic name for styrofoam. That search gave me a list of 4 recyclers to choose from — Yay!

Be sure to first call the recycler before heading over to verify location, hours, and any restrictions they may have. Some charge fees; you may actually want to call all 4 recyclers to get the best deal.

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This year’s BlogHer Conference was greener than ever, thanks in large part to Zwaggle’s recycling our shwag. Post-conference, I asked if you had suggestions about how we could make BlogHer Conferences even greener — and got some v. innovative ideas!

The conclusion I’ve drawn from those ideas is twofold:

1 To green a conference, one needs to set v. v. specific goals — i.e. something more specific than “go green.”

2. A lot of people want that goal to be “get rid of disposable plastic.”

I mean, BlogHer’s started down the de-plasticking path already, what with making the BlogHer bags reusable cotton totes! The problem was that each of those contained a disposable bottle of water (I believe it was bio-plastic, but still!), much to the consternation of many environmentalists.

I ran into a whole buncha conference attendees who said they’d actually brought their own reusable bottle (One said she was instructed to do so in an email, but I don’t remember getting said email. Do you?), but ended up grabbing the plastic bottled water in the bags or in the meeting rooms, simply because they were, you know, there.

I would like to point out, however, that no-plastic water options were very much available! Many meeting rooms had chilled water in metal coolers in the back — although they were much less prominent than the bottled water option.

My point is this: Many people brought their own reusable bottles, and for those who didn’t, one sponsor was giving out free reusable water bottles! We coulda nixed the disposable water bottles altogether, and no one woulda been parched due to their absence….

MamaBird at Surely You Nest echoes this sentiment. Her advice: “Easy one for next conference is obviously water. There were tons of glasses but instead of pitchers, plastic water bottles sitting next to them…. It drove me nuts.”

My other point: Lunches don’t have to be encased in plastic (or bio-plastic). What happened to good old brown paper bag lunches?

Beth Terry of Fake Plastic Fish noted that “There sure is a lot of plastic at this here conference. Somehow I thought there would be less.” Let’s make that happen at BlogHer 2009!

De-plasticking, some might say, could hurt BlogHer’s chances of attracting sponsors. However, I think this is highly unlikely. While plastic bottle companies may, of course, be less likely to try to get their goods in our shwag bags, other companies will surely see BlogHer’s de-plasticking as an opportunity to offer better-targeted shwag, i.e reusable water bottles!

In fact, BlogHer member Deb wrote that by communicating BlogHer attendees’ preferences to the sponsors, those sponsors will be “better able to spend their money on swag people want!”

Those want / don’t want messages came across loud and clear in this year’s Zwaggle recycling room, where many people dumped off mostly plastic-based items. Says Deb: “As a marketer I have been in the unenviable position of designing and purchasing swag for different purposes, and I think your vendors are lucky to get feedback from the room–what bloggers kept, and what they recycled is useful information.”

Which makes me think that one way we could sell this greening message to sponsors is by letting them know that, hey, you’ll get a clear visual sense of the fact that BlogHer attendees aren’t too keen on plastic just by surveying the recycling room.

Another sponsor selling point: BlogHer’s greening efforts will actually help sponsor shwag go to the people who want them most! BlogHer’s own Jory Des Jardins points out that while most people didn’t want those tire pressure gauge things, others wanted two! “It’s all about choice, the choice to take something, or two of something, if desired,” Jory points out.

Of course, some enviros are more radical and want to go beyond reducing plastic to basically doing away with most shwag. Says Jenn of Tiny Choices: “Who needs all that swag, more totebags, and fridge magnets? I’m definitely on board for working with them next year!”

I’m with Jenn to a large degree — After all, I kept v. little of the shwag I received. However, I do also get Jory’s point that one gal’s trash is another’s treasure, especially since I give out tote bags all the time as freebies on my personal blog — and those giveaways are always popular.

In any case, I think sponsors are important in making BlogHer conferences financially affordable to our community members — and I do think some sponsors — Zwaggle being a big case in point — offer v. valuable goods and services to the attendees. As long as we do our best to encourage BlogHer sponsors to offer USEFUL, non-disposable-plastic shwag, AND offer attendees a way to easily recycle the shwag they don’t want as Zwaggle did this year, shwaggin’s alright with me –

Got other suggestions for the next BlogHer conference? Let us all know in the comments!

[crossposted on BlogHer]

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Part of the reason for the light blogging: Yesterday I was part of a panel titled “L.A. Blogs, Green Blogs; New Media and Social Change,” organized by Green L.A. and Liberty Hill Foundation.

Intended for an audience made up primarily of local enviro and social change orgs, the panel drew people from Heal the Bay, Coalition for Clean Air, Santa Monica Baykeeper, and the like.

Pre-event, we (the panelists) were told we’d be given 4 minutes “to lay out [our] thinking on how advocacy groups can best build relationships with internet reporters, editors and bloggers. Concrete illustrations are especially welcome.” However, the actual event ended up being much more loosely organized.

For one, Margot Roosevelt replaced Tami Abdollah to represent LA Times’ new enviro blog Greenspace — and Margot had to leave early. So she kicked off the panel by saying little about blogging but instead emphasizing that the LA Times won’t survive unless all of us buy the print version of the paper.

Hmmm…. I’d like the LAT to survive, but I’m pretty happy reading it online — and just don’t think readers’ll be reverting back to the 90s anytime soon.

Still, what came across for me during the panel is that many of the audience members — like Margot — were relatively unfamiliar with new media (few had even heard of Greenspace) and / or the perspectives or potential benefits coverage in these mediums could provide for enviro and social change orgs. Thus, the Qs from the audience tended to focus on stuff like whether new media coverage could actually incite bigger changes, how many eyeballs blogs attract (and how to find out this info), etc. as opposed to actual tips and advice on working with the new media.

Because of this, I started to wonder if much of what the panelists said even made sense to the audience members, who may or may not have known even what a blog reader or rss feed is, let alone Twitter or the Causes application on Facebook….

Perhaps due to the lack of structure, the discussion sometimes rambled and went off topic. Much of the panel focused on advice not specific to the web medium, i.e. targeting your news pitch to publications / people who may actually be interested in it. Some of the convo went over to how to write better blogs — advice more useful to the panelists than to the audience members.

In any case: I think Zuade Kaufman of truthdig and I were the only people who actually prepped said 4-min speeches — or at least the only ones who insisted on getting ‘em in at random points during the event :P

I hope the attendees got something out of the discussion. For my part, I’ll put up my notes — along with a couple additional resources for enviro and social change orgs — in the next post. Feel free to critique it — or ask additional questions, which I’ll try to circulate to the other panelists too.

Most notable distraction of the event: The styrofoam cups on the panelists’ table.

I’d like to note for the record that I did not take, nor use, a styrofoam cup — one was just set down before me. In the Q&A section, Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay, noted his disapproval of said cups before asking his question. I agree with the disapproval, but can’t resist pointing out the fact that Heal the Bay gave out disposable plastic bottles in each and every shwag bag at its last fundraiser dinner….

Overall, I enjoyed being part of the panel — especially meeting people from the many enviro orgs in LA. I just hope the audience got as much out of it as I did. Thanks to Green L.A. for including me –

Update: My notes are up!

Photo by maxgladwell

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A twice-weekly sharing of eco-shwag.

Today begins the Bloggy Giveaways Quarterly Carnival! In celebration, green LA girl will have a giveaway every day this week –

Today’s giveaway is a Whole Foods tote, made of 80% post-consumer waste — namely recycled plastic bottles.

No clue where it’s made, but the bag does have some good features: The roomy bag stands on its own, making it easier for the shopper to load stuff. In addition, the lil tag says the bag’s durable — If it gets a tear, you can get a free replacement at Whole Foods!

Comment on THIS POST — Yes, the one you’re reading right now — by Wednesday to get into the drawing, which’ll happen Thursday. US addresses only.

And check out all the other giveaways happening at Bloggy Giveaways. Among the green things you can win: A copy of Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle from Writing: My Life, an Organic Hotslings Sling for babies, and organic cradle bedding.

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The anti plastic bag and styrofoam sentiment’s rising — but all the different state, county, and city-level initiatives can get super confusing. Here’s the skinny on what’s happening:
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State of California

Current regulation: Nothing as of yet, but a bill imposing a 25 cent per-bag fee could be passed as soon as the end of August.

While no firm action’s been taken as of yet, in the pipeline’s AB 2058, which stipulates that if voluntary measures to decrease plastic bag use by 70% by July 1, 2012, a 25 cents per bag fee would kick in. (The fee was 15 cents when the bill was introduced by Assemblyman Lloyd Levine (D-Van Nuys), but the legislation’s since been strengthened.)

The latest on the bill: AB 2058’s passed through Assembly and is now before the Senate Committee on Appropriations. According to Kirsten James of Heal the Bay, the bill’s expected to pass through that committee and come to the Senate floor before the end of August. If passed there, the bill may have to go back to the Assembly for concurrence — but that step’s really a formality, and AB 2058 would basically be headed to the Governor’s desk.

The bill’s been amended to allow local governments can enact tougher rules that go into effect earlier than AB 2058 will.
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LA County

Current regulation: Voluntary efforts to reduce plastic bag use.

In January 2008, the LA County Board of Supervisors passed legislation asking for VOLUNTARY reductions in plastic bag use. Stores bigger than 10,000 square feet that use plastic bags a lot were told to voluntarily reduce plastic bag use by 30% by 2010, then 65% by 2013. If these reduction goals aren’t met, an automatic plastic bag ban kicks in — July 2010 at the earliest.

That watered-down legislation had local enviro-org Heal the Bay fuming — but apparently the plastic industry peeps that watered it down still think it’s too tough. The plastic bag industry, aka the Save the Plastic Bag Coalition, filed a lawsuit earlier this month challenging this legislation.

“Where do these guys come from?” asks Heal the Bay’s Spouting Off blog. Kirsten James of Heal the Bay said she found it “interesting” that the plastic industry’s suing over something they agreed to back when the legislation was being hashed out. “The main threat is that it’s just going to tie things up,” Kirstin said. “It’s really unfortunate.”
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City of Los Angeles

Current regulation: A styrofoam ban’s going into effect at city agencies and events between now and 2010. A plastic bag ban could kick in July 2010 IF state efforts come to naught.

If — and only if — Calif’s AB 2058 (see above) doesn’t pass AND no other state anti-plastic-bag efforts pass before July 2010, LA will ban plastic carryout bags in supermarkets and stores by July 2010. Kirsten James of Heal the Bay said she hopes this “if not - then” plan in LA will show the plastic industry the benefits of getting behind a state-wide plan.

The LA City Council also voted this week to require city agencies to stop purchasing styrofoam — aka polystyrene — food containers starting next year. According to , this anti-styrofoam directive will be implemented in phases. Some city departments can immediately stop purchasing styrofoam, while other places — including LAX — would need to wait for existing contracts with vendors to run out before implementing the no styrofoam policy.

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City of Santa Monica

Current Regulation: Styrofoam ban went into effect February 2008. Anti-bag legislation being drafted.

The styrofoam ban’s been implemented quite well — at least in all the eateries I frequent — but we’re still waiting for action on the bag issue.

Back in February 2008, the Santa Monica City Council voted to draft an ordinance banning one-use plastic and biodegradable plastic-like bags in the city. However, this ordinance now won’t come before the City Council until after the summer break, according to both SM City Councilmember Kevin McKeown and Kirsten of Heal the Bay.

Why the delay? This ordinance is very wide reaching, making the plastic bag ban apply to all stores, regardless of size, as well as implementing a fee on paper bags. According to McKeown: “If we iron out the paper bag issue, it will probably involve a charge in the 15 to 20 cent range. That fee might be split between the store (to cover the increased cost compared to plastic) and the City (to pay for the educational component of the program, urging people to bring their own bags).”

Meanwhile, many local businesses have already nixed plastic bags in preparation for the ordinance-to-come.

City of Malibu

Current Regulation: Plastic bag ban starts to go into effect October 2008.

In May 2008, the Malibu City Council voted to banish single-use plastic bags AND plastic-like compostable bags at all retail stores big and small. Businesses ranging from grocery stores to small boutiques will have to de-plastic-bag of face fines up to $1000; the deadline is 6 months or 1 year, depending on the size and type of store.

City of Manhattan Beach

Current Regulation: Plastic bag ban starts to go into effect January 2009 - July 2009.

[Update, 8/19/08] Manhattan Beach voted on July 1, 2008 to ban both plastic and bioplastic bags, effective within 6 months for large stores, pharmacies, restaurants, and city facilities and in a year for all remaining vendors and retailers. The plastic industry group — self-dubbed the “Save the Plastic Bag Coalition” — has now sued Manhattan Beach, claiming that the city violated the California Environmental Quality Act by not fully analyzing the environmental effects of the ban.

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Yep, we’ve got a crazy patchwork of anti disposable plastic laws — which is why Heal the Bay’s feeling more optimistic about the statewide plastic bag tax. “The grocers’ association is sort of realizing that a statewide policy might be better,” said Kirsten of Heal the Bay — mainly because dealing with all the individual city-level policies is a “logistical nightmare.”

In the meantime, many individual companies are coming up with their own de-plasticking rules. Whole Foods already banned plastic bags on Earth Day this year, and Ikea plans to nix all plastic bags by Oct. 2008.

Photo by Envirowoman

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