Back when I first started putting together my voting guides, I prefaced every item with a description. For ex, my 2006 post on who to vote in as the new Member of State Board of Equalization, 4th District, began with this:

What does the State Board of Equalization do?: According to its website, “The mission of the State Board of Equalization is to serve the public through fair, effective, and efficient tax administration.” The Board has 5 members, 4 of whom are elected by district. The 5th member’s the State Controller.

I’ve since stopped intro’ing the post with these descriptions, instead diving straight into my opinions. But I’m wondering if that wasn’t the best decision. Would you find a description of the position / item on the ballot helpful, or would you find the description to be an unnecessary preamble?

Your vote’ll decide how I put together future voters’ guides. Poll closes at the end of the Monday.

0 Comments

Can eco-goodies be so crunchy they become chic? Or are these eco-goodies really just eco-fugly?

The item in question: WeBeBags. I got the one pictured in a shwag bag at Eco-ganik’s runway show.

And while I heart coffee and am happy to see those coffee burlap sacks put to good use — AND while I can attest to the fact that these bags are well handcrafted, complete with a zippered top and lined interior with an inside pocket to boot — I am not sure these WeBeBags are actually cute.

Still, I do have a rather specific aesthetic — and maybe I need to branch out a little more. So you tell me: Is this bag crunchy-chic or eco-fugly?

Poll closes at the end of the Monday.

4 Comments

In case you’re not familiar with bonded leather — cuz I wasn’t — the stuff is basically to leather what particleboard is to wood. Saith Wikipedia:

Bonded leather, or reconstituted leather, is an artificial material composed of 80% to 100% leather fibers (often waste scraps from leather tanneries or leather workshops).

If you’ve ever held a bible with a grainy-feeling cover in your hand, you likely know what bonded leather is. The stuff’s used for the “good” book, hymnals, sofa covers, and the like.

The thing is, bonded leather’s been used for these items for a long long time — long before green came into vogue. But now, companies using bonded leather are claiming eco-creds for doing so.

Still, bonded leather uses scraps that’d otherwise have been thrown away. Make the same item in real leather, and the carbon footprint, as well as the price, would be considerably higher.

So what do you think about bonded-leather-as-eco-material claims? Are such claims really green, or just greenwashing?

Militant vegans — Try not to skew the results too much by claiming everything that contains animal products is eco-evil. We all know vegan vinyl’s worse. Poll closes at the end of the day on Monday, Oct. 13, 2008.

Photo by timsamoff

3 Comments

My survey question this week’s simple: Should I switch to Google Reader? I use Bloglines right now, but I’m wondering if it’s time for change….

If you pick “Other,” let me know what other you recommend in the comments. Poll closes at the end of Monday, Oct. 6.

Update, 10/21/08: I’ve switched to Google Reader — but I’m having some issues. Help me!

6 Comments

While most commenters on green LA girl bring interesting perspectives to the blog, once in a while I get really dumb comments. Spammish, self-promotional comments top my pet peeve list, but anonymous derogatory comments take a close second.

The latest: A commenter so oversensitive about living in the valley he called me an ass for not knowing one of its areas. Note that many valley-dwellers seem hypersensitive about their unpopular ‘hood — I tweeted about that a while back and got some funny responses — but that these other commenters weren’t anonymous and so didn’t bug me.

Anyway — A topic as silly as whether the valley’s worth knowing well isn’t much of a concern, but when the discussion’s about more serious stuff, derogatory comments that shield themselves under the cloak of anonymity become a bit of a problem. For example, I have a certain repeat anonymous commenter at an unnamed nonprofit that’ll take pithy jabs at fair trade advocates he/she disagrees with, without ever revealing his/her name or affiliation with said nonprofit.

What do you think — Should I delete those along with the spam, or leave them be?

Poll closes midnight on Monday

15 Comments