Lloyd, of The Year of Coffee, recently launched the One Million Splotz of Glue campaign. His goal, I believe, is to collect a million ideas by which to build community.

And he asked me to contribute, asking: “What do you do to build community?” Here’s my answer.

I try to build community by working to bridge the gap between advice and implementation at a local level. We hear, for example, that we should recycle our e-waste, instead of dumping our broken DVD players into the trash headed to landfills. However, we rarely hear what steps we can actually take to recycle our e-waste.

The problem, at the moment, is that while ideas for solutions abound, the implementation of these solutions have yet to happen — even in supposedly eco-friendly states like California. Sure, we have facilities that take in e-waste. But to find those, one has to do a good amount of research.

And during that research, one’s likely to discover that these e-waste recycling facilities just are not very amenable to people who might hold jobs. Each location’s open different hours, and all locations aren’t open early or late enough for people who work regular hours to stop off on the way from or after work with any ease. This situation can get infuriating, especially for people who are aware that Californians actually pay an extra fee for environmentally-friendly disposal of much of the e-waste in our state.

So what can a pragmatic, would-be environmentalist do? Well, she’s going to need other resources — informational hubs that let her know that while state-run facilities might be hard to find and hold unfriendly business hours, other unexpected places are working to fill that gap.

For example, Amoeba Music — a green business — is open long and dependable hours every day — and has “The Big Green Box,” into which any customer can drop e-waste for proper recycling. Amoeba clearly saw a need between idea and implementation. And being the Cali-based, environmentally-focused company it is, Amoeba stepped in to help would-be greenies go green.

My response here isn’t simply about e-waste or Amoeba. But disposing of my broken DVD player triggered the first green LA girl post — and similar issues that point to the still-huge gap between idea and implementation is what keeps green LA girl going. Sure, you hear about organic cotton. But where does one find stylish duds made of the stuff? Sure, Californians are supposed to get reimbursements for installing solar panels. But how does one actually get these reimbursements?

While I think that many people could still take that easy first step — switching to CFL bulbs, for ex — I think many would-be eco-converts get held back by the difficulties they run into just at their newbie green get-go. So that’s where I come in. I want to glue together idea with implementation in my community.

Now I just need to work on my google rankings so people don’t give up before they find me. On a sidenote, do we really need a million different ideas to get going? I say find a few good ones, then start working on those –

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