Make It Right!

I love Brad and Angelina and their quest for goodness... This is Brad for the organization Make It Right in New Orleans with the commitment to bring affordable, sustainable housing to the Lower 9th Ward devasted by Hurricane Katrina.

L.A.D.W.P.'s Green Energy Program

I just signed for L.A.D.W.P.'s Green Power program. Again, seems like so little (an extra $3/month) to support L. A.'s green efforts. I found it here on their website. I needed my DWP bill in order to enter my account number, but filling out a simple form online was all it took. I liked how you could choose the percentage of energy you wanted as green energy. I've heard from others in my workshop that previously, you only had the option to purchase 20% green energy. Now you can choose from 20-100% depending on how much you wanted to support.
Makes me proud of our smog torn city.

here's an explanation form the form I filled out...

The price for new green power is slightly higher than power generated from conventional sources such as coal and natural gas. The extra cost is currently 3 cents per kilowatt hour, which is applied only to that portion of renewable energy that is chosen. The minimum contribution percentage for residential or small non-residential customers is 20%, but up to 100% may be elected. For the average LADWP customer that chooses a 20% contribution and whose monthly electric charge is $50, the additional charge would be $3 (or $6 on a bi-monthly bill). This extra cost may be offset by free energy efficiency products and services provided by LADWP. Participating customers are required to remain on the Green Power rate for a period of no less than 12 months.

Knitprovisation

Items knit from recycled clothing, yarn scraps and found objects from a book called Knitprovisation! The combining of formerly finished products that weren't meant to be so matchy, makes each piece feel so rich with a sense of depth. Via Smarts & Crafts

Green Workshop Part 3: Waste

There are so many shocking facts about waste. Honestly, I’ve spent the last 15 minutes trying to write about it more simply, but it is too much. Here are links regarding waste to the Sustainable Works blog , a great reference, or just trust that we need to create a cycle rather than a linear process for consumption or else we’ll be living in trash!

Here are the top 5 things we can do according to my Sustainable Works book…

Reuse more, Consume less
This is the mantra. Reusing is always better even if it takes some resources to clean after use. This includes plates, utensils, cups, water bottles, grocery bags. It, then, becomes a cycle, rather than a linear line to the landfill. Some one in the class asked, what was she to do about cups for a birthday party for 50 kids? Instructor said, borrow tumbler cups from friends or neighbors, or if was in your budget, rent from a party supply. Total silence from the group of course, maybe because this would be totally inconvenient, easier to buy 200 disposable cups for $8.99 at Costco, but hold up – fact: Styrofoam takes approx. 500 years to break down in a landfill (One Makes a Difference), ah, whew, okay it’s worth that extra effort. I get it. It was at this point that I realized only by knowing all these crazy messed up facts will I keep myself driven.
Consuming less plastic ziplock bags and paper towels were huge for me, but just being less of a consumer in general was even bigger. I'm just buying less and asking myself 3 or 4 times if it's really truly necessary, end of story.

Recycle Everything
Recycle plastics, paper, glass, cans, anything you can see something being remade out of. This reduced my trash greatly, to the point that in the beginning, we had way more to recycle than to throw in the regular garbage. Also, if you are not sure if it’s recyclable, put it in that recycle bin anyway. I found out that they will keep these non-recyclables stored until they find a way to recycle them.

Give away or donate things you don’t use.
I have to admit, we had so much stuff when we moved into our house, I was embarrassed to tell anyone. We accumulated so many things that ended up in storage and our parents’ homes that when they were all transferred to one place, it was overwhelming. I am proud to say, we have given away about 1/3 if not 1/2 of our stuff and in the process furnished my cousin’s apartment, clothed friends and relatives, and have made more than a dozen trips to Goodwill.

Close the Loop. Cradle to cradle.
This is the other mantra! Buy things made from the things you recycle. What a great feeling. I recycle all this paper and then purchase recycled paper goods in return. Of course! Barent, our instructor, was wearing a black t shirt from Pategonia made from recycled plastic bottles the other day! It’s amazing what they are doing now. I’ve also now been taking note of the percentage of post-consumer content on recycled products.

A few other things:
Harzadouse Waste Facility - old batteries, used light bulbs, old paint, anything with a cord should be disposed of at your nearest facility. They will leak toxic chemicals that will get into our ground water if it is not disposed of properly. Bad! I am guilty of having one too many paint sample quarts and leftover paint from the last 9 years or so. Having said that, I am happy I finally brought all of it to the Hazardous Waste Facility today. Now that I know more about more toxic waste, it’s actually a relief to have it out of the house!
Compost – so little time, but I itch to do this every time I throw veggies in the garbage! Very soon for me, I hope.
Eliminate Junk mail – I just signed up for www.greendimes.com. Will post about what happens.
Try a zero waste lunch! – very cool concept! I stopped using paper napkins in restaurants in exchange for a handkerchief.

fall flora

a lovely fro of fall flowers from Sabine.

unfortunately, we weren't invited, but i loved seeing this sunset dinner table at the chateau marmont probably set up for a special someone, their spouse and 10 of their closest friends...

Green Workshop Part 2: Energy

When I think of energy, I wonder why new homes don't come standard with solar power. It seems like the right thing to do. After this workshop we decided to divert our kitchen remodel funds to solar power.

Lighting
- This one is easy - Compact Flourescent Light bulbs. Change as many as possible to CFL's simply put, they take a fifth of the energy traditional incandescnets do, and last ten times longer. Our big question was if we should wait till the other ones burn out... the answer, and this was from the experts, was no. Don't wait one more minute. The earth’s resources are already so depleted that we cannot afford to use electricity in excess especially if there is a way to use a fraction of it. I guess this is also the case with anything that saves water - so we replaced the toilet even though it could last another few years - it was wasting water and that's what mattered most!
- Use task lighting instead of the larger overhead light. Makes sense. Need one for my desk.

Appliances
- Unplug all unused appliances, even your TV and VCR. Apparently, there is this thing called phantom energy which is the energy that is used when your appliance is idle or in standby mode. So this means everything with a remote. Appliances are waiting attentively for a signal from your remote so they are definitely on - this idle time accounts for 93% of what we are paying for! For answering machines and cordless phones, it's 98%! (Alan Meier of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) When I told my sister about this, she immediately started unplugging things around the house. The best thing to do is to have the VCR and TV on a power strip so that it is easy to turn off when not in use.

Heating and Cooling:
- This was easy. We set our thermostat to 78 degrees when we had the AC on this summer. Seemed like no big deal but apparently it will save us 3-5% of our energy bill with each degree higher. My friend Jon was shocked when he saw that his energy bill dropped to approx $50 this summer from $150 last summer after changing his thermostat one degree from 77 to 78 . Crazy.
- Got rid of our electric space heaters. They gobble up so much energy.
- Installed ceiling fans this past spring after last summer's heat wave. They're perfect all year round.
- We’ve recently installed more tinting of our windows to keep the UV rays out and create more insulation. Window tinting can block up to 50% UV rays.
- We’ve also opted for more blankets and sweaters instead of the heater which I will do gladly after these last heat waves.

Washing Machines and Dishwashers
- Run washer only when it's full. They use the same energy with a full load or half load. Turn off the drying cycle in the dishwasher and let the dishes just air dry.
- I love these dryer tips directly from my sustainable works book. I think I want to print them out and tape the washer dryer.
- line dry when weather permits: I’ve been line drying the easy to dry t shirts all summer. I put the rest of the wet clothes in the dryer and set the time to half of what I would usually set it to.
- clean the lint filter before each load – if lint is allowed to collect, drying time and energy consumption increases.
- dry full laundry loads but make sure not to overload the dryer
- do not over dry – I was amazed at how little time it truly takes to dry clothes.
- dry continuously – energy is spent warming a cold dryer.

As we remodel our home we will be
- only purchasing Energy Star products
- looking to eventually install solar panels
- also looking into a tankless water heater

the 11th Hour

Whew, what a weekend. With triple digit temperatures, a random 4 a.m. thunder storm, one brown out, and a small earthquake Sunday morning, uh, I think someone is trying to tell us something! We took refuge at a movie theater yesterday afternoon finding it quite appropriate to be watching the 11th Hour.

The idea behind everyone's message -- the earth is sick, it needs healing. The earth will survive it's sickness, but will we? The earth had been around for billions of years morphing from one form to another. We on the other hand are just one civilization occupuying the planet. Are we driving ourselves to extinction? This movie interviews dozens of independent experts who each explain, mostly through science, what brought us to the point. Industrialism, our addiction to fossil fuels, the myth that we have a limitless supply of resources, has advanced us beyond our expectations, but this as also made us become more separate from nature, therefore are not fully aware the harm that we are causing. As one woman said in my Sustainable Works Workshop, you feel so horrible and guilty in the first half of the movie, thank god the second half is about hope and the reality is that most of human kind never had the intent to be this destructive. We just weren't aware. Now is the time to become more aware and not ignore the things we hear in the news, but to take action within our own lives.

If we look at this as an opportunity, it is an exciting time to be able to redesign, well, everything we know with a new frame of mind, a new purpose to make sure the products we create from this point forward are reusable, recycable, creating the least impact to the earth. It's the idea of cradle to cradle instead of cradle to grave. It gives me, as a designer, a purpose larger than myself and beyond just trying to make a living.

Feeling overwelmed about all this is normal, so as a general rule of thumb, I'm realizing that it is more simply about SLOWWWING DOWWWWN - what are we really buying, what we are eating, where are we always going, do we really need all these material things, do we really need to consume this much???

Go see it, and see it in theaters to support the movie financially.

Other important movies -- An Inconvenient Truth, Who Killed the Electric Car.

Green Workshop Part 1: Water

So water was the first workshop. Wow, I was hanging on Barent's (the instructor) every word. "Water will be the next major impetus for conflict; Australia is currently in the middle of a drought which has forced entire cities to move, the country to start recycling their sewage water, and start the process of desalination; It takes the water equivalent to 6 months of showers to make 1 pound of beef." All of these facts have such a direct effect on our immediate futures. What's more crazy is that all the changes are so simple and totally within reach of an average citizen.

There is so much information, these are the things that stuck with me....

My Toilets:
Leaks - I'm so glad I found out about this test, because we have 1 leaky toilet. To test for a leak, we were asked to drop some food coloring (I used some India ink) into our toilet tanks, to wait, and see if the coloring "leaked" into the bowl. Sure enough, it did. We are scheduled to change it this week. A leaky toilet can waste up to 200 gallons per day.
Lo flow toilets- This means 1.6 gallons per flush which is standard now. Luckily, we had all standard toilets. I think the old standard was over 3+ gallons, which is double! We are also practicing "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down."

My shower:
Lo flow/hi pressure shower head - The concept behind this is like putting your thumb to a hose so that it sprays out, but with less water. So surprised that this was not a big deal for us taking a shower. We were still getting clean.
Turn off water while we shampooing and soaping - Our shower head also came with an on/off attachment which we hardly used until recently. It's not so bad now that it is summer and it seems at 2.2 gallons per minute, I am saving quite a few gallons. Also made me take a quicker shower.

My sinks and dishes:
Aerators - Same idea as the lo flow shower head. Already standard on all our bathroom and kitchen faucets, but we still need to do this on our garden hose. They are also like 2 bucks at the hardware store.
Do not use garbage disposal to throw away food. Scrape food off into the trash or compost. - This is so terrible because the disposal is what we are led to believe is the right thing, but that waste actually goes to the water treatment facility which then needs to filter out the food. We may try to start composting, but in the trash for now.
Operate the dishwasher when completely full- I don't have a functioning dishwasher, but I understand that it uses less water than washing by hand. This is also the case with our car - going to a car wash saves more water than washing it yourself. Absolutely fine by me!

My laundry:
Operate the laundry when completely full - It uses almost the same water and energy to do a smaller load.
Use only cold water to launder clothes - Today's laundry detergent is advanced enough to do the real cleaning. I tried this and my clothes were fine. I also started committing to doing laundry at night when it's less pressure on the energy grid. I also dried my t-shirts on a drying rack in the garage through the night. The rest of my clothes have been going in the dryer, but have been taking less number of minutes to dry therefore less energy. Kinda feels like a cool game at this point!

My garden (which doesn't really exist yet, but we are planning it now!)
Plant drought tolerant plants - I'm really excited about this one. I have a black thumb. But I am discovering through the Theodore Payne Foundation, that I can still have a garden of native plants meant for this Southern California desert!

A few more better habits:
Eat less beef - This was a surprising one. It takes water equivalent to 6 months of showers (12,009 gallons) to make 1 pound of beef! Crazy!
Allow frozen foods to thaw out in the refidgerator - rather than running them through hot water, which the way we did it growing up.
Use reusable water bottles - I bought us Siggs (I bought the one in the pic above), really fun aluminum water canteens. They aren't plastic so they won't make your water taste weird after it's been opened and sitting.

It's a bit of a hussle to do everything at first, but I always feel better after doing it.

recycled leather bag

This recycled leather bag by Ashley Watson is gorgeous and brilliant. Her collection is made from old leather jackets. I thought I could never buy leather again, but now... Via Lena Corwin

Greening the home more and Sustainable Works

Ahhh, my efforts to green the home... good, but a lot of time and research. I'm retraining myself out of what I learned in suburbia growing up. It was a comfy life in the OC (thanks mom and dad), but not enough awareness. Now I am creating cozy and aware. Right now it seems Santa Monica is my best resource. Walk around and they have the ideal California - beach, nature, sun, climate which also means they have the most to protect. I realize that this is one of the reasons why they are so forward about being green.

A few weeks ago I started a 6 week workshop with Sustainable Works in Santa Monica with my friend Sabine. It's one of the best things I've ever done. For those that think they are already being green, you have to take this workshop. It will take you to the next level in terms of tweaking your everyday habits. I'm happy that it's not about spending thousands for solar panels, even though we may just do that before the kitchen, but doing things like always doing laundry with cold water because the detergent does the cleaning, tinting our windows for more insulation, and eating less beef because it takes so much water to raise a cow. We recycle, turn off lights when we're not in the room, bring our reusable bags to the store, but there is so much more than that.

I'd like to document my progress. We were asked to take a life assessment survey at the beginning of the workshop and will be taking one at the end to get a sense of our progress and the difference it will make. I can't wait to see the numbers!

norens & dish cloths

last week, sabine helped me photograph my norens and dish cloths properly! just uploaded them to the supercozy etsy shop.

French knots

Having recently learned embroidery over at Make Workshop on my NY trip, I've been obsessed with the French knot - a delightfully graphic element for these little fiber collages I've been making.

so little time....

i have SO much to blog about - make workshop, sustainable works workshops, the new patio, the new bathroom, how much i hate home depot, art fridays, the barnsdall art sale.....!!! but, alas, i have not enough time in the day (sigh!), so i offer the beautiful mochi adam brought over for dinner last week....

lisa congdon

LOVING Lisa Congdon's new work! These pieces are for her upcoming show The Tenderhearted, which opens September 6 in SF.

furoshiki purse

I was inspired to share the furoshiki purse Yuka taught me how to make when I saw this post on AT:LA.

This one is made from a square bandana Yuka brought me back from Japan. 1) Tie parallel corners together 2) and then pull the knot of one side through the opposite side opening. You now have a little wristlet!

Sometimes I will use a larger piece of cloth to carry a few groceries home from the store.

penny tile

the new penny tile progress in our bathroom -- sooo pretty. it will be on the floor and in the shampoo nook. I wish I could've been able to afford the recycled glass tile which was equally beautiful, but at $32/sq ft, it was still way beyond our budget even for our petite little bathroom. This was very frustrating because when you have the opportunity to rebuild, especially now a days, you want to be as green as possible. So, as with many decisions we've made with the bathroom, we've opted for longer lasting more efficient products and donating the items to be removed to Habitat for Humanity.

Wind Power & Urban Spring

How incredible is it that today, a little person like moi can purchase something like wind power generated by those huge wind mills on the 5 fwy. Actually, you purchase credits that offset your electric bill. This past weekend, I signed up for the program at renewablechoice.com after seeing a pamphlet at Whole Foods. For $15/month, I purchase enough credit for a family of 3. Pretty cool. To top it off, you get a $50 gift certificate to Whole Foods.

I have to give props to the Urban Spring Cafe in Brooklyn, NY for bringing about my new found fascination their wind power access and for setting a great example of a "green" based business. I frequented the cafe every morning while staying with my dear friend Margaret in Fort Green. Their eco efforts encompass every part of their business from the corn plastic compostable cups and sugar cane fiber packaging to the salvage doors turned shelving. Their tropical smoothies and goji power bars are to die for.

corn stalk divider

Corn stalks - a great idea for an outdoor divider. This shot was take at the corner of Dekalb and Carlton in Fort Green, Brooklyn.

food shots

Lovely illustration (lol!). My sister-in-law Kiyoka says it's suppose to be good!
I've been trying to find some good black sesame spread. This one is suppose to be like peanut butter but with a black sesame flavor.

modern sushi

A slightly different visual take on sushi - thin, sleek and narrow... from the Japanese restaurant Lan in the East Village.

Etsy Lab

the sewing area...the screen printing and jewelry making area...
Julie, Mary, Danielle and Michelle in the office area...
yarn and a monster size owl in the lobby!What an amazing place. I knew that this would be something I wish we had here in LA. Hmmmm. This is Etsy's headquaters in Brooklyn, NY. I made the most of my carbon footprint by stopping by during my time in NY last week. This is also the home of their lab, where for $20 a month you can "make" all day long. It's amazing because they have the tools, the space, the materials, the know how, the company, the best attitudes - all the things you need to make a little handmade business work and take it to levels that will actually make you a living. Okay, who's going to start this here!? I'm determined to start with "make" night if anyone is interested. I know it's hard to get people together, but I also know that we all have these ideas that have been lingering in our heads and just need to be made!!

In the photos by the way, are the wonderful people I met - (l-r) Julie, Mary, Danielle, and Michelle. Danielle just moved to Brooklyn from Michigan and now works for Etsy after starting her whole local movement in a basement of a local church!

181 Madison Ave.

Despite the humidity and rain, I took out my camera to capture this cast iron art deco entrance for Domus on Madison Ave. Later that afternoon, a steam pipe exploded near Grand Central Station making everyone think that it was another terrorist attack.

more power to the hanky

In the airport on my way to NY this weekend, I figured out that I could air dry a damp hanky by tying it to my computer bag and look cute doing it! I’ve been trying to get back into the habit of using hankies instead of paper towels to wipe my washed hands in public bathrooms. I stopped because I didn’t like the thought of stuffing the damp piece of cloth back into my pocket, but the view of a trash can full of clean paper towels is better? I don’t think so. Problem solved!

jewelry

My latest interest... making necklaces for myself. Thanks to my friend Jennifer of Jennifer Morris Beads for teaching me how to knot!