Featured events- 03/10/2012 - Ton Koopman & The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir
- 02/27/2012 - Classical at the Freight: Rossini Birthday Celebration
- 02/23/2012 - Michio Kaku: Physics of the Future, How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100
- 02/23/2012 - 2012: a Turning Point? And If So, Which Way?: A Talk by Robert Reich
- 02/19/2012 - Takacs Quartet
Category Archives: Green
Codornices Creek: Happy ducks in place of concrete
Update, 01.31.12: Susan Schwartz, President, Friends of Five Creeks, provides an informative clarification on the history of this section of Codornices Creek. (This is why we love the Berkeleyside community so much — our expert readers always bring the latest intelligence to the table!):
We’re always delighted to see articles about nature, but the Codornices Creek reach between 6th and 8th referred to was not in a pipe, nor were the reaches downstream.
Since 2000, three projects have carved new channels … Continue reading »
Tagged Berkeley nature, Codornices Creek
Alameda County bans use of some plastic bags
The Alameda County Waste Authority voted Wednesday to ban the use of plastic bags at pharmacies and grocery stores county-wide, starting in 2013.
The authority, which also goes by the name Stopwaste.org, also voted to require businesses and multi-family dwellings to recycle all “high-market value materials,” as part of an initiative to reduce waste going the landfill.
The plastic bag ban will apply to 2,000 stores around the county. The ban does not include restaurants or retail stores. … Continue reading »
LeRoy Steps: Source of pride and local controversy
Five years ago the steps leading from Hilgard Avenue down to LeRoy were a tangled mess, ill lit, broken in spots, and dotted with graffiti. Scraggly trees and brambles grew unrestrained along the steps’ borders.
Then a group of neighbors got together, and, with hard work and the assistance of funding from the city and UC Berkeley, transformed the steps into an inviting path. New lights now illuminate the walkway, and every March hundreds of daffodils push their way to the surface, creating a yellow burst of color.
“Several years ago it was just a dump,” said City Councilmember Susan Wengraf. “It was overgrown, strewn with garbage, basically abandoned by the city. Over time it really became transformed from a very unattractive place to quite a beautiful place.” … Continue reading »
Field trip highlights programs in food-forward Berkeley
Tomorrow, Bay Area Green Tours co-hosts a food field trip spotlighting some of the best of Berkeley’s alternative food systems. It’s part of the 15th Annual Community Food Security Coalition Conference, which runs today through Tuesday in Oakland. The Community Food Security Coalition is a national nonprofit dedicated to creating a food movement that is healthy, sustainable, and just.
The national conference draws sustainable food advocates, anti-hunger experts, and food policy wonks from around the country. The Food Sovereignty tour, which is open to the public (though now sold out), introduces participants to community food gardens, farmers’ markets, school food, and alternative food businesses in this town, which, of course, is well known for its food-forward agenda. … Continue reading »
Up to $6,300 rebates available for home energy upgrades
Berkeley residents can claim rebates up to the value of $6,300 for implementing energy efficiency upgrades to their homes. And they can learn all about the what, where and how at a Berkeley Home Energy Efficiency Forum happening tomorrow, November 2nd, in Berkeley.
The City of Berkeley has partnered with Energy Upgrade California to offer the workshop as a one-stop shop for all Alameda County homeowners to find contractors, get information about the rebates and tax credits available and have all their questions answered.
Residents will get a chance to meet participating contractors who are trained and ready to work on their home, as well as homeowners who have already made energy improvements to their homes. … Continue reading »
How toxic is Halloween face paint on your child’s face?
By Belinda Lyons-Newman
With Halloween approaching, I set out last week to find make-up to decorate my three-year old daughter Ella’s face to go with her ladybug Halloween costume. I saw a variety of brands of face paints at the drug stores and toy stores near my north Berkeley home. Before choosing one to buy, like many Berkeley moms wanting to find the most natural products for their kids, I decided to first research online for the most natural brands available. I was amazed at what I found.
Two minutes into my online research, I pulled up a report published in 2009 by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (CSC), a national coalition of non-profit groups working to eliminate harmful chemicals from personal care products. After testing ten major kids face paints sold in the US, the study found that all ten of the face paints tested contained lead. Six out of the ten face paints tested contained the known skin allergens, nickel, cobalt and/or chromium, at levels far exceeding the recommendations of industry studies. … Continue reading »
Tagged face-paint, Halloween
Town-gown panel to examine Berkeley and sustainability
The second event in The University and the City: Ideas for Partnership, a fall series of evening discussions, will be held tonight on The Environmentally Sustainable City.
Jason Mark, Editor of Earth Island Journal, with moderate a panel of Timothy Burroughs, Climate Action Coordinator for the City of Berkeley, Lisa McNeilly, Director of Sustainability, UC Berkeley, Jason Trager, Environmental Sustainability Director, Graduate Student Assembly, and Claire Evans, lead coordinator of the UC Berkeley Compost Alliance.
Tonight’s panel will focus on … Continue reading »
Homegrown truths: Sunny Side Café chef Aaron French
Aaron French, a self-described eco-chef, has headed up the kitchen at The Sunny Side Café on Solano Avenue in Albany since it opened in 2004.
For the past two years he’s served up breakfast standards (think pancakes and eggs) and simple lunch fare (burgers, sandwiches, salads) at a satellite café of the same name in Berkeley.
French bounces between the two popular spots several times a day and jokes that the breakfast-brunch shift is the Rodney Dangerfield of cooking (it don’t get no respect).
Still, he’s proudest of his low carbon emissions menu options and his weekend food specials, a short, seasonal list that emphasizes local farms and calculates food miles.
French isn’t your typical chef. Before he cooked for a living he worked as a scientist. His interest in ecology led him to spend two years living among pygmies in Cameroon, where he studied seed dispersal by monkeys and birds.
An avid nature photographer, he’s also written about the relationship between ecology and food for the Bay Area News Group, where he penned the EcoChef column, as well as for Civil Eats and Fungi Magazine. … Continue reading »
Berkeley introduces parking boots for repeat offenders
Parking ticket repeat offenders could be in for a rude surprise after October 18, the date the Berkeley Police Department is introducing the “smart boot”, a wheel-clamping device they say will enable a cheaper, more efficient parking enforcement system, and, ultimately, be more customer friendly for the city’s scofflaws.
The immobilizing boots will replace the current habit of impounding cars whose owners have failed to pay five or more parking tickets which are 30 days old, or older. The City decided to adopt the system in February. Berkeley is only the second city in California to introduce smart boots. Oakland introduced them in November 2009, and they are in use in dozens of cities nationally.
The “smart” part comes in because the boot can be removed by the car’s owner, once they have paid a $140 fine, plus the outstanding money due on the tickets. A call to a 24-hour phone hotline, operated by Paylock, and a credit card payment can, said BPD Lt. Diane Delaney at the smart boot media launch, have a motorist on his or her way in five minutes. … Continue reading »
Tagged Berkeley police chief, Paylock, Smart Boot
With collapse of Solyndra, is there hope for solar?
In the media frenzy surrounding the bankruptcy of Solyndra, which collapsed despite a $535 million loan guarantee from the federal government, one piece of good information has been overlooked: the company’s demise resulted, in part, because of the huge decline in the price of photovoltaic panels.
Solyndra, which had a manufacturing plant in Fremont, couldn’t compete with PV panels made in China. And while that equation was bad for Solyndra, it wasn’t necessarily bad for the solar industry.
Tom Dinwoodie, the founder and chief technology officer for SunPower, one of the nation’s largest solar energy companies, has been trying to get the word out in recent months that “ferocious cost reductions” in solar manufacturing are bringing it closer to parity with the cost of new nuclear, new natural gas, and new coal.
“The public perception about solar is it’s too expensive and it can never scale,” said Dinwoodie, a Berkeley resident. “When we talk about evolving our energy systems, it’s a small-bit player. But solar is going to be a much bigger player much sooner than people realize.”
Dinwoodie will be talking about the facts and myths about solar energy on Thursday Oct. 6 at 7:30 pm. at LiveTalk, an interview series at College Preparatory School in Oakland. Quentin Hardy, a New York Times technology reporter – and Berkeley resident – will interview him on stage. The LiveTalk series is open to the general public. … Continue reading »
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