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
Are plastics good or bad? An author explains
When Susan Freinkel decided to write a book about plastic, she vowed to spend an entire day not touching the stuff. The plan lasted about ten seconds. After she woke up, she walked into the bathroom to use the toilet. She suddenly realized the seat was plastic, which meant she couldn’t sit down. Freinkel quickly changed plans. Instead of not touching plastic for a day, she would write down all the plastic things she touched in a day. The list came to 195 objects.
In recent years, plastic has gotten a bad rap, with some good reason. No one is happy about the giant garbage patches in the world’s oceans, or the six-pack rings that regularly lodge around wild animals. Yet plastics have also helped revolutionize medical care and other industries. Freinkel, a San Francisco author, explored the complexity of plastic in her just-released book, Plastic: A Toxic Love Story. She will be talking about her findings tonight at Books, Inc on Fourth Street in Berkeley at 7:00 pm.
In Plastic, Frienkel uses eight plastic objects – the comb, the chair, the Frisbee, the IV bag, the Bic lighter, the grocery bag, the soda bottle, and the credit card – to explain the incredible popularity of the material, its benefits, and its downsides. It’s an important, yet entertaining, look at the issue. … Continue reading »
Help to Google-map public drinking fountains in Berkeley
Peter Gleick is upset about the dwindling number of public drinking fountains in our communities and is determined to do something about it.
“It’s harder and harder to find public water fountains and there is bottled water everwhere,” Gleick, president and co-founder of the Pacific Institute and an internationally recognized water expert, told Berkeleyside.
Gleick became acutely aware of the decline of public drinking fountains when he was working on his book, Bottled and Sold, which was published last year. It’s a detailed look at our society’s “obsession” with bottled water. Part of the history Gleick recounts in the book is the growth of public drinking fountains from the late eighteenth century, when access to reliable water supplies was a rarity.
“There were huge celebrations when they were opened,” Gleick said. “You couldn’t call a city civilized unless it had public drinking fountains.” … Continue reading »
For Earth Day, a new e-waste recycling center in Berkeley
A new business will open tomorrow in downtown Berkeley, and it’s a fitting one for Earth Day: GreenCitizen is the latest outpost of a small chain of e-waste centers which aim to tackle the shameful statistic that 80% of electronic waste in the U.S. is dumped in the landfill or off-loaded to developing countries.
GreenCitizen, at 1971 Shattuck Avenue, will offer electronics recycling — be it computers, printers, televisions, cell phones, or batteries. It will also take styrofoam.
“We’re very excited to be opening in Berkeley,” said James Kao, GreenCitizen’s founder and CEO. The company launched on Earth Day 2005 in Palo Alto and also has two outlets in San Francisco. “We have developed a holistic approach to e-waste based on repair, recycling and re-use. Our aim is to reduce everyone’s carbon footprint.”
The process is straightforward, said Kao. There is ample parking outside the new store for customers to drop-off their electronics, and carts will be available for moving items. A global tracking system devised by GreenCitizen allows the company to monitor where each item is shipped. All the equipment is sent to two facilities in California and either recycled or re-used. … Continue reading »
Measuring a Berkeleyan carbon footprint
A recent research paper by UC Berkeley’s Christopher Jones and Dan Kammen looks at the impact location and lifestyle has on your household’s carbon footprint. The point of the research isn’t to state the obvious: that, for example, a couple living in an urban area with good public transportation has a very different footprint to a family of four living in car-dependent suburbia. Instead it looks at how different strategies for carbon footprint reduction are needed depending on where and how you live.
So what does it mean for a Berkeleyan? Helpfully, Jones and Kammen have worked with the California Air Resources Board to create a carbon footprint calculator that focuses on Californian lifestyles, which is part of an online community called CoolClimate Network. CoolClimate Network is a project of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the university.
“Our primary message is simple:If you are concerned about reducing your carbon footprint, or the carbon footprint of others through policy, it is important to focus on the actions that lead to the greatest reductions,” Kammen told UC Berkeley NewsCenter. “Our online tool can help people do just that.” … Continue reading »
Berkeley lighting business creates winning green space
Instead, the couple behind Metro Lighting have fashioned a work space in keeping with the handcrafted light fixtures they create. And their commitment to design and sustainability has paid off. This month Metro Lighting’s showroom and manufacturing operation at 2240 San Pablo Avenue was awarded the Acterra Business Environmental Award for its impeccable green credentials.
Lawrence Grown and Christa Rybczynski, who met at architecture school in Cincinnati, OH, moved to Berkeley 20 years ago. Architecture work was hard to find and Grown took a job at Ohmega Salvage. It was there he formed a passion for rebuilding antique lighting and, in 1993, he and Rybczynski decided to open a business restoring and crafting light fixtures.
He named the store, a 600 sq ft pace on Delaware Street, “Organically Grown Design Work”, a nod both to his name and to his mission. However the moniker did not immediately resonate with some customers. “We used to have people coming in asking us if we sold drugs,” said Grown. … Continue reading »
Tagged Metro Lighting
Urban homesteader challenges city on sale of edibles
Should city dwellers be allowed to sell their backyard bounty?
Sophie Hahn thinks so. The North Berkeley resident wants to share the abundance from her residential produce plot and offset some costs she incurs maintaining her edible garden.
But Hahn ran into hiccups with the city last year trying to get her idea off the ground. “I had no idea it would be so complicated,” she says. “It’s actually easier in Berkeley to have a pot collective than to have a vegetable collective,” a frustrated Hahn told a New York Times reporter in August.
Or pretty much any other home-based business. That’s because Berkeley’s zoning codes prohibit selling or otherwise conducting commerce outside a house in a residential neighborhood. Never mind that many residents (this writer included) toil from inside their homes. City codes allow for small, low-to-moderate impact home businesses, such as piano teachers, explains Dan Marks, director of planning and development for the city. … Continue reading »
Weaning off the bottle: UC Berkeley tests the waters
Being a college student means starting to make tough decisions. But here’s one you might not expect: bottled water or tap?
Students at UC Berkeley are poised to vote next week on whether they want to be sold plastic water bottles on their own campus. On the April 5-7 student election ballot, they can check off an initiative to support phasing out the sale of bottled water and improving access to public water, including campus drinking fountains.
UC Berkeley would join an eco-trend that has swept colleges nationwide. Washington University and the University of Seattle jumped on the bandwagon last fall and the University of Portland was the first West Coast campus to start a ban in 2010. And it’s not just universities: in 2007, former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom prohibited all city departments from purchasing bottled water.
Student leaders of the movement say it’s a way for them to take charge over their consumption of a wasteful product. By reducing plastic waste on campus, a bottle ban would help the campus reach its goal of trimming waste by 75% by 2012, says UC Berkeley senior Rose Whitson, who is spearheading the effort with student senator Elliot Goldstein. … Continue reading »
A planner who favors edible, eco education — and risks
In the course of her travels researching her new book Asphalt to Ecosystems: Design Ideas for Schoolyard Transformation, Sharon Gamson Danks was struck by two things: First, the United States is a world leader in school food gardens and Berkeley is firmly at the epicenter of that movement.
And second, the U.S. lags far behind other countries when it comes to building green schoolyards with eco-friendly aspects beyond a produce patch — in other words spaces that encourage play with potential risk. We’re talking less asphalt and metal structures, and more nature nooks and shaded ponds.
An environmental planner, Danks and landscape architect Lisa Howard run Bay Tree Design in Berkeley, which specializes in designing ecological outdoor play spaces. They incorporate ideas Danks picked up from her playground adventures overseas. … Continue reading »
Produce for the people at Berkeley Bowl
Nick Christopher moved out West in the early 90s, drawn to the punk-rock scene here he toured with a band and hung out with Green Day.
These days Christopher spends more time thinking about perfect produce than the perfect tune, as an organic produce buyer for Berkeley Bowl. He started at the Bowl as a dishwasher, and quickly worked his way through various departments, including the deli and bulk section, before rising to supervisor status.
Owner Glenn Yasuda personally trained Christopher in the fine art of selecting fruits and vegetables. The Bowl has a reputation for its large and extensive produce selection, including exotic finds like durian, carambola (star fruit) and horned melon. … Continue reading »
Fourth Berkeley site proposed for LBL second campus
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory received a fourth Berkeley proposal for a new campus – the old Marchant Building on San Pablo Avenue near Ashby Avenue.
Redico, a Michigan-based real-estate development company, suggested to the lab that the 540,000 square foot building on a 6.5 acre plot of land become its new second campus, according to a knowledgeable source who asked not to be named.
The Marchant Building, which was used by the University of California as a storage facility for 28 years, straddles Berkeley, Emeryville and Oakland. The university vacated the building in 2010 and Redico has been promoting it since then as prime R&D and office space for the East Bay Green Corridor. … Continue reading »
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