Results tagged “recycling”

Local ecoblogger GreenLAGirl reports that Sierra magazine has published their annual list of the 10 colleges in the country that rank as the greenest, and our UCLA makes the cut at a respectable #9. However, at 60%, the campus' recycling rate is actually lower than the City of Los Angeles overall, who can boast we have "the highest recycling rate out of the 10 largest U.S. cities," at 65%.

For those living in apartments or condo buildings, much of the recycling is done by the city's Multifamily Residential Recycling Program from the the L.A. Bureau of Sanitation. The progressive department, who is also aggressively working on a zero waste plan with the public, has now entered the world of Web 2.0. They just set up Twitter and Facebook accounts so people can learn about materials accepted in blue bins, but also for residents to send suggestions and questions. Sounds like a good idea considering over 400,000 multifamily residential units take part in the program.

It's a Christmas Tree, a Hanukkah Bush, or a Kwanzaa Shrub. Call it what you will, but the bottom line is, it's a chopped down tree you hauled home on the roof of your car sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve and it's now a brittle fire hazard taking up space in the house you resolved on January 1st to "Keep More Clean!" You may have also resolved to "Be More Green!" so let's start with recycling that Christmas Tree.

Today LA will be taking another look at a water recycling program that could help the city become not only more efficient in usage but lead us towards freedom from costly and precious state-level water sources. Currently, 80% of our city's water is imported.

LAist met Marc J. Sahara, of The Inconvenient Bag at The Earth Day celebration last week. We asked Marc to share his tips for being green in LA.

In 2004, artist Peter Schulberg learned that literally tons of advertising billboards were being dumped into landfills every month. His solution to dealing with all this waste was rather novel: recycle those billboards into art. On Saturday night, the newest exhibition of these pieces is unveiled at Eco-LogicalART. Fifteen local artists have created pieces that will eventually be mounted as billboards across the city.

Did you know that residents of Los Angeles County use 6 billion plastic bags a year, and only 5% of bags in the US are recycled? In the state of California the average person uses 552 bags, according to the environmental organization Heal the Bay. These bags are then left to choke up our waterways, landfills, streets, and urban landscapes, causing harm to animal life and our ecosystem. This is why Heal the Bay, along...

Now that Thanksgiving is over and Christmas Tree shopping is in order, it's a good time keep in mind that when it comes time to get rid of that tree, you can recycle it. If you have a green yard trimmings container, then you can the tree up and place it in there. If not, it's a good thing the Department of Public Works is already pushing their Christmas Tree Recycling Program that will be...

I like to consider myself a green person. I mean every time I leave the house I ask myself if my destination can be reached without a car, which is why I find myself riding a bicycle/subway/bus often. However I always come across others who are gung-ho about nascent eco-trends (drives a Prius, shops only at Whole Foods), who are so caught up in Green Commercialism that they never stop to evaluate its benefit for themselves. You're not positively contributing to the environment just because you drink Fiji water! Oh, and as a side note, the transport of one bottle of Fiji water to your local grocery store burns 1 kilo of fossil fuel, 27 kilos of water, and generates 1.2 pounds of greenhouse gases.

Via Steve Hymon's Monday LA Times column on all things local government, apartment dwellers are finally able to participate in the city recycling program:What can apartment dwellers in Los Angeles do this week that they couldn't do a couple of weeks ago? Recycle. For reasons difficult to explain, apartment and condo dwellers in Los Angeles have for decades had their trash picked up by private haulers instead of city crews. That, too, has meant...

Throwing your Christmas Tree on the curb is not so good. The mayor wants to plant a million trees, not haul a million to the landfills.

If, unlike us, you don't procrastinate, you're already planning for the disposal of your Christmas tree. Maybe you already booked the full-service recycling disposal from the aptly-named California Christmas Tree Recycling. For a fee, they'll come to your house, drain the stand, remove the tree, vacuum the dropped needles and then take your holiday decor off to become mulch for more trees. For less dough, they'll grab it from your curb and make sure it ends up as mulch, not landfill. They'll pick up from Santa Monica to Beverly Hills to Koreatown (sorry, Silverlake).

Anyway, the date has triggered an epiphany of our own--exactly when can we reasonably expect Angelenos to take down all the holiday lights, trees and geegaws?