Zenergy House

ZENERGY House - Studio City CA

ZENERGY House was conceived as a living example and educational tool for the average person to learn about and incorporate greener elements into their home environment. The one-story home was originally built in 1950 and includes 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 2,450 sq. ft. of living space, and a pool. The home was selected because of its unique architecture and because the home’s size reflects the national average for square footage. See Virtual Tour

The ZENERGY House will host a number of seminars and tours for architects, builders, designers, government officials, realtors, financial institutions, homeowners and other interested parties through 2010. Supporting ZENERGY House’s educational mission, tours will be performed by students from LACHSA (Los Angeles County High School for the Arts) ‘The Giving Tree Club’ who have attended specific training events at the property.

Green Day Planner: Food Harvest - May 1 - 2

Sunday Food Harvest Volunteers Needed
May 1 - 2
SFV Green: April 28, 2010

Food Forward will participate in Big Sunday with its Big Pick event.

Help harvest fruit trees in neighborhoods in the North San Fernando Valley to feed the hungry. There are multiple trees on multiple properties just ready to be harvested! EXTRA trees have come through so we need EXTRA help!

Volunteers are needed on Saturday, May 1 from 9am to noon in Granada Hills, and on Sunday from 9am to noon in Northridge.

Please RSVP if you are free to help out and which day/location you will report to.

In addition to getting the warm and fuzzies, you'll also be eligible for donuts and coffee both days plus FREE Big Sunday t-shirts for all who help!

Read more about the massive amount of fresh fruits and veggies being offered to L.A. area food banks by Food Forward in this Los Angeles Times article.

Business Watch: American Lightning Motor Co.

Lightning in a vehicle
Rock musician is hoping to grow business converting gas-powered cars to electric. Council isn’t interested in providing seed money.
Burbank Leader: April 23, 2010 by Christopher Cadelago

Six years ago Danny Blitz bit through his tongue and cracked an industrial-strength office chair on his way to the floor.

Heralded as a “future icon” by a popular music magazine, the rock musician was selling well, appearing on television and getting radio ads across the country.

Suddenly, he couldn’t walk, could barely talk, and his left arm was out of its socket. Worse, his left hand was paralyzed.

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So began the second act in the life of a self-described “unlikely environmentalist.” Blitz grew up in Houston, the son and stepson of oil executives.

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That enthusiasm has led to American Lightning Motor Company, a fledgling gas-to-electric conversion company in search of seed money and a brick-and-mortar location. The search will have to continue after Burbank officials on Tuesday rebuffed his proposal, which sought $750,000 and up to 8,000 square feet of work space.

The Burbank City Council, acting as the Redevelopment Agency, panned the business plan, contending that the risk was too high and the plan not specific enough. The company in exchange had pledged to convert from gas to electric a city fleet, 1955 Chevy, lighting chopper and produce a feature-length documentary in the first 180 days.

City officials referred to the plan as “glaringly inconsistent,” maintaining that it would be unwise to commit taxpayer money and serve as an incubator for a company still in concept stage.

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The roughly $20,000 conversion starts with pulling out an engine, transmission and other parts and replacing them with lithium ion nanophosphate batteries, a large electric motor and a dimmer switch where the gas pedal was.

“We are told by the auto industry to throw away our cars. But can you imagine the environmental catastrophe?” he said. “We believe that the model of the electric-car industry is flawed. Junkyards themselves are an industrial-age artifact.” READ MORE !

Happy Earth Day

. . . from Care 2 Make A Difference

Eco - ABC's

A is for Adjust Your Thermostat

B is for Both Sides of the Paper are Usable

C is for Cruise Control: To Save You Gas

D is for Diaper With a Conscience

E is for Eat Organic

F is for Fly With an E-Ticket

G is for Go Vegetarian Once a Week

H is for Hang Dry

I is for Invest in Your Own Coffee Cup

J is for Junk Mail - Cut it Out of Your Life

K is for Keep Your Fireplace Damper Closed

L is for Local: The Way To Go

M is for Make a Bag And Use It

N is for Newspapers - Recycle and Consider Alternatives

O is for Old Cell Phones Need a New Life

P is for Plastic BottlesQ is for Q-Tips

R is for Recycle Glass

S is for Shower Instead of Baths

T is for Turn Off Computers at Night

U is for Use Fewer Paper Napkins

V is for VacationsW is for Wash in Cold Water

X is for X Out Your Phone Book

Y is for Your Enemy is Greenwashing

. . . and Z is for Zero Waste from the City of Burbank

Building The Blue Economy: April 26

Building the Blue Economy
Gunter Pauli
April 26, 2010 - 6:30 pm
Woodbury University

Join the Burbank community for a rare chance to spend time with one of the most innovative thinkers of our time. Gunter Pauli, author of the newly published book "The Blue Economy” has amassed 100 of the best innovations from nature’s designs that will regenerate a new economy.

Presentation & Book Signing @ Woodbury University
Ahmanson Main Space
7500 Glenoaks Blvd - Burbank

Admission $15
Space is extremely limited, so register today to guarantee a seat!
To receive a registration form email Kathleen

With Ecover in Belgium, Pauli built the world's first biodegradable factory and manufactured ecological detergents. Then he founded the Zero Emissions Research Initiative (ZERI) at the United Nations University, Tokyo, Japan. The purpose of ZERI is to design corporate strategies and policies based on the principle of sustainable, social and economic development. ZERI aims to produce all the goods society needs without any form of waste. Zero Emissions envisages all inputs being used in the final product or services, or converted into value-added inputs for other businesses or processes.

Green Day Planner: April 28

RIDE THE FUTURE
April 28 - 9 am

The First Zero Emission Hydrogen Fueled Bus arrives in Burbank, California !

Attend the unveiling of the new zero emissions, ultraquiet, hydrogen powered bus on April 28, 2010.

“We are excited to be a leader in the use of responsible and progressive technologies. The City of Burbank has always prided itself on exploring alternative sources of fuel and this project is another example our Council’s commitment to sustainability”- Burbank City Manager Michael Flad

Community Services Building
- parking lot -
150 N Third

RSVP by April 22

Utility Watch: Geothermal

Power plan fizzles out
Burbank won’t be getting energy from underground project after Los Angeles shelves its plans.
Burbank Leader: April 14, 2010 by Zain Shauk

Burbank and Glendale utilities are looking for new renewable-energy sources after a decision last month by a Los Angeles utility to cancel plans for shared transmission lines for a geothermal project.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power abandoned its plans for a Green Path transmission line to the Salton Sea. The line could have carried up to 500,000 volts of power from an area that utility officials say has great potential for geothermal power generation.

Power generated from heat, captured underground near the edges of tectonic plates, is also considered more reliable than solar rays or wind, utility managers said.

Opposition from environmental groups and community organizations along the proposed transmission line, which would have run through multiple wildlife preserves and the San Bernardino National Forest, ultimately derailed the plans, local utility managers said.

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Burbank Water and Power had anticipated receiving about 5.5% of its peak load of electricity from geothermal projects through the Green Path line.

Glendale Water & Power had expected a similar amount.

Both utilities have committed to getting roughly a third of their power from renewable sources by 2020. Burbank is at about 10%, Glendale at 23%. READ MORE !

Geothermal Power – Neil Morris
Smart Apple Media, 2007
J 621.4 MORRI

Burbank Water and Power

Residents cut water use
Burbank Leader: April 14, 2010 by Christopher Cadelago

CITY HALL — Burbank Water and Power customers have reduced their daily per-capita use from 193 gallons to 163, a drop-off that utility officials said had put the city on track to meet state mandates by 2020.

The utility serves more than 7 billion gallons per year to about 100,000 customers, with 75% going to residential, 19% to commercial and the rest to industrial and other users.

Taken together, the latest figures from the utility show that the groups have reduced their usage by about 10% from last year, inching closer to compliance with the 2009 law that mandates municipalities to reduce their water consumption by 20% within 10 years.

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Drinking water to local customers comes from the San Fernando Valley Basin, Colorado River and the State Water Project.

The figures beat the City Council’s goal of a 10% reduction in water use in line with the United Nations Urban Sustainability Accords, according to the report.

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Multifamily residential, commercial and industrial water customers face steep fines if they fail to certify that certain water-saving fixtures have been installed effective June 30. READ MORE !

Third Industrial Revolution

The Third Industrial Revolution

"We have the science and technology to do it, but it will mean nothing unless there is a change in will." — Jeremy Rifkin

We are on the cusp of a Third Industrial Revolution that could give us a door open to a new post-fossil fuel era. It was the first Industrial Revolution that brought together print and literacy with coal steam and rail. The second combined the telegraph and telephone with the internal combustion engine and oil. What we now have now is the possibility of a distributed energy revolution. We can all create our own energy, store it, and then distribute it to each other. Twenty five years from now millions of buildings will become power plants that will load renewable energy. We will load solar power from the sun, wind from turbines and even ocean waves on each coast. We can also make the power grid of the world smart and intelligent; we call it inter-grid. Not far from now, millions and millions of people will load power to buildings, store it in the form of hydrogen and distribute energy peer-to-peer; just like digital media and the internet. The first inter-grids are going up in the United States this year in Houston, Boulder Colorado, and Southern California. The "Third Industrial Revolution" is an economic game plan. We have the science and technology to do it, but it will mean nothing unless there is a change in will.

Four Pillars
Renewable Energy
Buildings as Positive Powerplants
Hydrogen and Other Storage
Smart Grids and Plug-in Vehicles

European Dream – Jeremy Rifkin
Tarcher/Penguin, 2004
306.3094 RIFKI

Industry Watch: eBooks

How Green Is My iPad?
NYTimes: April 4, 2010 by Daniel Goleman and Gregory Norris

With e-readers like Apple’s new iPad and Amazon’s Kindle touting their vast libraries of digital titles, some bookworms are bound to wonder if tomes-on-paper will one day become quaint relics. But the question also arises, which is more environmentally friendly: an e-reader or an old-fashioned book?

To find the answer, we turned to life-cycle assessment, which evaluates the ecological impact of any product, at every stage of its existence, from the first tree cut down for paper to the day that hardcover decomposes in the dump. With this method, we can determine the greenest way to read.

(A note about e-readers: some technical details — for instance, how those special screens are manufactured — are not publicly available and these products vary in their exact composition. We’ve based our estimates on a composite derived from available information. It’s also important to keep in mind that we’re focusing on the e-reader aspect of these devices, not any other functions they may offer.)

Step One: Materials

One e-reader requires the extraction of 33 pounds of minerals. That includes trace amounts of exotic metals like columbite-tantalite, often mined in war-torn regions of Africa. But it’s mostly sand and gravel to build landfills; they hold all the waste from manufacturing wafer boards for the integrated circuits. An e-reader also requires 79 gallons of water to produce its batteries and printed wiring boards, and in refining metals like the gold used in trace quantities in the circuits.

A book made with recycled paper consumes about two-thirds of a pound of minerals. (Here again, the greatest mineral use is actually gravel, mainly for the roads used to transport materials throughout the supply chain.) And it requires just 2 gallons of water to make the pulp slurry that is then pressed and heat-dried to make paper.

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Step Two: Manufacture
Step Three: Transportation
Step Four: Reading
Step Five: Disposal

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So, how many volumes do you need to read on your e-reader to break even?

With respect to fossil fuels, water use and mineral consumption, the impact of one e-reader payback equals roughly 40 to 50 books. When it comes to global warming, though, it’s 100 books; with human health consequences, it’s somewhere in between.

All in all, the most ecologically virtuous way to read a book starts by walking to your local library. READ MORE !

Book Watch

New Green Books @ Burbank Public Library

Consumer’s Dictionary of Food Additives
Ruth Winter – Three Rivers, 2009
~ Descriptions of 12,000+ ingredients in Plain English
R 664.0603
7th Ed
2009
WINTE

Natural Enemies Handbook
Mary Louise Flint – U of California, 1998
~ Control pests in gardens, farms, or landscapes. Listed alphabetically according to the common name of major groups such as aphids, beetles, caterpillars and mites.
R 632.9
1998
FLINT

Our World of Water
Beatrice Hollyer – Holt, 2009
~ Explores where water comes from and means to children in Peru, Mauritania, U.S., Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Tajikistan.
J 363.61
HOLLY