Green Gal

Stores that sell college dorm "necessities" give out those lists every fall with tons of awesome gadgets, furniture, and other "essentials that every college student needs"! Of course, you want to be comfortable and have all the stuff you need for college so you can focus on getting good grades and having fun. But as a third year college student who thinks she might have finally gotten the system down, I'm here to tell you that while those lists can be great reminders for the things you really do need, you do not need to get those items new and you certainly don't need to buy all of the latest "dorm" accessories--if truth be told, you don't have room for all of those things in your dorm. One of my boxes Green Gal brought to her first dorm room at UC Santa Cruz. If you want to save money, reduce your environmental impact, and still have the stuff you need to be comfortable and happy as you study and enjoy college, you first have to take th...

This week, I took Beth Terry (of MyPlasticFreeLife.com )'s  Show Your Plastic Challenge . I met Beth last Sunday at a lecture she gave for Science Sundays at the Seymour Center at Long Marine lab, and I was inspired to be more conscious of plastic in my life and begin the process of living without it. You can read a little about Beth and the lecture that I attended  here . I purchased a copy of Beth's book at the lecture last Sunday, and I am LOVING it. She has not only great resources and facts about plastic, but she also includes practical solutions. I will be writing more about her book in future posts. The challenge is to " Collect all of your own plastic waste, both recyclable and non, for a minimum of one week ." I tried my best to do the challenge this past week, but I went home for the weekend (I spend most of the year on campus at UC Santa Cruz) and lost track of a few of the plastic items that I used while out to lunch with family. I also didn't pr...

Today has been one of those days where a lot happens and you spend a lot of time doing something awesome, but as a result, your homework just doesn't get done. And I'm more than okay with that. Beautiful poppies along the road to the Seymour Center. This afternoon at the Seymour Center at Long Marine Lab in Santa Cruz, I attended a Science Sunday presentation by Beth Terry, author of the new book Plastic Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too and the blog  MyPlasticFreeLife.com (formerly known as Fake Plastic Fish). I think it was the first time I met a fellow eco-blogger in person, and I'm looking forward to spending more time on her blog, as well as reading her book. Though the presentation was only 45 minutes long, she somehow managed to explain clearly and convincingly the 9 reasons why personal change matters, particularly as it relates to her experiences living her life with as little plastic as possible. On the bus ride home, I started ...

This morning, my family and I went to our town's downtown farmers' market to enjoy the company of our community, enjoy the fresh air and fresh produce, and to get a knife sharpened at one of the booths. I also was able to snap some photos for the green tips guide I'm editing for the City. After we dropped off the knife to be sharpened at one end of the market, we wandered back down to Main Street and explored an art gallery, which sells locally crafted art, paintings, and jewelry. I observed that the jewelry prices were all at least $40, which seemed high to me. Then I realized that in order for a local artist to make a living selling jewelry and in order to use fine quality materials, that is the true cost. I'm so used to prices you might see at big chain stores where the jewelry is made in China out of cheap materials. Though I stopped buying lots of jewelry awhile back, realizing this made me want to be selective and thoughtful the next time I do want to get som...

Since Saturday, my family and I have been enjoying the fresh mountain air of the Sierra Nevadas of eastern California. Despite wanting to just leave behind all of our cares, we've been conscious of our environmental impact and have been thinking green (hard not to, when you're surrounded by beautiful green pine trees and pure, blue skies). Thought I'd share a few of the easy things we've done and are trying to do to make our vacation a little greener: 1. Traveling close to home. Any vacation is going to have its mileage footprint, but try thinking about places closer to home that you can visit and still feel like you're escaping. My family has been coming to the mountains for years, and while we could probably find a place a little closer to home for vacation, the drive to our favorite mountain town is only about 2.5 hours and we never have to think about carbon offsetting due to plane rides. Not to mention that going someplace closer to home costs less in gas an...

Did you know that for the many uses we have for freshwater, and for the billions of people living on Earth, that we can only use 0.01% of all the water on Earth? Are you aware that the leaky toilet in your bathroom might be wasting 200 gallons of water daily? How about this: Energy Star rated CFL lightbulbs (the curly ones) use 75% less energy than incandescent lightbulbs because rather than produce heat to make light, they rely on a chemical reaction that takes far less energy to create. No, I didn't look these startling facts up online. I learned them today, among dozens of others, during training as an Energy Specialist for California Youth Energy Services , a program of the non-profit organization Rising Sun Energy Center . CYES provides free home energy & water consultations (Green House Calls) to increase the energy and water efficiency of homes in the San Francisco Bay Area, thus saving residents money on their utility bills. Founded in 2000, California Youth Energy Serv...

The free and wild spirit of UC Santa Cruz draws many different sorts of people to its forest of learning. This spirit can be contagious to those who are already inclined toward living a little on the wild side; after all, the campus is surrounded by trees and deer, and this makes it difficult not to be aware of one's place in the natural world. I feel comfortable with being myself here, wearing what I want and dancing around when I want. I feel like I can be more naturally human, instead of abiding by certain social constraints that frown on violating arbitrary rules, like the idea that women should shave their legs and that men should have short hair. The foggy, wild forest of UCSC It's not strange or appalling to see girls who don't shave their legs here, and I would guess many of those same girls don't shave their armpits. Hair is just part of being human, and many people here embrace this, with beards and mustaches of all sorts, long hair on both guys and girls, an...

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my family has joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program with Terra Bella Family Farm . I hadn't visited the farm until today when we picked up our fresh produce and bread. I had to take pictures of the quaint farm located right in Pleasanton. On another note, I saw the Toy Story 3 midnight premiere in IMAX 3D early this morning and then again watched it at noon with my younger sister, and I have to say it is one of the best movies I've seen in awhile. It's a little stressful and scary at times, but hilarious and very sweet and definitely one of my new favorite movies. One thing that freaked me out was the depiction of the landfill. I won't give anything away, but it made me never want to buy anything disposable ever again! Which is a good thing, I suppose! Happy Weekend and Happy Summer! Green Gal --- "Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole w...

We're learning about externalities, or costs of production that affect people who have no control over how much of a good is produced. So far this semester, we've watched a lot of environmentally-related 60 Minutes videos, which I find interesting considering it's an economics class. Economy vs. environment, for sure. This is the video we watched in class today: (Click here if you can't see the above video.) Makes me wonder where my e-waste ends up... Green Gal

I love reading the newspaper on Sunday mornings. I almost always find at least one article to cut out and save. This morning I came across a few: "Ore. town is poster child for geothermal energy, toasty sidewalks during winter and all" by Jeff Barnard - I learned what geothermal energy is and how it can be accessed. It looks like an interesting "green" energy source. "With Cheap Food Imports, Haiti Can't Feed Itself" by Jonathan M. Katz - Of the articles I read this morning, this was my favorite because it highlighted the issues involved with less developed countries importing cheaper food, reducing their independence and putting local farmers out of work. We learned about this issue in Human Geography recently. I'm going to send this article along to my teacher. "High tech multitasking slows you down" by Jessica Yadegaran - My English teacher was talking about this recently and it's made me more aware of how easy it can be to get ...

Coffee and I have a close relationship, I'd say. This morning, I was a little rushed to get out the door because I was riding my bike and thus had to leave a little earlier than usual, and I didn't have time to make coffee. I figured it would be no big deal--I've gone without coffee in the morning before with no issues. But today, my body knew that I hadn't had my normal routine interaction with coffee and it was mad. So, in retaliation, I got a headache. I guess if I want to go without coffee, I'll have to slowly reduce my dependence on my coffee routine and begin trading in some decaf so my brain doesn't freak out when there's no caffeine. I was also really tired today after going to bed at 11 PM, which for me is late but for my fellow classmates is early; many of them go to bed routinely at 12, some 2:00 in the morning... I have no idea how they do it. My dad and I had studied poetry and Hamlet after St. Patrick's Day dinner until 10 PM and then m...

© Copyright 2010 Green Gal

Happy Valentine's Day! May you enjoy a simple, resourceful and non-wasteful day of celebrating love and apprectiation for others. Pesticide-free flowers, organic free trade chocolate, soy candles and organic dinner? I would hope! We're going to my grandparent's house this evening to celebrate with them and my aunt and uncle. Not sure that every one of those ingredients will be involved in our Valentine's Day celebrations tonight, but at least my sister and I made recycled Valentine's Day cards with old magazines, tattered books and scratch paper :-) On an entirely different note, I've been thinking lately about the greenwashing that's made its way into our minds to think that using the computer is a green alternative to using paper. In some ways, it can be. For large corporations and companies who use up so much paper in documents and reports, using the computer for emails and virtual files rather than printing everything is "greener" than using an...

This Valentine's Day, show your love for the Earth while showing your love for friends and family: create a Valentine's Day card of recycled or reused materials or make your own to avoid purchasing a wasteful card from the store. Whenever we purchase something that can otherwise be hand-made, we tell corporations that we support what they're doing and we increase demand for those products, when we otherwise could be decreasing our reliance on the corporate world. It increases the amount of trees cut down to make cards, the amount of plastic used to laminate those cards, quantities of ink used, transportation and fuel usage, and many other things that can be damaging to the environment in such a large-scale operation. Don't you wonder how many cards go unused and unpurchased every year? There are so many cards being produced for Hallmark, Walgreens, Walmart, Target--there's no way they're all used. Most of them are not recyclable. Nice Hallmark cards can show som...