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Marlene Martinez from Public Affairs with Caltrans approached us this week about doing a table at their Earth Day event roughly two weeks from now.

So, we’ll be doing a table, hosted by Ryan Wartena, along with Freya Bardell of GreenMeme. Come on out and say hi if your in the neighborhood!  Details on the event below…


California Department of Transportation
District 7 – Los Angeles & Ventura Counties
100 South Main Street
Los Angeles, California 90012
http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist07/index.php

EARTH DAY EVENT

WHO:  California Department of Transportation
WHAT:  Earth Day - “A Day of Information”
WHAT:  Come share information concerning one or multiple ways your company is environmentally improving your practices and/or emissions
WHEN:  April 22, 2008, 10:00 a.m.
WHERE:  Caltrans Building Plaza at 100 South Main Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012

BACKGROUND:  The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is celebrating Earth Day by planting trees in our plaza and inviting other environmentally conscious businesses and departments to share information and ideas

COST:  No charge to participants or the public
PHONE:  213-897-3656

First off a quick, Green Gurus team update on current events…

Last week while Shena was prepping for her time at the South By Southwest festival, Ryan continued working on one of his new solar flower designs, Elizabeth continued pouring over the latest Plan Check plans for one of our clients, Doug continued work on his thesis draft, Brent worked on the latest fabrication plans, Evonne carried on in Second Life, and I hit up Greg Wendt, Jeff Hayes, Sarah Shewey, Kipp Stroden, and Ferris Kawar’s Green Business Networking monthly night.

This was the first night that I had been able to make it out since hearing about it several months back. I ran into several great people I’ve been talking with recently and many more great faces, all from around the LA startup and sustainable business circles.

Several previous contacts included Michael Moss / Founder Green Nectarine, Jenn “1luv” Breckenridge, and Ben Clayton / Gliving, Watts Up America, etc. I also got to put some names to faces we’ve been hearing more about recently, like Scott Badenoch / Founder Creative Citizen and Melanie StJames / Executive Director of Empowerment Works. Other new faces included Olivia Kuhn-Lloyd / Cause + Capitalism Blog Author, Laura Beatty, Kacy Palmieri / Earth Day LA, Kristofer Youngstrom / Engineer at Digital Housing & Administration, and the Heart Beet Gardening gaia’s.

A few people were asking after more networking nights at this event and the LA Green Drinks was mentioned more than once, which we posted about last year here. Others range from Lunch 2.0 to Dealmaker, to LA’s Largest Mixer to Mashable’s return with “MashMeet LA 2.0“, and many, many others.

Some handy online resources include LA Times “Emerald City” blog, Siel’s “green LA girl“, the Green Group, etc….you just have to keep at it, digging around online, joining various social networking groups, meeting up at the local business mixers in person, and all the rest. Whatever the case may be, we’d love to meet up with you in person at the next LA Green Drinks or other event of your choosing…

Feel free to contact us here if you need help figuring out what to hit up next, carpooling arrangements or any other details.

We look forward to meeting up with you sometime soon!

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is really, truly unconscionable.

It blows my mind that nearly every single article I’ve come across in my research states that “There’s nothing we can do about it now…” (Eriksen, October 19, 2007). What kind of asinine, uncaring and lazy response is this?

In case you haven’t yet heard of this man-made atrocity, there is a collection of human waste (mostly plastic trash), that has piled up into a floating island (some say two islands), twice the size of Texas, about 1,000 miles west of San Francisco. What’s even more astounding to me anyway, is that this has been known to exist for the better part of half a century now (though it was until the last few decades that it’s neared its current size).

An article from the San Francisco Chronicle states:

Ocean current patterns may keep the flotsam stashed in a part of the world few will ever see, but the majority of its content is generated onshore, according to a report from Greenpeace last year titled “Plastic Debris in the World’s Oceans.”

This is just totally unacceptable.

Having just learned of this recently and then really took a hard look at it today, I can no longer, in good conscience, continue to write off this horrendous creation and let it continue unabated. To that end, I have just registered a domain which I hope to evolve into the official, leading source of information, activism and action against this atrocity. In the coming months, I hope to raise funds to start dismantling this floating island of trash, generate significant publicity, donate hundreds if not thousands of hours and dollars, both of my own and others, to turn the tides on this.

The GreatPacificGarbagePatch.com will serve as my central focus on what I hope grows into a massive wide effort to eradicate this abysmal by-product of our global industries. I hope that you will join me in my efforts, in whatever way you can.

Stay tuned for more info on this including a website, blog, donation system, and much more.

What in the world is Arnold thinking? Below is Environment California’s brief but urgent news:

“In a move that has stunned nature-lovers across the state, Gov. Schwarzenegger’s latest budget proposal would shut down 20 percent of the state’s parks, as well as cut down on lifeguards at state beaches. Of course, we all know California needs to balance the budget. But we’re talking about a step that would save $9 million — less than 0.1 percent of the state budget. Meanwhile, the costs to our environment, our quality of life, and our confidence in state government would be incalculable.”

Please cast your vote online now against this obscene motion attempting to slip past under the radar.