There’s ample scientific evidence that marine reserves help fish populations recover, and some evidence that these burgeoning populations then spill over into areas outside the reserve. There’s also ample evidence that California’s fish populations are, historically speaking, over-fished. Talk to someone who’s been diving in the state for a few decades, and they’ll tell you how the kelp forests once looked like aquariums, and about how you could just pick abalone off the rocks. Even fishermen lament the old days when you could fish for salmon just out of the harbor, or limit out on rockfish in a few hours after work.

With one recent study estimating that only four percent of the world’s oceans are completely unaffected by humans, and another (controversial) one estimating that, at current rates of fishing, the world’s fish stocks will vanish in forty years, marine reserves, even in popular fishing spots, seem like an imperative to many marine scientists and environmentalists. “Just from that big high-altitude perspective, I believe there ought to be chunks of the ocean that are set aside that aren’t supposed to be screwed up,” says Chris Harrold, a marine scientist and longtime director of conservation research at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. “It’s really as simple as that.”

After the final North Central California Marine Life Protection Act Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force meeting in late April, the state is close to setting aside those chunks. It’s a measure of the project’s degree of difficulty that, when the decision-makers polled all the involved organizations about their proposal, they ultimately boiled their questioning down to: “Can you live with this plan?”

Here’s another measure: at the final north central coast Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) meeting, a disgruntled environmentalist showed up intending to make a point with an authentic severed—and badly decomposing—seal head in a bag. (He was asked to leave, but there was no legal action taken against him, Department of Fish & Game spokesman Steve Martarano said, because the man had a permit. For the seal head.)

Saving the ocean, pleasing the constituents: Not easy. But when you can manage some sort of compromise that leaves everyone just mildly irritated, well, that’s when you get, as the Department of Fish & Game did, to trumpet your plan as the “milestone” that it is.

The MLPA orders state agencies to take a long look at California’s existing protected marine areas, then figure out some way to build a statewide, comprehensive, networked group to protect wildlife, improve research conditions, and enhance or at least maintain recreational opportunities.

To make it a little easier, the MLPA staffers split the map of California into study regions. They started last spring on the north central coast, which covers the area from Alder Creek in Mendocino to Pigeon Point in San Mateo. The region’s 45 appointed “stakeholders” then started the nearly year—long process of coming up with plans, commenting on the plans, running the plans by an appointed science advisory team, revising the plans, and coming up with new plans.

If you had stopped by one of these workshops, like the one held in Pacifica in January, you would have seen a motley assortment of ocean-lovers gunning for their own interests: an environmentalist in flowing silk, two fit young surfers from the Surfrider Foundation, an older man concerned about access for kayakers, a gentleman named Rolf who worried that he wouldn’t be able to drive his boat around, a thin, Lincoln-ish representative from California Trout in a maroon sweater vest and six-inch-too-short khakis, and at the head of the table, bellowing like something out of Robert Louis Stevenson, a party boat fishing captain with a name tag that read, “Hello my name is SMITTY,” all of them arguing passionately the finer points of ocean policy.

The most contentious battles were over “no-take” marine reserves; fishermen argued that environmentalists are trying to kick them off the water entirely by taking away all the good spots to fish. With Northern California salmon gone for at least the next several years, the catch in question, for fishermen, is mostly rockfish. And since rockfish are found in areas where there are rocks, and since areas with rocks and fish also tend to be obvious areas to put in marine reserves, recreational fishermen argued that the wrong plan could mean the end of their sport. (To be clear: fishermen aren’t against all marine protected areas, they were just against the particular protected areas proposed in this process by environmental groups. Some of the early plans would have put marine reserves in about ninety percent of the rocky areas, meaning that the only areas left open to fishing wouldn’t have any rockfish in them.) Suggested marine reserves at popular fishing spots like Duxbury Reef off Point Reyes, the area around Montara, and the Farallon Islands had many fishermen saying they’d sell their boats and do their fishing in Alaska or Mexico.

Calling it the “biggest political battle” his group had ever faced, Chris Hall, the president of the 13,000-member Coastside Fishing Club, said that the MLPA had “provided a vehicle for environmental organizations that wish for us not to be on the ocean a way to do it.” Environmental organizations and MLPA organizers disagreed. “This is not about trying to prevent people from fishing,” said Melissa Miller-Henson, the program manager for the MLPA Initiative. “It’s really about trying to maintain a healthy ocean ecosystem so that folks can take their children, their grandchildren, eventually their great-grandchildren out to go fishing because there are still fish out there in the ocean.”

Fishermen argue that California already has extensive marine regulations, and that after over-fishing in the 1980s and ’90s, California fish populations (especially rockfish and other so-called “groundfish”) have recovered to sustainable levels. Groundfish populations in California, after reaching a nadir in the 1990s, are increasing or holding steady. But Harrold argues that even a well-managed fishery still allows a lot of fish to be caught, and that we have really no idea what that means for the ocean ecosystem. “In large part, we’re conducting this big experiment in the ocean,” Harrold said. “Let’s extract hundreds of thousands of tons of fish—and see what happens.”

In late April, after a year of arguments, the north central coast stakeholder group presented three proposals to the Blue Ribbon Task Force, the group charged with taking a year’s worth of advice and picking one “preferred alternative” plan to send to Fish & Game for final approval. The three stakeholder proposals split along party lines: a “fishermen’s” proposal, an “environmentalist’s” proposal, and a slightly environmentalist-leaning compromise proposal that, in its backers’ defense, was “everyone’s second choice.”

The task force forwarded all three plans intact to the Fish & Game Commission and then set to mashing them all up into one giant compromise for its “preferred alternative.” For areas in the northern parts of the study region, they borrowed almost exclusively from the environmentalists’ plan, recommending the proposal’s suggested marine protected areas at Point Arena, Sea Lion Cove, Saunders Reef, Del Mar, Stewarts Point, and Salt Point, including a state marine park at the popular abalone-diving area near Salt Point. Then, as the task force moved south, they swung back toward the fishermen’s plan. They elected not to recommend any protected areas at Duxbury Reef, perhaps the most important area to fishermen, and also used the fishermen’s suggestions for Bodega Head and the Fitzgerald/Montara area. The task force’s “preferred alternative” covered twenty percent of the region’s waters and called for 160 square miles of marine protected areas.

Everyone now gets one more opportunity to make an argument. Again. The Fish & Game Commission started taking public comment on the preferred alternative and other proposals in June and has the power to change any of the plans as it sees fit. A final decision isn’t expected until at least December, and it’s likely the new MLPAs won’t be implemented until well into 2009. Meanwhile, the task force moves on. After a year of tension and argument and debate and passion, and a difficult compromise recommendation, their reward: They get to start all over again in Southern California.

SB 1121, Migden’s labeling bill, is currently making its way through the state’s Senate. California is one of thirteen states considering such a bill; Maryland senator Barbara Mikulski is also pushing for a federal law. So far, none have passed; Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a virtually identical Migden bill last year, saying such labeling is pre-empted by federal law. Migden and her allies, mostly food safety and consumer interest groups, disagree, pointing out that states have often set precedents for labeling regulations, such as for irradiated foods. “People have a right to know that cloned foods are on the market,” says Migden spokesperson Tracy Fairchild. “We see it as an issue of consumer choice.”

Admittedly, there isn’t much to label yet. According to the US Department of Agriculture, there are fewer than 600 clones in the United States, mostly cattle. The USDA, as well as the federal Food and Drug Administration, portray cloning as the most recent development in animal husbandry’s long history of assisted reproductive technologies, which already includes artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, and selective breeding. Cloning companies usually market their services as a way for ranchers to replace valuable animals that die or are injured, or to engineer herds of highly productive livestock. “Instead of having one top female in your & breeding program, imagine what you could accomplish with two, four, or eight of her,” cloning company Cyagra urges on its Web site. Indeed, because clones are so expensive to produce, most observers expect that they’ll primarily be used for breeding, not eating.

In January, the FDA concluded that it is safe to eat milk and meat from cloned animals as well as from their conventionally bred offspring. The FDA spent years examining this hot-button issue; in 2001, the agency asked agricultural producers to observe a “voluntary moratorium” on introducing products from cloned animals into the food supply while it deliberated. In 2006, the agency gave a preliminary all-clear, releasing a draft risk assessment claiming that milk and meat produced by clones and their progeny are no different than those from other animals.

The agency’s findings were hotly contested by the Center for Food Safety, which accused the FDA of fuzzy math and of basing its research too heavily on data supplied by cloning companies. The center released its own report deconstructing the FDA’s figures, emphasizing clones’ low survival rate (between five and eighteen percent between implantation and delivery for cows) and the high prevalence of birth defects.

For example, the Center for Food Safety reports that hydrops, an abnormal build-up of fluid in the fetus that can cause stillbirths and often leads to the euthanization of the surrogate mother, is very rare in natural breeding but may have an incidence rate of up to 42 percent in cattle cloning. The center claims that as many as half of cow clones are afflicted by “Large Offspring Syndrome,” which can cause not only unusually high birth weight, endangering the host mother, but a laundry list of organ dysfunctions and systemic abnormalities, including heart problems and immature lung development. Furthermore, the report cited some evidence that clones are not always exact duplicates of their gene donors, suggesting that cloning remains an unpredictable science.

Rebecca Spector, the group’s West Coast director, says they’re worried that the cloning process might create problems up the food chain. For example, she asks, could people get sick, or develop allergic reactions or antibiotic resistances, due to the high doses of hormones administered to host mothers to assist difficult pregnancies, or the antibiotics given to sickly offspring? Could undetected birth defects or genetic changes in animals that make it to slaughter age have food safety implications? “The FDA’s risk assessment didn’t adequately look at that, especially for long-term effects or effects on children,” Spector says. The group has also encouraged the FDA to consider issues outside of food safety: the animal welfare concerns raised by the poor health of clones and dangers to their host mothers, as well as the threat to biodiversity caused by genetic homogenization. (For the dangers of a monocrop, one only need think of the Irish potato famine.)

Yet the FDA’s final report, issued this January, brushed aside most of these concerns, stating that it was not the agency’s goal to parse the ethics of cloning or determine if clones are “normal.” The agency stood by its original findings: that it’s safe to eat cloned cows, pigs, and goats, although it admitted that the efficiency of producing clones is “very low,” and that animals involved in the process “are at increased risk of adverse health outcomes.” While admitting that the technology is still too new for anyone to draw conclusions about overall clone longevity, the agency ruled that premature deaths “do not pose a food consumption risk” because those animals theoretically don’t survive long enough to enter the food supply, and that the offspring of clones are safe to eat because the sexual reproduction process resets possible genetic defects in their parents.

The FDA stresses that meat and milk go through multiple quality checks before hitting the grocery stores (including ensuring that animals slaughtered for meat do not contain unapproved levels of antibiotics in their edible tissues), and products that fail federal or state standards are withheld from the food supply. (The Center for Food Safety challenges these claims, pointing out that agricultural inspectors are unlikely to catch subtle defects.) The FDA emphasizes that clones are mostly “elite breeding animals” unlikely to go to slaughter. As a statement from the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine puts it: “The value of these animals is in their genetics, not their meat. & Clones are just too expensive to produce, so you wouldn’t want to eat your investment.” In any case, the statement continues, “Clones are as identical as twins are—there is always a slim chance of genetic mutation in the production of any animal, no matter how it is created. We do not expect any food safety effects.”

Even after the report’s release, both the FDA and the USDA have asked producers to continue observing the voluntary moratorium. The FDA says that it is not aware of any clone-derived products entering the market since the report was released. The FDA (which regulates milk products) says it will not require labeling for food derived from clones, because it is not nutritionally different than food from other animals. However, the agency may consider, on a case-by-case basis, the truthfulness of the claims of producers who want to label their dairy products “clone-free.” The USDA (which regulates meat) has not taken a stance on labeling, although it has stated that meat from clones cannot be considered “organic.” (The agency has not decided if this will also apply to meat from clones’ offspring.) A spokesman from the California Department of Food & Agriculture declined to give the state’s take on the labeling issue, saying the agency cannot comment on pending legislation.

According to a 2007 Consumers Unions survey, 89 percent of Americans would support labeling. Oddly, most of the forward motion on this issue seems to be coming from cloning companies themselves. Last year two of them—ViaGen and TransOva Genetics—announced they had developed a supply chain tracking program for cloned animals utilizing a third party registry, similar to the systems used to reassure consumers that they are buying Fair Trade coffee or Halal meats. Both companies referred questions to Barbara Glenn, animal biotechnology spokesperson for lobbying group BIO (Biotechnology Industry Organization). She compares the labels involved in this system to ones already used to denote organic or kosher foods. “Such labels provide information not about the ingredients, or nutritional value, or safety of the foods, but rather about the process by which the foods were produced.By facilitating consumer choice, such labels serve a valuable function,” she says.

Glenn says that while BIO opposes mandatory labeling, “We do support voluntary labeling as long as the label is truthful and not misleading. Therefore, food marketers could use ‘no clone’ labels to appeal to consumers who want to avoid buying food products from cloned animals.” Others have suggested that consumers concerned about cloning skirt the issue by buying organic. However, says Migden spokesperson Fairchild, “That is unfair to consumers. It puts more pressure on their pocketbooks, because organic foods are more expensive.”

Cloning’s critics suspect that even if labeling eventually prevails, consumers will ultimately reject a technology that seems to benefit breeders, rather than buyers—especially one that involves dairy production, a touchy subject because milk is so frequently consumed by children. Plus, Spector points out, as a political issue, cloning likely has a “yick factor” that even genetically engineered crops can’t match. As the labeling debate makes its way through thirteen state legislatures, brace yourself—we’ll be hearing about clone-derived foods again.

And again.

One of the most glaring shortfalls emerged as hundreds of volunteers headed to the shoreline to see how they might help. State and federal officials were slow to incorporate volunteers into cleanup and wildlife rescue efforts, citing safety and training deficits. As a result, most of these Good Samaritans were turned away.

Two bills, AB 2031 and AB 2911, seek to address the logjam for volunteer training. The first bill would require the California Department of Fish and Game’s Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response (OSPR) to provide grants to local agencies so emergency officials could train volunteers in cleanup and recovery operations. The second would fund local agencies and organizations to train volunteers in bird and wildlife rescue in oil and chemical spills.

OSPR came under scrutiny for what Hancock and others saw as mishandling the cleanup. Nine days after the crash, Hancock and other members of the Assembly Natural Resources Committee held the first hearings on the spill. They determined that communication between the Coast Guard, OSPR, and local agencies broke down in the critical days following the spill.

Currently, the authority for dealing with oil spills and other emergencies on the bay falls to the Coast Guard. Coast Guard officials were unfamiliar with the geography of the area and lethargic in their response to clamoring local agencies. Chris Boyer of the Contra Costa County Office of Emergency Services says he offered everything—his agency’s expertise in hazardous spills, knowledge of the area that includes the largest stretch of coastline on the bay, and equipment—only to be told to wait. “I asked what I could do to help, and I was told to fill out this form,” recalls Boyer. Part of the legislation making its way through Assembly committees would invert the chain of command in the event of an oil spill to place local authorities on the top.

Also becoming clear was how under-resourced OSPR was in dealing with the spill’s aftermath. Non-agency scientists and other individuals tried to help soak up the oil by deploying newer technologies for cleanup that OSPR didn’t have. AB 2547 would require OSPR to set aside $5 million each year for purchases of modern equipment. AB 2912 increases OSPR’s responsibilities to include overseeing inland oil and chemical spills, and also raises the penalty for these spills to the level of maritime spills.

Another issue arising from the spill was its effect on fisheries. AB 2935 would require the California Department of Fish & Game to shut down commercial and recreational fishing within the first 24 hours of a spill, determine whether fishing could go ahead within 48 hours, and within seven days test the fish and shellfish in the affected waters for toxins. AB 1960 raises the fines for misreporting spills, but otherwise does little other than re-state existing spill-prevention law. Finally, AB 2441 would require all vessels carrying hazardous chemicals to have a tugboat escort in California’s harbors. Currently, no escort is provided.

At press time, all of these bills had passed the Assembly, with the exception of AB 2912, which was still in committee. Senate bill SB 1739, which would strengthen requirements for oil-spill response contractors, was also being heard in the Assembly, as was SB 1056, which requires OSPR to hold workshops in cleanup techniques such as burning off the oil.

However, the strongest bill proposed, AB 2032, died in the Assembly. It would have raised money for cleanup, levying a 25-cent fee on every barrel of oil produced or imported into California. A second provision in this bill tried to address the increasing size of container ships. As the Port of Oakland and other ports dig deeper channels to handle bigger ships and larger shipments, the fuel required to power these ships becomes a greater risk in the event of an accident; larger ships hold nearly as much oil as an oil tanker. AB 2032 also would have increased the amount of insurance required for these vessels.

Governor Schwarzenegger has come out in support of three of the bills: Assemblymember Pedro Nava’s AB 1960, Assemblymember Lois Wolk’s AB 2911, and Senator Joe Simitian’s SB 1739. The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association’s Zeke Grader says Governor Schwarzenegger has opposed the strongest bills and is starving OSPR by loaning away its funds. “We’re hoping there was some oversight on the governor’s part, because he certainly missed some of the more substantive bills,” says Grader. “What we have right now is a weak, half-hearted position by the governor that misses an opportunity to better prevent and fully prepare for another Cosco Busan or worse.”

But recently I’ve started to wonder if holding on to the old is really beneficial or just a knee-jerk reaction to over-consumption. In this new series of columns, I’ll explore the true environmental costs of objects throughout their lifecycles, from materials collection and product assembly, to the impact of use and beyond to disposal. Together we’ll see if newer is better as we pit products against one another to determine if one has a clear environmental edge.

There are plenty of places in my life where this quandary pops up, but only one of them racks up 10,000 miles each year. When it comes to your carbon footprint, is it better to keep driving the car you already have or buy a new hybrid?

Sure, it would be great if people drove less and bicycled or walked more, but our personal ecosystems are often just too big and time too short to give up the convenience of cars. While gasoline-electric hybrids are no longer the cutting-edge of eco-conscious automotive technology, they’re the most mainstream option. How would the Prius, that iconic hybrid, stack up against my own not-very-new four-door hatchback?

In a 2003 report, UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies research scientist Mark Delucchi estimated that assembling a car—including turning its component materials into auto parts—produces about 1.8 pounds of carbon dioxide per pound of vehicle. According to Toyota, it takes about the same amount to produce a hybrid, which means that before it’s ever hit the road the Prius has already emitted about 5,220 pounds of greenhouse gas.

What about emissions from refining the gasoline itself? If you add the 19.4 pounds of carbon dioxide produced by burning a gallon of gas to the additional 5.1 pounds of “upstream” emissions Delucchi estimates are needed to make fuel, you’ve produced almost 25 pounds of carbon. That’s like dropping a giant Thanksgiving turkey onto the road every time you burn another gallon.

Armed with these numbers, I began my comparison. I drive about 10,000 miles per year. Since I don’t commute to work, that’s on the low side; the US Environmental Protection Agency puts the national average at about 12,500 miles per year, while Web site FuelEconomy.gov suggests 15,000 miles as an average. You can check how many miles per gallon (mpg) your car gets at FuelEconomy.gov; mine gets a disappointing 22. The 2008 Prius, on the other hand, gets 46. Each year, my car produces 5.56 tons of carbon dioxide to a Prius’ 2.66 tons. That’s a lot of turkeys. At this point as I did the calculation, a small voice in my head started contemplating a craigslist used-car ad.

But that isn’t the whole picture. Since I am considering replacing my existing car with one that must be newly produced, I need to know how long it would take to make up for the emissions involved in manufacturing the Prius—the equivalent of about eighteen tanks of gas. Since I drive 10,000 miles each year, it would take about eleven months for the emissions to balance out. (A person driving 15,000 miles per year in a typical passenger vehicle would reach that point in about six months.) And since I’d be using less gas, I’d be saving over $900 a year at the pump. The clear message: When it comes to emissions, mileage matters more than manufacturing.

How much would driving a Prius reduce my overall carbon footprint? Pinning down a national average is tough, but the EPA’s online carbon calculator sizes the typical footprint at around 10 tons per person each year, and driving makes up about six of those tons. The rest of the emissions come from heating, cooling, electricity, and waste. (The EPA doesn’t factor in air travel, though, and since a round trip cross-country flight emits a ton of carbon dioxide per passenger, that’s a serious omission.) Based on this estimate, a high-mileage vehicle such as a Prius would offer a thirty-four percent carbon footprint reduction after the initial manufacturing emissions recovery period. In my case, there would be a 5,809 pound difference each year, which, even including the manufacturing emissions, translates to an impressive 11.8 fewer tons of carbon dioxide over five years. That’s like erasing my carbon footprint for an entire year.

But we can’t decide yet, since carbon dioxide emissions aren’t the only factor. Tim Lipman at UC Berkeley’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center says that hybrids produce slightly more air pollution during the manufacturing process because of the smelting needed to make the sealed nickel-metal hydride batteries. However, he says that overall, hybrids pollute less since they require less gas and tend to be clean emitters.

There’s also the question of what happens to your old car. If you sell it, it will continue emitting the same amount of carbon dioxide while someone else drives it, so it’s hard to say whether that’s making things better or worse. Maybe your car gets better mileage than the one it’s replacing, or perhaps you’ve kept the new owner from buying a car that gets even worse mileage. On the other hand, perhaps it would be better to send your car to the scrap heap in the sky. These days, most cars don’t rust in the junkyard: more than 85 percent of each car is recycled, and as the recycling process improves, that figure is inching towards 100 percent.

Finally, there’s the financial issue: hybrids are priced at a premium. A new car is an investment no matter what, and with so many hybrids on the road today, there should be an influx of used models soon.

After crunching my way through the whole equation, it seems that in my case the impulse to conserve by making the most of what I’ve got doesn’t take into account vast differences in fuel efficiency. In California, where people drive more than 825 million miles each day, getting the most out of every gallon of gasoline has a tremendous environmental impact. That’s reason enough for me to take another look at consuming a little more in order to use a lot less.

Want to try this yourself? Here’s how to compare your car with a high-mileage vehicle:

1. Choose a hybrid or other high-mileage car for your comparison. Look up the weight of the car in pounds and multiply by 1.8 to estimate the pounds of carbon dioxide emitted during manufacturing.

2. Use FuelEconomy.gov to compare your existing vehicle against the hybrid. You can adjust the tool to reflect your annual mileage and highway-to-city ratio. Note the mpg of both vehicles. This website will give you an emissions estimate, but it doesn’t include the upstream emissions from producing the gas in the first place. We’ll do that in the next step.

3. Divide your annual mileage by the mpg. Multiply that number by 24.5 to determine the annual carbon dioxide emissions of each vehicle. Add the manufacturing emissions to the first year of the hybrid vehicle.

4. Calculate the emissions out over multiple years to assess the difference and determine the carbon footprint reduction.

Though I won’t be able to buy a hybrid tomorrow, this comparison has dramatically altered the way I think about driving. Great—not just good—mileage is far more important than I realized. Upgrading to a more fuel-efficient car has moved to the top of my personal to-do list, and with so many more high-mpg conventional cars and hybrids on the horizon, plus the promise of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, this is an exciting time to be considering a new car.

What’s more, thinking about those 25 pounds of carbon dioxide emitted for every gallon of gas I burn inspires me to leave the car at home—to bike, walk, and take public transportation more often, shrinking my footprint as I boost my footsteps.

It Pays To Eat Organic

Organically grown food used to be a rare luxury for middle-class families like that of Ladan Sobhani, a 33-year-old Berkeley mother of two who works as a consultant for nonprofits. While Sobhani herself was an early adopter of foods grown without pesticides, she’s found that since her first daughter was born four years ago, the percentage of her shopping list that is organic has shot up to about ninety percent. “I was always conscious that eating organic was better for the environment,” she explains. “But when I had kids it became more important to me that organic was good for my kids’ health, especially since they are so much more vulnerable.”

Environmental advocates support Sobhani’s preference for pesticide-free foods. When pesticides aren’t used in food production, farm workers and nearby residents are spared exposure to chemicals that could hinder fetal development and cause developmental delays in children, according to the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, DC research organization. Yet whether eating organic products is healthier for children than eating their non-organic counterparts is still uncertain, says Dr. Jatinder Bhatia, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ nutrition committee. He says there is “no evidence at this current time” that organic products are healthier for kids than conventionally grown foods.

Efren Ávalos, an organic farmer in San Benito County, takes no chances. Before he began growing his own produce, Ávalos picked strawberries for a large company in Monterey County, and he experienced headaches and nausea every time a nearby celery field was sprayed with pesticides by helicopter. “When I worked for the company, I was not allowed to bring my kids to the fields because of the spraying,” he says. “Now I have my son and daughter with me.”

Eating organic produce, especially locally grown products, is a good way for a family to reduce its carbon footprint, says Timonie Hood, an environmental protection specialist at the US Environmental Protection Agency. In the past few years, the array of organic food choices, including several kinds aimed at kids, has widened as prices have fallen in the marketplace. Even mainstream stores like Safeway, Target, and Wal-Mart have embraced organics, rolling out affordable lines. Safeway’s O Organics, which boasts more than 300 foods, is so popular that the Pleasanton-based company plans to sell it internationally across retail and service food channels.

A quick comparison of the price tags of O Organics against better-known, non-organic brands such as Kellogg’s and Gerber reveal just how mainstream organic food has become. Organic baby food is just a touch more expensive: this summer, the Pak ‘n Save-branded Safeway store in Emeryville has been selling the O Organics four-ounce jars of baby food for 79 cents. It also carries six-ounce jars of organic Earth’s Best baby food for $1.28. The Gerber jars sell for 65 cents for the four-ounce and 85 cents for the six-ounce. For older children, Safeway’s organic cereals—as diverse in flavors as better-known brands—actually beat other prices. O Organics frosted flakes (fifteen ounces), for example, cost $3.39 whereas the Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes (fourteen ounces) cost $4.49. Even the EnviroKidz frosted flakes at Whole Foods in Berkeley are cheaper—$3.69. Yogurt, another kid favorite, is only slightly more expensive than the non-organic brand. A six-ounce cup of O Organics yogurt was recently selling four for $5. A Yoplait of the same size cost five for $5, or ten for $7. Those savings add up for buyers paying with food stamps or a food voucher, a community that the Emeryville Pak ‘n Save serves. Safeway spokeswoman Teena Massingill said the O Organics line has had no trouble finding its way into the shopping carts of all shoppers, affluent and penny-pinching alike. She says the company expects sales of O Organics to explode from $310 million last year to $410 million this year. “Many people have found organic foods to be cost-prohibitive,” she says. “O Organics is priced so that people who have never considered organic foods will try them and realize that organic doesn’t mean sacrificing quality or taste.” National sales of organic food shot up by as much as 94 percent in 2006, the last time such numbers are available, according to the Organic Trade Association (OTA). In 2005, organic food sales at mass market grocery stores, which do not include stores like Whole Foods and Wild Oats, made up approximately 35 percent of the organic market. By 2006, that figure rose by nearly two percent in one year. Even big box stores like Target and Wal-Mart saw respectable gains in market share, from five percent in 2005 to 5.3 percent a year later, according to the trade association. “When you look at the consumer surveys, in general, people see organic products as fitting in with their efforts to live a more healthful life,” said OTA spokeswoman Holly Givens.

What’s Up With Lead in Toys?

One of the most frightening news stories for parents in 2007 was the Thomas the Tank Engine recall. The $20 wooden trains, favorites of pre-schoolers, turned out to be loaded with lead paint, which even at low levels can cause permanent brain damage.

Berkeley mom Sobhani was bewildered by the news, but she did not join the many families who returned the trains. Instead, she simply kept them away from her one-year-old who was prone to putting things in her mouth. “I actually feel kind of guilty that I never scrapped the whole train collection and tried to find an alternative,” she says. “But it was hard to take them away from my four-year-old.”

The scare has had a silver lining. The public outcry over Thomas prompted more information about recalled items and heightened scrutiny of toys imported into the United States. California Assemblymember Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco) has threatened to draft legislation banning lead in children’s products if the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission, the agency in charge of regulating the chemicals in consumer products, does not take up the task. Ma previously authored successful legislation banning another toxic chemical in baby and toddler toys: phthalates. It is now illegal to manufacture, sell, and distribute toys, such as baby teethers, that contain the chemicals, which are known to cause reproductive defects and the early onset of puberty. In a prepared statement describing her proposed legislation that would ban lead in toys, Ma declared, “California continues to lead the nation in protecting children from dangerous chemicals and in safeguarding our environment. & AB 1108 sends a clear message to the Consumer Product Safety Commission that if the Bush Administration won’t act, states will.”

The Consumer Product Safety Commission currently prohibits the sale of paint, including that manufactured for toys and furniture, with a lead toxicity of more than 0.06 percent, far below the levels permissible in the ’70s, when consumers became aware of lead’s harmful properties and the chemical was phased out of products like gasoline. But watchdog groups say the agency is too under-funded and understaffed to adequately enforce the law. “That’s why we have to be engaged as citizens,” says Joan Blades, a Berkeley mother of two and founder of parent-activist group MomsRising (www.MomsRising.org), which is advocating giving the CPSC more law enforcement power. “[CPSC] is now half the size it was in 1980, and George Bush has taken away funding,” she says.

The Poop on Diapers

One of the most agonizing decisions for an environmentally-minded parent is choosing a diapering method. On average, a child will soil 5,000 diapers, each of which has the potential to end up in an air-tight landfill. While disposable diapers have a terrible reputation as non-biodegradable landfill-cloggers, the EPA’s Timonie Hood says that they actually don’t have a very heavy effect on the environment; they make up less than one percent of solid waste. She says that lifecycle studies have shown that both cloth and disposable diapers require a lot of resources, most obviously water (disposables require it for manufacture, and cloth requires it for cleaning). The EPA does not make an official recommendation on diapering. “I wouldn’t say that one is definitely better than the other,” Hood says, but adds quickly, “Speaking for myself, I think it is great to reuse whenever you can.”

For parents concerned about their child’s Huggies piling up in the landfill, there have never been more diapering choices than there are now. Cloth diapers need not become another stinky pile in the hamper for an already harried parent to deal with in the evenings. There are diaper services, like ABC Diaper Service (www.ABCDiaper.com) in the East Bay, that will drop off, pick up, and launder dirty diapers. High-efficiency Energy Star washers allow parents to wash cloth diapers at home on the cheap. And as for those prickly pins our parents had to contend with, they’ve been replaced by comfortable and trendy snap-on plastic wraps sold on Web sites such as Baby Bunz (www.BabyBunz.com) and Little Sprouts Diapers (www.LittleSproutsDiapers.com). ABC Diaper Service also sells the wraps.

Companies like Seventh Generation and Whole Foods sell disposable diapers manufactured without chlorine, which, when treated with water and organic matter, forms compounds called trihalomethanes. (THMs are linked to cancer, miscarriages and birth defects, according to the Environmental Working Group). However, ABC Diaper Service washes its diapers in bleach, demonstrating that the cloth vs. disposable diaper debate is not black and white—or chlorine-free.

The product that has garnered the most buzz thanks to endorsers like Julia Roberts is the hybrid gDiaper (www.gdiapers.com). The gDiaper works like this: You stuff what looks like an oversized maxi pad into a cloth and plastic diaper wrap. When your child soils it, you tear it open and flush the cotton down the toilet. The good news is your child’s excrement goes where it should—into the sewer. On the flipside, gDiapers are not widely available, and environmental scientists have yet to study their impact on sewage systems.

Something all eco-conscious parents can agree on is that it’s best to cut down on the number of diapers used. Sobhani, who is originally from Iran where the word for diaper is literally kohne, or “rag,” has been taking her daughter Ahva to the potty since she was four months old. Ahva, now twenty months old, regularly straddles a BabyBjörn potty ($10) to relieve herself. Even more impressive, she has not soiled a diaper for the past month. In contrast, most US children are in diapers for between 36 and 44 months, according to statistics compiled by the National Association of Diaper Services, which promotes cloth diaper use.

Some point out that training a baby to use the toilet takes being on call 24-7 to interpret when a frown means “gotta go.” Sobhani, who works, also has her mother and a nanny ready to take Ahva to the bathroom. Sobhani is not as stringent in her beliefs as diaper-free experts such as the renowned Laurie Boucke, who believes that you’ll have reached the Promised Land only if you eliminate diapers altogether. Sobhani has one goal: to reduce the number of diapers she uses. She has been able to cut down disposable diaper use for naptime and at nighttime. “A lot of information out there about potty training is all or nothing,” Sobhani says. “You have to put your kid in underwear and deal with accidents. For me it was about making it easier… A lot of people say, ‘I can’t do this because I am a working mother.’ If you have five extra minutes to take your infant and sit her on the potty and have that bonding time, then you’re on your way to teaching your kid to be aware of the fact that the toilet is where they need to eliminate.” She recommends enticing a baby or toddler with a book in the event she won’t sit still on the potty.

Educating Children to be Stewards of the Environment

Parents are their child’s first teachers, and these first moments can be about conservation and stewardship. “Teaching your kids to be aware [is] hugely important,” says MomsRising’s Blades. “The love of the earth is something that comes very naturally to them. It’s not a hard thing to teach.” Teaching children the three R’s—reduce, reuse, and recycle—is an invaluable lesson that can be reinforced by everyday behaviors like dressing children in hand-me-downs and showing them how to recycle appropriate items.

Bill Walker, a father of three who heads the Oakland office of the Environmental Working Group, has seen the benefits of modeling friendly environmental practices such as toting a refillable metal bottle instead of throwaway plastic ones and explaining to children why it is better to eat organic food. “My kids are better environmentalists than I am,” he says. “When they see me buy a plastic bottle of water, they call me on it. They’ll say, ‘Dad! Dad! Dad! You bought plastic!’”

Another tip he offers parents is to give children allowances with the proviso that they set aside an amount to spend, a percentage to save, with the rest for charity. Because he has spoken so much about the importance of protecting the earth, his two oldest children, ages nine and seven, give to environmental causes. Walker’s oldest daughter, Sasha, uses her to money to help organic farmers. She attended a week-long agricultural camp (www.SlideRanch.org). Her brother Rafie loves raptors and has donated money to protect birds. It is very easy to track down environmental causes on the Internet, Walker says, adding that nearly every environmental organization has a section for kids on its Web site.

It is never too late for parents to educate themselves and adopt good behavior for their kids to copy. Blades points to numerous online forums, including MomsRising, that draw attention to environmental concerns such as recalled toxic toys. Katy Farber, who runs a blog called Non-Toxic Kids (www.Non-ToxicKids.net), recommends signing up at the CPSC website (www.CPSC.gov) to receive regular notices of recalled toys. Countless sites such as craigslist let people responsibly dispose of old furniture and kids’ clothes and buy second-hand baby items.

Blades says it is easy to shoot off an e-mail to your state legislators by signing a MomsRising online petition. The organization keeps tabs on the legislation, drafts the letters and then delivers the signatures to the appropriate officials. For a busy parent, political activism has never been easier. “I recommend online participation,” Blades says, who has seen exactly how powerful it can be—she helped found MoveOn.org.

Parents can also flex their political muscles using their wallets. The Environmental Working Group’s Walker says simply switching to foods with the least pesticides—replacing apples, which have a high pesticide load, with mangoes, for example—eliminates about ninety percent of pesticides in a family’s diet. The EWG conveniently ranks foods (www.FoodNews.org/index.php) according to pesticide level. The organization also evaluates cosmetic products like baby shampoo and kids’ toothpaste: www.CosmeticsDatabase.org/special/parentsguide.

Walker warns that just because a product is labeled “natural” doesn’t make it better for the environment—or children. “The government doesn’t enforce standards on these products,” Walker says. “Right now there is an unregulated marketplace where companies can make whatever claims they want.”

If an organic or chemical-free product is more expensive than the conventional brand, would Walker make the switch? Walker’s answer is a resounding yes. “The decision I’ve made with my child is that’s worth the money,” he says.

Elisa Batista, who cofounded parenting Web site Mothertalkers.com, can be reached at elisa@mothertalkers.com

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For more information on toxic chemicals and recalled toys:

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“When the couple has made choices in integrity with their values that honor the planet, it’s a green wedding. They’ve considered their impact with each choice they’ve made,” says wedding consultant Jessica Rios, of Love Events in Marin County. She stresses that green weddings can be as stylish as the traditional model, with a deeper sense of connection to the spirit of sustainability.

Green wedding and events planner Corina Beczner says, “Creating a wedding that is aligned with a couple’s personal values is new for people. Green weddings are less rigid—there’s a greater sense of freedom and connection to values.”

The trend took off in early 2007, after the New York Times ran a piece called “How Green Was My Wedding.” Many celebrities have gone public with their green nuptials, and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is reportedly planning a green wedding.

What makes a wedding green? Beczner, founder of San Francisco-based Vibrant Events, says that green weddings go beyond the three R’s—reduce, reuse, recycle—by including organic, local, sustainable choices.

Weddings begin with engagements, and most often diamond rings, but you won’t find blood diamonds at a green wedding. Because of the destruction associated with diamond harvesting, couples are choosing alternatives to diamonds for their engagement. Options include synthetic jewels, family heirlooms, or other stones.

The couple can set the tone early with tree-free or recycled invitations. Beczner says a new trend in invites eliminates paper altogether: e-clips, short “save the date” or invitation videos. The couple may set up a Web site where they post details about their wedding, and where guests can respond so that they don’t have to mail in RSVP cards. The couple might list organizations to which guests can make donations in lieu of gifts.

Travel is the most environmentally unfriendly aspect of any wedding. When it comes to location, organic gardens, farms, or green buildings are popular choices for the ceremony, close to the reception site so that guests can walk. The guests can purchase carbon offsets if they fly, or the couple may choose a wedding site closer to home with the ceremony and reception sites in close proximity to one another to encourage walking or biking between locations.

Expect to find seasonal, organic food served on china or compostable materials; the goal is to stay away from disposables. The food can come with organic or local wine and beer if alcohol is served. On tables you might find vintage lace, beeswax candles, and locally grown flowers that are donated or given away afterwards. Some couples opt for potted plants, herbs, or edible arrangements. “One bride I worked with didn’t want flowers that would die,” says Rios. “She had arrangements of red, yellow, and green hot peppers.”

The bride’s dress may be made from organic fibers—bamboo, hemp, or silk—or could be vintage, borrowed, or used, and the wedding party might wear dresses or suits they already own or could wear again. All these green details add up favorably. Says Beczner, “Any wedding generates forty tons of carbon, but green weddings offset the carbons, the equivalent of taking seven cars off the road for a year.”

All this greening must be expensive, right? “If you want your wedding to look like a conventional bridal magazine wedding, it can cost you fifteen to twenty percent more because organics are more expensive,” says Beczner. “Then there is cost associated with carbon offsets and other details. If you want it to look over-the-top and you want to green it, it’ll cost more.”

The average cost of a wedding in San Francisco is already $60,000. Ouch. But a green wedding can demonstrate that bigger is not necessarily better. “There’s this idea that more stuff, more food, fancier dresses, more show, bigger favors, and more gifts will make a great event,” says Beczner. “But you lose focus on the magic behind the wedding—that you’re in love and you’ve invited people to witness that, and that’s the real takeaway. Less becomes more.”

Depending on the couple’s budget and location, a green wedding needn’t be pricier, especially if they incorporate that “less is more” philosophy. “As the market shifts, everything becomes more affordable,” says Rios. “We have many amazing luxuries in California that you may not be able to get in Iowa or Kansas. But my personal opinion is we will all move in a greener direction. Rather than a trend, it will become a consideration.”

For Berkeley’s Elizabeth Zimmer, going green for her wedding had little to do with trends—it was simply the way it had to be. “It’s just the kind of people we are,” says Zimmer. She and her husband Todd were married in a small town in North Carolina in March. Invitations were printed on recycled paper with soy-based inks, and RSVPs were sent via e-mail and phone rather than snail mail. The couple set up a Web site detailing lodging, directions, and travel suggestions.

The food was vegetarian, made within ten miles of the event site. The wedding party wore their own clothes. Guests walked to the reception, and many stayed with neighbors to avoid using hotels. The flowers, well & they may or may not have been sustainably grown. “I asked the florist if he could get organic, locally sourced flowers and he said he would have trouble with that; the resources weren’t available,” says Zimmer. “I doubt if those perfect roses we had were local and organic!”

Zimmer says she doesn’t think that planning her green wedding was more difficult than planning a traditional one, but Beczner says that more research is involved. “How you celebrate while connecting to being responsible really is hard for people to do in events because they happen so quickly. There are tons of materials and energy that go into this event that’s over in an instant,” she says. “When you plan a green wedding, it may take more time to find the right sustainable product or service that will fit the theme or budget.”

When Rios plans weddings, she starts with an in-depth consultation to uncover the couple’s vision and what aspects they would like to integrate into the ceremony. “The greening is interesting to me, but what’s more interesting is the interpersonal relationship,” says Rios. “I enjoy the process of getting a deeper, spiritual awareness of what they’re about as a couple: how they want to be together, how they want to make decisions. I find that choosing to respect the planet makes people happier because the planet is a reflection of us.”

Relatives may worry that the couple is trying to push their ideals on the guests. Rios says that’s not so. “Some couples may want to make it an educational experience, but it’s also a celebration and a great opportunity to share your values with people. You’re making an effort to support markets that are life affirming rather than depleting. It’s a misconception that people who have green weddings will shove it down your throat.”

Northern Californians toss around terms like “sustainability” and “organic” with regularity, but some folks may have a harder time accepting—or even understanding— green wedding ideals. Says Beczner, “Families might be resistant because in their minds, it’s a hippie wedding. And it’s hard since the parents play a big role or may be paying for a wedding. But they’re pleasantly surprised after.” This was the case for Zimmer, whose mother was “completely resistant to having the bridesmaids in different dresses,” Zimmer says. “She was trying to convince me so many times that it wasn’t what I wanted. On the wedding day, she looked at the bridal party and said it was beautiful.”

Rios says generational resistances often dissipate. “The parents see their children making choices that honor themselves. They might think it’s weird, but they get the sense that you’re making choices that are healthy. Anybody who loves you will support you even if they don’t understand it, so in the end, I don’t find there’s a conflict.”

Chances are, you may not even know you’re attending a green wedding. Couples may merely encourage their guests to make sustainable choices in travel or lodging, or they may choose to display a plaque at the ceremony. “Some couples want to educate friends and family, and some don’t,” said Beczner. “All the couples I’ve worked with have put up a plaque that shows all the green things we’ve done. I’ll create the plaque, which says how much carbon we’ve offset along with a list about what’s incorporated and why that matters.”

In the end, after the last piece of cake is eaten, the last dance is over, and the remaining food and flowers are donated, the couple may choose to embark on a green honeymoon—again, purchasing carbon offsets if they travel or vacation off the grid. The Zimmers went to Europe but stayed in friends’ apartments to avoid using hotels.

Whether it’s one big detail or several tiny ones, it’s easy to think green on your wedding day. “Weddings are the biggest and best example that we have in our culture of a gathering where we celebrate love, and part of what makes green weddings rewarding is that there’s a depth of personal experience there,” says Rios. “People leave a good wedding feeling in love with life: they’re happy, and it’s a really amazing experience.”

This is Fernwood cemetery, where so far about 120 people are helping, even in repose, to pioneer a concept that’s been dubbed “green,” “natural,” or “conservation” burial. The goal is to make interment a less resource-intensive process than traditional burial by returning one’s body gently to the Earth. As the Fernwood staff like to say, it’s using “what remains of a life to generate new life.”

It’s a striking contrast to the prevailing emphasis of the $20-billion-a-year American funeral industry, which over the last century has profited greatly from the illusion that its particular form of artistry can stand indefinitely between the human body and decay. Staples of the modern American funeral now include metal caskets billed as airtight and waterproof, which are further sealed inside concrete sarcophagi called “grave liners” or “vaults.” To restore the deceased to a semblance of lifelikeness and good health, chemical embalming is typically used, as well as a heavy application of cosmetics. While the American use of embalming has its roots in Civil War, when it helped preserve the bodies of soldiers shipped home from the battlefield, today the funeral industry’s emphasis on lifelike tableaux and decay-resistant entombment serves a different purpose: it enables bodies to withstand lengthy periods of public viewing, and gives grieving family members a certain—false—hope that their loved one will not be doing much mouldering in the grave.

Green burial’s modus operandi, on the other hand, is to help dust become dust again as seamlessly as possible. Instead of copper, bronze, or stainless steel caskets, green burial favors anything designed to fade away: That can run the gamut from ancient wrappings like fabric shrouds to very modern innovations like the Ecopod, a shell made of recycled paper that biodegrades in about six months. Fernwood offers options including a $1,200 plain pine wood box with rope handles, made without nails or toxic adhesives, an $800 wicker basket, or just bringing an old sheet from home. Embalming, which is not required by state law, is optional, and green burial grounds use dry ice or refrigeration for preservation. (Fernwood customers who request embalming are referred off-site; its funeral home does not perform the procedure.)

What is preserved instead is the land itself. Fernwood has been a green burial ground for three years; for the previous 114, it was a conventional, if somewhat run-down, cemetery and crematory. Fernwood’s current owners poured $3 million into restoring the property, including using hand tools to clear the grounds of non-native plants, and building a strikingly beautiful memorial hall that seems composed of equal parts concrete, air, and waterfall.

Because of its hybrid history, Fernwood still allows conventional burials in the older part of the graveyard, but interments on the other twenty acres play by new, eco-friendly rules. Graves are dug by hand, to minimize the chance that healthy topsoil and the nutrient-poor clay six feet under will switch places. (Conventional cemeteries, which have accidentally buried their best soil, often chemically treat their lawns.) There are no grave liners or upright headstones made of granite or other imported stone. Fernwood favors a mixture of high- and low-tech to mark graves, with an emphasis on extreme subtlety. Families may indicate gravesites by planting a tree or laser-etching a small locally sourced rock; a signaling device is buried at each site so that it can be located with a GPS receiver. Next year, Fernwood’s staff hopes to replace its current GPS locator—a monstrosity as tall as a fishing pole—with handheld devices that can play a memorial montage of music and photos as visitors approach a grave site.

It’s hard, though, to discourage the human urge to proclaim that we were here. A walk through Fernwood reveals that several families have ringed recent burial sites with purplish stones; others have scattered brightly colored pebbles over the top of graves. One family used dry flower stalks to spell out “Mom.” But despite these temporary tributes, Fernwood family services counselor Eliot Vander Lugt says he’s noticing an interesting psychological shift among the families who visit the cemetery. “A lot of them have started to express this identification of the entire habitat, this preserved park area, being the memorial,” he says. “There’s not the same focus on this spot for my loved one, it’s more about participating in this with other like-minded people.”

And there are plenty of those people. In addition to the 120 occupied green gravesites, Fernwood has booked another 240 spots for natural burials. Fernwood is one of nine green cemeteries in the United States, with another half dozen on the way. The modern eco-funeral is actually a British concept, brought to the states in 1998 when physician Billy Campbell opened the Ramsey Creek Preserve in Westminster, South Carolina. The phenomenon has received a good deal of media attention, much delivered under punny headlines about “greener pastures” and “thinking outside of the box.” But the effort is serious: Natural burial is a legal and financial tool to conserve open space, and a stopper against the huge drain on natural resources associated with conventional funerals.

There are about 2.5 million deaths a year in the United States, creating an enormous demand for the flowers, hardwoods, metals, and chemicals that make open-casket wakes possible, even though most of these materials will be permanently sequestered underground within a few days. Fernwood funeral director Tom Cromie puts it this way: “First you mine the Earth to get the gravel to make the cement to make the grave liner that you put back in the ground. Then you cut down the forest to make the coffin.”

“We bury more metal each year in caskets than what was used to build the Golden Gate Bridge, and bury enough reinforced concrete each year that we could build a two-lane highway from New York to Detroit,” says Joe Sehee, executive director of the Green Burial Council, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Britain’s Centre for Natural Burial estimates that nearly a million gallons of embalming fluid, which contains the carcinogen formaldehyde, is buried in North America every year.

Why not just cremate? It’s a fast, simple process that’s easier on the environment and the pocketbook than conventional burial, and it has become increasingly popular over the last century. California performs the most cremations in the nation; more than half of Californians choose it over burial. But cremation, too, has an environmental impact, albeit much smaller: burning vaporizes the mercury in tooth fillings, produces dioxins, and consumes fuel. The Centre for Natural Burial claims on its Web site that “the amount of non-renewable fossil fuel needed to cremate bodies in North America is equivalent to a car making 84 trips to the Moon and back&each year.” Even though no laws require a casket or embalming for cremation, service providers may urge families to choose them, racking up additional tolls, financial and environmental.

But cremation’s real drawback, some critics say, is that while many people choose it with the romantic notion that their ashes will be scattered outdoors to nourish a beloved landscape, in fact, cremated ashes are sterile. They won’t do any harm, but they’re not fertilizer.

Speaking of fertilizer, here are some things about green burial you no doubt are dying to know: Do wild animals ever dig up bodies, or do teeth and bones make their way to the surface? (So far, no.) Do the cemeteries smell? (Nope.) Without embalming, will decomposing bodies cause disease? (No; green burial’s proponents say there are no public health consequences to skipping embalming.) Will buried people be literally pushing up daisies? (Probably not—Fernwood’s graves are five and a half feet deep, too far for most roots to reach.)

If the idea of commingling bodies with the Earth makes you feel a little squeamish, some of the methods used by conventional cemeteries to keep bodies boxed forever aren’t much nicer. One of the reasons most cemeteries insist on concrete grave liners is because industrial-sized mowers and backhoes can otherwise crush the caskets beneath; easier lawn mowing is also behind modern cemeteries’ switch from upright headstones to flat-lying memorial plaques. Conventional cemeteries usually squeeze about 1,000 bodies into an acre, so chockablock that the grave liners touch. (Fernwood won’t put more than two in the same twelve-foot by twelve-foot space.) Some funeral homes require grieving relatives who resist buying a waterproof vault to sign waivers indicating it’s okay for the deceased to be submerged in water and subjected to decay.

And if spending money is the sort of thing that gives you the heebie-jeebies, traditional funerals are terrifying. They’re expensive, something well-known since 1963, when muckraking Oakland journalist Jessica Mitford blew the crypt doors off the funeral industry with The American Way of Death, her exposé of how unscrupulous operators can take advantage of people faced with the perfect storm of circumstances: bereavement, a time crunch, a pocketful of insurance money, their own inexperience organizing a funeral, and a fear of looking cheap. Back then, the average cost of a funeral was $1,450; today, it’s $6,500, according to the National Funeral Directors Association, and that doesn’t include cemetery fees. Neither does it include flowers, transportation, obituary notices, nor vaults, all of which, as the AARP warns its members, can bring the bill closer to $10,000.

Sehee estimates that even though buying a plot in a natural burial ground may be more expensive than buying one elsewhere—places like Fernwood exist on some pricey real estate—a green burial typically costs one-half to two-thirds as much as a conventional one because it excludes some of the costlier accessories: a grave liner, embalming, a fancy headstone or casket. “There is no economic motivation for a cemetery to do it this way. It would strip away all their profit, all their add-ons,” muses Vander Lugt. “It’s like a dealership not having a service department where they sell you the car, and then they make money on service.”

He considers green burial a middle ground between too much memorializing and not enough. “The natural burial approach gets rid of the excesses of conventional funeral practices and the excessive expense, without going way to the other extreme either philosophically or financially,” says Vander Lugt. “It seems a little more holistic.”

But how holistic, exactly, is holistic enough? Even in its short lifetime Fernwood has already been the source of a rift in the eco-burial community. Sehee, a former Jesuit lay minister, was one of Fernwood’s first advocates; now, through the Green Burial Council, he runs a certification program that has granted approval to several green burial sites in the US, but not Fernwood.

First a word about Fernwood’s owner, Tyler Cassity: Cassity is a funeral industry icon and provocateur; he pioneered the idea of a hip, rock n’ roll cemetery that could be a hangout for the living as well as the dead. The son of a Missouri-based family that operates six cemeteries under the name Forever Enterprises, Cassity made his own mark on the trade by reviving the once moribund Los Angeles cemetery Hollywood Forever, screening classic films against the mausoleum walls and setting up touch-screen kiosks that would play back professionally produced “Life Stories” videos of the deceased. Cassity conferred a certain glamour on the undertaking business, consulting for the TV show Six Feet Under, and becoming the subject of the HBO documentary The Young and the Dead as well as a stream of articles in publications like the New Yorker.

Sehee claims to have brought the idea for green burial to Cassity while doing communications work for Hollywood Forever and running an eco-retreat in Joshua Tree, and says he was part of the initial team that designed and developed the Fernwood site. Billy Campbell, the founder of the Ramsey Creek Preserve, also served as a consultant. But the relationship between Sehee and Cassity soured quickly, and in 2005 Sehee split off to form his own organization. Among Sehee’s bones of contention: he alleges that Fernwood was making misrepresentations about banning embalming on the premises and having a conservation easement when it did not.

Fernwood’s general manager, Nickolas Careone, says Fernwood never claimed to have such a ban. Although it no longer performs embalming, because of its hybrid status Fernwood does allow embalmed bodies in the older part of the graveyard, where some people have pre-purchased plots with conventional burials in mind. “If Mom’s there, we can’t say, ‘Sorry, Dad, you can’t be,’” says Careone, noting that they only do two or three such burials a year.

A conservation easement, which Fernwood currently does not have, would turn the land’s long-term care over to a nonprofit organization or government agency like the National Parks Service, ensuring that it could not be used for another purpose in the future. Sehee hopes to use this mechanisim to fundamentally change the industry by making cemetery owners concessionaires, rather than the actual guardians of land. “What you want is the cemetery operator to focus on what they’re good at—opening and closing graves—and the parks service to focus on what they’re good at. A cemetery shouldn’t do stewardship of a natural area,” says Sehee.

Without an easement, Sehee asks, “How do you make promises to families today that in ten years it won’t be a field of weeds, or it won’t be sold to another concern that says ‘There isn’t money in this?’” His worries about Fernwood were exacerbated this May when the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that three of the Cassity family’s holdings have been taken over by government regulators who are trying to determine if one of the businesses, National Prearranged Services, which sells prepaid funeral packages, has enough money in its coffers to make good on as many as 100,000 prepaid funerals. For Sehee, Fernwood’s lack of an easement, combined with the Cassity empire’s ongoing problems, raises concerns that if there is a sale of the property, nothing would prevent a future owner from turning it into a more conventional cemetery.

But Careone says that can’t happen. He points out that Fernwood plans to apply for an easement once the property is fully restored, most likely turning over control to the federal government, since the cemetery abuts the Golden Gate National Recreational Area. In the meantime, it has a dedication on record with Marin County stating that the land can only be used as a green cemetery. “Either way,” says Careone, “it can never be anything other than what it is now.” In addition, Fernwood, like most cemeteries, has an endowment fund—people who purchase plots pay an extra ten percent, which goes into a state-controlled trust. The interest from this account must be used to care for the cemetery in perpetuity.

Furthermore, says Careone, he believes Fernwood is insulated from National Prearranged Services’ money problems because Tyler Cassity runs the two California cemeteries separately from his family’s businesses. (Indeed, the media relations team at Forever Enterprises’ St. Louis office referred interview requests back to California; Hollywood Forever staffers did not return phone calls.)

While there may be some bad blood in this fledgling industry, it’s clear that everyone involved wants the same thing: a burial process that respects the dead and the planet. “I feel like this is the kind of place where somebody might go if maybe Dad was an outdoorsman or something, and they would never think of putting him in a confined box-in-a-box and then have a mowed lawn on it,” says Cromie, as he picks his way down Fernwood’s slope. “They can come here and have a good feeling, like this is where Dad would belong. A lot of people would never visit a regular cemetery, the more recent generations. I don’t think it resonates for them.”

Sehee puts it this way: “Americans are starting to understand their end of life ritual options, and I think they are very much drawn to this idea that provides a great deal of solace, and allows them to get into sync with this cycle we see all around us of birth, life, death, and rebirth.”

Maybe Mitford had it right 45 years ago, when she observed that just as ostentatiously large cars were going out of style, so might the voluptuous funeral. “Could it be,” she wrote back then, “that the same cycle is working itself out in the attitude towards the final return of dust to dust, that the American public is becoming sickened by ever more ornate and costly funerals, and that a status symbol of the future may indeed be the simplest kind of ‘funeral without fins?’”

If so, then the funeral industry may have just met its Prius.

Treatment wetlands need to be built near an existing plant to minimize pumping costs, close to a potential disposal or re-use site, and on relatively flat land, all of which narrow down a city’s site choices. In some cases, there’s another hurdle to pass: proposals to create treatment wetlands are getting the ax because the site is already in use & as another wetland. Recently, the North Coast Regional Water Board shot down several cities’ proposals on the grounds that installing a treatment wetland could damage an existing wetland on the same site. The board is attempting to protect existing wetlands even if they are seasonal or already degraded by livestock grazing.

But if a little wetlands is good, isn’t a whole lot of wetlands better? Does a seasonal horse pasture count as degraded land ripe for a wetlands, or is it a habitat to preserve? Everybody involved in these stand-offs is trying to do the right thing, and the clashes demonstrate the strains between environmentalists with different land-use priorities.

First, though, a word about waste: It’s routine for most of us to flush a toilet and not give it a second thought. Unless you have a septic tank (and most urban users don’t), the flush goes into a sewer pipe that connects to a wastewater treatment plant. The force of gravity helps carry waste to the plant, but if the plant is uphill, sewage has to be pumped. The plant is likely a large concrete building tucked out of sight, and the only clue you might have to its existence wafts your way when the breeze blows just right.

After the sewage arrives at the plant, large debris is screened out (you’d be surprised what ends up in sewer pipes), and then the sludge is aerated and mixed in large vats. Grease, plastics, and soap are skimmed off the top, and the wastewater is sent to more tanks where it is disinfected using chlorine and other chemicals. Solids are kept for days in large heated digesters where bacteria gobble up as much as they can; the remains are sent to a landfill or incinerator. Some plants make leftover solids into “cakes” or “pellets” to be sold as fertilizer. The disinfected wastewater is discharged—usually via a long pipe—as far out as possible into a nearby bay, river, or ocean. If you’ve ever been trapped in traffic in the MacArthur maze, you likely noticed that East Bay MUD’s treatment plant is located nearby, with its discharge pipe into the bay.

In rural areas where land is still available, treatment wetlands offer a viable alternative. They mimic and function like natural wetlands, with plants, soils, algae, and bacteria filtering and taking up nutrients from the waste. These created wetlands usually work along with some traditional treatment but still greatly reduce the use of energy and hazardous chemicals, as well as maintenance costs. Martinez, Hayward, Palo Alto, and Los Gallinas in Marin County treat their waste with wetlands; Humboldt County’s Arcata, Manila, and McKinleyville also use the system, and Petaluma is completing construction.

Treatment wetlands keep waste local: “The worst thing we can do is treat [waste] at the end of the pipe,” says treatment wetland expert and Humboldt State environmental engineering professor Brad Finney. “Shipping it off to some place on the other side of the bay where some magical plant pops out a little brick—I’m not interested in that.” One of the biggest benefits of treatment wetlands, say advocates, is that they provide much-needed wildlife habitat, helping replace wetlands that have been filled for big boxes or condos.

What about the witch’s brew of chemicals that clogs our sewers these days? Finney, who helped write the US Environmental Protection Agency’s manual on treatment wetlands, says wetlands probably do a better and safer job of tackling contaminants than traditional treatment. “Worries about toxins are real, but [many toxins] are not removed during conventional wastewater treatment,” he says. “With treatment wetlands, you’re tightly regulated—you’re right there in front of everyone’s face. If dioxins start showing up, we can control them, contain them in a treatment wetland. With traditional treatment you send it out there into the bay or ocean and hope for the best. If it shows up in fish in fifty years, it’s too late.”

Finney was part of a team that studied potential pollution bioaccumulation at Hayward Marsh’s treatment wetlands. “It was a comprehensive study, and no significant problems were found with birds, mammals, or other organisms,” Finney says. “In fact, we found that the wetland water and sediments were significantly better than the adjoining bay muds and waters. In wetlands, there’s an incredibly diverse set of organisms, solar radiation, lots of oxidizing agents, and lots of time—thirty, forty, fifty days of contact [compared to the average three to six days at a traditional plant]. It’s likely that that complex environment can handle being exposed to these toxic compounds and also attenuate them better than conventional treatment—it can’t do any worse. The key is a lot of opportunities for organisms to naturally break things down.”

The downside to treatment wetlands is that they take up more land than those concrete buildings—and some communities have identified sites for treatment wetlands that already contain seasonal wetlands used for grazing cattle or horses. That’s how Ferndale and Willits ran afoul of the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board—and in the case of Willits, aroused the ire of environmentalists who might be expected to support this greener method of treating waste.

When a proposed site contains a wetland of any kind—or in any condition—state and federal laws designed to ensure no net loss of wetlands come into play, particularly since so many wetlands have been destroyed, and continue to be destroyed, by development. In California, wetlands fall under the jurisdiction of the US Army Corps of Engineers, the region’s water board, the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Fish and Game. Explains North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board’s John Short, “Wetlands, riparian areas, and headwaters are shallow waters, which by their nature are affected most often and severely by filling and excavation.” When regulatory agencies allow developers or others to fill or alter natural wetlands, those parties are required to mitigate by creating new wetlands on- or offsite.

In Willits, a long-planned proposal to build full-treatment wetlands on agricultural land that contained seasonal wetlands was turned down by the North Coast water board regulators. “We had the land purchased; we had the design for three levels of treatment,” says Willits city manager Ross Walker. “We knew that the deep oxidation ponds [used for the first level of treatment] would have taken some area designated as jurisdictional wetlands, but the treatment wetlands were designed not as a detriment to wetlands but an enhancement.”

That was not the view of the water board or the Army Corps of Engineers, says Walker. “Our question was, what was our impact going to be? I could see no rationale for [the board's position] because ‘no net loss’ made no sense in an area where there are hundreds of acres of wetlands. We never wanted to do anything that was not improving the environment; we felt like we were enhancing it.” Walker says he understands and supports wetlands regulations and stresses that he is not a scientist. What he can’t understand is the board’s decision: “When you’re taking a piece of hardened ranchland, you’re not talking about a major detriment to a wetland.”

The city could have mitigated off-site—but “the cost [to acquire land] is a big thing for a small city; we couldn’t do it,” says Walker. Willits is now trying to squeeze an upgraded facility onto the footprint of its current plant and build a much smaller treatment wetland in an upland area. Because of the delays, Willits must raise its sewage rates to pay for the new mechanical plant.

Regulators weren’t the only problem in Willits, says Walker. “We didn’t have the full backing of a very active environmental group here,” he says. The Willits Environmental Center’s Ellen Drell says her organization was disturbed both by the scale of the project—ponds with berms for primary treatment, and acres of treatment wetlands for secondary treatment and beyond—as well as the proposed location. “The fact that this valley is a seasonal wetland makes it even richer than a permanent wetland,” she says. “It acts as a sponge to absorb excess runoff; it recharges groundwater, mitigates flooding, and supports a wide range of vegetation and critters. That there’s not only water every winter, but grasses going to seed in other seasons, is one reason it supports so many species.”

Drell says she felt the city leaders never understood the value of seasonal wetlands. “They thought, ‘If a little bit of wet is good, then a whole lot is really good.’ We disagreed.” Drell says the seasonal wetlands flood in the winter and connect to local creeks that support runs of steelhead, and Chinook and coho salmon. That made her nervous about altering the existing hydrology. Drell says the sewage treatment wetlands, some of which would be surrounded by berms, would have blocked the flow of water into the creeks. Drell says she wouldn’t have objected had the city put wetlands on the site of an auto wrecker or lumber yard, but she felt the proposed site—known by locals as Little Lake—was just the wrong spot. “They said, ‘There’s nothing there.’ But there is something there.”

Farther north, Ferndale also ran up against the North Coast Regional Board. Facing enforcement orders from the board to upgrade its existing plant, the city rallied the community around the idea of a treatment wetland. City councilmember and wetlands ecologist Ken Mierzwa says the treatment wetland had tremendous support from Main Street business owners. “A lot of them are elderly and conservative politically,” says Mierzwa, “but they understood that birdwatchers would come to see the birds.”

Ferndale’s geography got in the way. Situated at the mouth of the Eel River, the city is surrounded on three sides by wetlands—the floodplain of the Eel. That meant that building a treatment wetland on open space anywhere close to town would have involved impacting a natural wetland, says John Short, even if those wetlands happen to be cow pastures. And that meant that Ferndale would have had to mitigate for those impacts—with the only space available for mitigation on an upland area, a less than ideal spot for creating a wetland.

Building a mitigation wetland upland probably has the “least likelihood” of success, says Mierzwa: “You’d be trying to force ecological processes to do something they don’t naturally do.” Finney, too, was frustrated by the outcome in Ferndale. “There’s nothing wrong with the wetlands that exist in a cow pasture, but to say that the [treatment wetland] systems we’re creating have less wetland value makes no scientific sense.”

Short says, “No one technology fits every situation. Each community has its own unique set of issues. In my mind, certain wetland treatment advocates have done a disservice to small communities by pushing treatment wetlands as a solution to all wastewater problems, and unfortunately, that is not always the case. Our responsibility is to remove pollutants before the discharge reaches our wetlands and streams.” The bottom line, says Short, is that if Ferndale had been able to do enough wetland mitigation, the Regional Board probably would have permitted their project. Instead, Ferndale, like Willits, will undertake an expensive major upgrade of its existing treatment plant.

It wasn’t always this hard to build wetlands. In 1974, the Mt. View Sanitary District in Martinez became the first wastewater wetlands in the state, built on the site of a degraded natural wetland that had been diked off and used for agriculture. The site was located between the treatment plant and the Carquinez Strait, where the district discharged its wastewater. To adequately dilute its waste, the district needed to build a very long, expensive, deepwater outfall pipe, says Mt. View Sanitary District’s Dave Contreras. Instead, the wetland helped Mt. View retain and treat its wastewater sufficiently so that it did not need to build the pipe. In the early ’90s, the district upgraded its traditional plant to use UV disinfection and sand filtration to treat the wastewater before it enters the wetlands for final treatment.

In addition to an enthusiastic San Francisco Bay Regional Water Board, Mt. View had support from the Department of Fish and Game and the Audubon Society, says Contreras. Today, the marsh is promoted as Martinez’s crown jewel. “We have over 120 species of birds and wildlife, deer, river otter, fox, and beaver in these wetlands,” says Contreras. By switching to UV and sand filtration for primary and secondary treatment, and treatment wetlands for final treatment, Mt. View has been able to stop using chlorine gas, gaseous sulfur dioxide, sodium hydroxide, and anhydrous ammonia, says Contreras. “We eliminated the use of acutely hazardous materials. It’s actually been a model for the Bay Area.”

Steve Moore, an engineer who formerly worked for the bay’s regional water board and is now with a private engineering firm, says he thinks Mt. View produced “a net environmental benefit of treating waste while providing 21 acres of habitat.” But as he points out, making a decision isn’t always easy. “From a regulatory perspective, you have to decide: How do you fairly account for that lost natural wetland versus the wastewater purification function on your balance sheet?” he asks. “It’s different environmental values clashing. I think we have to take a more holistic perspective and realize that all of us are robbing the state’s natural waters for drinking and farming. That water is unavailable for wetland habitat. As we try to make gains in wetland function and habitat, wastewater wetlands are a good tool. That’s the perspective we’re missing.”

Since it’s hard for regulators to decide whether building treatment wetlands is ultimately going to help or hurt the local environment, the decision process can be rife with contradictions and absurdities. The Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary, a highly successful treatment wetland and a major tourist attraction, likely would not be permitted by the North Coast Regional Board today. Arcata Marsh was built on top of historic wetlands that had been filled and become degraded, says Finney. “Their functioning was extremely poor, but in today’s regulatory environment, [some regulators] would have said they were jurisdictional wetlands.”

Often where a treatment wetland can or cannot be built depends on the judgment of the individual regulator—and the regional board office—involved. Says Bob Bastian with the US EPA’s Office of Wastewater Management, “It’s not unusual to see varying interpretations and constraints being imposed by field offices. The same thing happens with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and endangered species. In one part of the country they are open and willing to work with [a private landowner or developer] on how to manage an area to protect endangered species. In another office, you just can’t do anything. I think we’re seeing some of the same thing happening when it comes to how to protect existing wetlands.”

Finney points out that since we have paved over most of our historic wetlands, constructed wastewater wetlands help replace that loss. But, he says, “If you object to the notion of using a wetland for treating water—which is what wetlands have been doing since before man roamed the planet—that contains some human waste, then it will be increasingly difficult to find sites that can receive regulatory approval.” The bottom line is treatment wetlands have to be done right and in the right place, says Finney. “I wouldn’t want to convert a nice, beautiful existing wetland to a treatment wetland. But where there’s an opportunity to create new beneficial uses and at the same time take care of a problem, I think we should do it.”

I am looking forward to backyard get-togethers, but I want to walk my environmentally conscious talk. What kinds of dishes and flatware should I be using? What is the best material for a tablecloth? What method of grilling produces the fewest greenhouse gas emissions? How can I find meats that have been raised and harvested in a humane and ecologically friendly manner? How can I encourage my guests to walk, bike, or carpool to my party? Also, what eco-friendly summer trips can you suggest?

—Eager for BBQ

Dear Eager BBQer,

The most eco-friendly choice—as well as the least expensive—is to carry dishes and flatware with you and bring them home to wash. Disposables are usually made from non-renewable sources, such as paper and plastic, and at the end of their life cycle, they’re tossed into a landfill, wasting the material. The energy required to manufacture, distribute, and trash them contributes to climate change. Reusable bamboo plates and metal flatware are an example of how you can avoid disposables.

If you must use disposables, the best options are those made from sustainably produced materials that can be composted. Consider 100 percent post-consumer waste recycled content paper. This is hard to find but is the best choice, especially when composted after use. Paper towels and napkins are easier to find than plates and cups. Bagasse plates are made of sugar cane fiber, a byproduct of sugar refining. Chinet plates are made of waste from poly-coated milk carton production.

Most natural foods grocery stores carry these items and you can also purchase them online at stores such as GreenEarthOfficeSupply.com. An important thing to consider with biodegradable plastic cutlery, plates, bowls, and cups is that they need to make it into a municipal, industrial compost facility. They won’t break down in your backyard pile or in the landfill. Remember also that most biodegradable plastic is made from GMO crops that are energy-intensive to produce. GMO corn cross-pollinates and contaminates non-GMO strains. Corporations such as Monsanto control the seed and herbicides, and farmers worldwide are forced to become ever more dependent on these companies.

When using paper and biodegradables, be sure to recycle and compost all of it. This may mean bringing it home for your household pickup. Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco have municipal compost programs that do curbside pickup of food scraps. People living in areas without municipal compost should compost the food scraps and paper material in their backyard pile.

For tablecloths, cloth is a better choice than plastic, and organically grown cotton or hemp is even better. Conventional farmers use more insecticide on cotton than on any other crop in the world. Your best choice is to buy a reused tablecloth from a thrift store or make your own from leftover fabrics. Most importantly, avoid vinyl and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Dioxin and other persistent bioaccumulative pollutants are created in the manufacture of PVC. Lead, cadmium, and phthalates are added to PVC as well, and can leach, flake, or outgas over time, raising risks that include asthma, lead poisoning, and cancer.

Charcoal on the Grill

Now on to the main event: never use lighter fluid to start your grill, because it impacts air quality, especially during the summer. The fluid lets off volatile organic compounds, creating ground-level ozone that contributes to respiratory problems and asthma. Instead, use a chimney briquette starter and lump charcoal, which you can find made from invasive tree species or harvested from sustainably managed forests. Natural gas and propane grills create carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, but are still a better choice than electric grills or conventional charcoal. The best choice is a solar cooker. On July 20 the Ecology Center hosts a solar cooking workshop at Berkeley’s EcoHouse featuring five types of cookers, from those you can make by hand to deluxe manufactured models.

Save the Beef

Food choices have an enormous impact on the planet and never more so than with beef. Cattle production impacts air quality, contaminates groundwater, requires enormous grain consumption, is responsible for deforestation worldwide, and is a major contributor to climate change. Cow manure from beef and dairy cattle creates methane, a greenhouse gas twenty times more powerful than carbon dioxide. According to a United Nations report, cattle production is “responsible for eighteen percent of greenhouse gases, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.”

If you choose to eat meat, locally produced organic chicken has the least environmental impact. The term “free-range” is not meaningful because there is no oversight or certification process for this designation, and meat from animals that have never stepped foot outdoors can be labeled “free range.” On the other hand, the Certified Humane Raised and Handled label is verified by a third party and is meaningful.

Live lighter by growing your own vegetables! For those without yards, try scoring a plot in a community garden—or at least put yourself on the waiting list. You’ll be able to connect with other gardeners and share tips about local varieties and growing conditions. Artichokes, corn, peaches, tomatoes, raspberries, and squash are all in season during the summer months. Some commercially grown fruits and vegetables carry more pesticides than others. The Environmental Working Group (www.ewg.org) publishes the Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce, which cites peaches, apples, bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, pears, grapes, spinach, lettuce, and potatoes as most likely to carry a high pesticide load. Purchase these organically.

Travel Time

A few online services help people use alternative transportation. Bikely.com helps cyclists share knowledge of good bicycle routes. It covers the entire United States. Another service, 511.org, provides information about public transit routes and times, ridesharing, and links to bicycle maps of the Bay Area.

Get on the Water

For an eco-friendly summer trip, visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium (www.mbayaq.org), which conducts conservation research programs that help create sound ocean policy decisions. Your admission fee to the Aquarium helps support their work. The American Cetacean Society (www.acsonline.org) offers whale-watching trips with certified naturalists throughout the year. These fundraisers help support education and conservation programs.

Above all, Eager BBQer, get social: have fun with friends and family in an ecologically responsible way, and gently spread the word on your travels.

The Eco Team dispenses tips like these at the Ecology Center’s information line: (510) 548-2220 x233. Send questions for the column to ecoteam@ecologycenter.org.