Welcome to Bluedot Los Angeles! Every other Sunday, we will share stories about local changemakers, sustainable homes and yards, the nature all around us, planet-friendly recipes, and advice from Dear Dot. Please email us with story ideas at laeditor@bluedotliving.com. Together, we can make a difference for the blue dot we call home.
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SIMPLE / SMART / SUSTAINABLE / STORIES
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Fed up with wrestling her two young daughters into car seats, Notes From the Home Front columnist Krista Halverson started searching for new ways to shuttle her kids around town. Walking worked for short trips, and a bike with a trailer proved popular with her kids — until it was stolen. Just as she resigned herself to climbing back in the car, she saw a neighborhood dad piloting a cargo bike, kids in a big wooden box in front of him as he cruised into the elementary school playground. Soon, she was transporting her kids on her very own, locally built cargo bike. And yes, it made every trip — to school, the playground, you name it — much more eco-friendly, not to mention less stressful. But it also brought a host of surprise benefits, including a kind of fame that led her to connect with people in all kinds of unexpected ways. “You should know that, if you’re considering a cargo bike, conversation becomes inevitable, so get used to that celebrity life,” she says. “You can wear sunglasses and a mask if you want, but you’ll still be cargo-famous. Introvert though I am, I learned to count that among the perks, and there have been many more over the years.”
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Quick Links |
Skip scrolling! Here’s what you’ll find in today’s Bluedot Los Angeles Newsletter:
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Paid Advertisement from Masterworks
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This painting sold for 8 million and everyday investors profited
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When the painting by master Claude Monet (you may have heard of him) was bought for $6.8 million and sold for a cool $8 million just 631 days later, investors in shares of the offering received their share of the net proceeds.
All thanks to Masterworks, the award-winning platform for investing in blue-chip art. To date, every one of Masterworks’ 16 sales out of its portfolio has returned a profit to investors. With 3 recent sales, investors realized net annualized returns of 17.6%, 21.5% and 35%.
How does it work? Simple, Masterworks files each offering with the SEC so that nearly anyone can invest in highly coveted artworks for just a fraction of the price of the entire piece.
Shares
of every offering are limited, but [Newsletter Name] readers can skip the waitlist with this exclusive link.
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Skip The Waitlist
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We know that the news from Washington, D.C., can be so depressing that it’s sometimes easiest to just tune it out. But lately, there’s been a spate of positive federal actions coming fast and furious as this presidential term nears its end, including rules limiting oil drilling and mining, promoting solar power in poorer communities, and putting coal power plants on notice. Most of these could be reversed by a different administration in the future, but they point the way to a greener tomorrow. In more good news, wildlife scientists have discovered a new way to help endangered species: digging through musty museum collections to gather historical DNA samples from long-dead
specimens of those species, then using the samples to learn how the animals have changed over time and what populations may be in danger of inbreeding. “Looking into the past, we can see how much diversity there used to be, and from that we can measure what has changed to the present day. We will be able to see just what has been lost, making what remains even more important to protect,” says Evelyn Jensen of Newcastle University in the UK, who looked for four years to find a sample of a particular type of Galapagos tortoise.
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–Illustration by Elissa Turnbull
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Dear Dot,
Is plastic made from wheat straw (and what does that even mean, anyway?) really eco-friendly? Just looking at it/feeling it, it appears to be regular old plastic.
– Paul
Dear Paul,
Though wheat straw might feel like conventional petroleum-based plastic to you, my skeptical friend, rest assured it is a bioplastic made from the waste products of wheat harvesting — biodegradable and entirely plant-based.
Dot’s dogged researcher Emily reports that “wheat straw is made with broken-down lignin, a complex organic polymer that forms the structure of plants and stabilizes their shape. Once the lignin is broken down by a bacteria found in soil called Rhodococcus jostii, it is mixed with sugar to produce the plastic-like material.”
And there’s more good news, Paul. Not only is the product itself biodegradable and plant-based, but the production of it “takes significantly less energy,” Emily reports. When you’re done with it? Toss it in your at-home compost bin where it will break down in less than a half-year, or give it up to a municipal system where it will transform into compost in one to two months.
Read the rest of Dot’s answer.
Got a question for Dot? Write her at deardot@bluedotliving.com.
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If you make a purchase through our links, including from Amazon, we may earn a small commission.
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One of the most sustainable fabrics on the planet, linen is ideal for summer. It’s airy and light, keeps you cool, and looks chic whether you decide to iron it or embrace the natural crinkle.
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Linen for Life
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We’ll always love Eileen Fisher, who has made sustainability part of her brand’s identity since its founding. Her breezy linen separates top our list of summer wardrobe staples.
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Buy now or
read our review.
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Everything in Linen
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Made Trade, a site that curates a lovely selection of ethically made goods, offers linen bedding, pillows, table linens, apparel, and more. Save 10% with code Bluedot10.
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Buy now or
read our review.
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These cool, gray mornings absolutely cry out for a comforting healthy breakfast, and we’ve got you covered. First: a recipe for amaranth porridge from food writer Nicole Litvak. Amaranth, a nutrient-dense ancient grain, is rich in fiber, protein, iron, and magnesium and pairs well with spices, fresh fruit, and honey. Prefer something savory? Try these breakfast tacos from Vanessa Seder, a cookbook author and food stylist.
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We here at Bluedot love a good craft beer, and given the number of craft breweries plying their trade in L.A., we know there will always be a new one to try when we visit our favorite local gastropub. But we also know that breweries in the U.S. generate a ton of waste — more than one billion tons of edible food waste every year, to be specific. That’s why we were thrilled to learn about Brewer's Foods. The company takes spent grain, which makes up 85% of brewery
waste, and turns it into delicious crackers, pita chips, and cookies. Good Libations columnist Julia Cooper tells the story behind the company, started in 2017 by food industry veteran Kyle Fiasconaro.
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If a handful of boat manufacturers get their way, our waterways might just get a lot quieter and cleaner in the next few years: New and established boat makers are ramping up production on electric boats. Some of them — launches, pontoon boats, fishing boats — have modest electric out- or inboard motors meant for recreational cruising on placid waters. Others are the sorts of craft that compete in The Wye Island
Challenge, a twenty-four-mile open-water race run annually since 2001 by the Electric Boat Association of America. Here in Southern California, we’ve been tooling through canals on Duffy boats, the original electric cruisers, for decades, and we’re happy to see the rest of the world is catching up.
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Happy Ocean Month! |
When you live on the coast, it’s easy to take the ocean for granted. That’s why this June, we’re celebrating Ocean Month by revisiting some of the sea-worthy stories that have inspired us this year: a reporter working to
inform people about the threat posed by sea-level rise, a couple harnessing the power of the ocean for sustainable aquaculture, and commercial fishermen banding together to provide fresh, local, and sustainable food to the community, rather than just letting big companies ship it around the globe. We hope you’ll consider contributing to our journalism so we can keep bringing you these kinds of stories, and more.
Thanks for reading, and we’ll be back in two weeks!
–Robin Jones
Do you have a special Los Angeles photo or story to share?
Email laeditor@bluedotliving.com.
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Robin Jones is a Southern California native who served as an editor at Westways magazine for more than a decade. She currently lives in Long Beach and teaches journalism at Cal State Long
Beach, where she advises the award-winning student magazine, DIG MAG. She loves road-tripping across California, especially when the itinerary includes stops in Arcata and Trinidad.
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