Welcome to Bluedot Los Angeles! Every other Sunday, we share stories about local changemakers, sustainable homes and yards, the nature all around us along with 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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Dr. Craig Stanford made his name researching wild great apes and critically endangered tortoises and turtles around the world, from East Africa to Central America and Southeast Asia. But when the pandemic put his research trips on hold in the spring of 2020, the USC professor of biological sciences and anthropology turned his focus to the natural world in his own backyard. The result: Unnatural Habitat: The Native and Exotic Wildlife of Los
Angeles, a book examining L.A.’s unique ecosystem that comes out at the end of this month (available on Amazon). “There’s a weird mix of animals that belong here and animals that don’t belong here,” he says, “and I wrote about the interaction between those things.” In a Q&A with Bluedot L.A. editor Robin Jones, he discusses what he found and what Angelenos can do to help preserve and rebuild the natural Southern California habitat.
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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 NativePath Collagen
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Featured Stories |
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Since recreational marijuana was legalized in California in 2016, sales have grown to almost $6 billion. Unfortunately, cannabis is still an industry with a robust black market that does tremendous environmental
damage. Sun+Earth, a non-profit third-party certification that advocates for regenerative organic cannabis cultivation techniques, aims to change that by encouraging ethical production practices. Writer Frederick O’Brien examines their standards and the growers striving to cultivate their crop in a sustainable way. Speaking of encouraging changes, support for carbon dividends is gaining traction. One of Bluedot Institute’s scholars, Annabelle Brothers of Yale University, gives us the lowdown on
the proposed policy: a gradually rising federal tax on carbon emissions and the redistribution of all revenue to Americans in equal rebates.
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–Illustration by Elissa Turnbull
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Dear Dot,
What is a smart plug?
–Julia D.
Dear Julia,
A smart plug is a little device (available on Amazon) that plugs into an outlet and into which you can plug appliances and other devices. But because it’s “smart,” you can control it remotely, turning off said devices and appliances when they’re unneeded or charged. In that way, smart plugs can save you energy and reduce or eliminate what’s called “phantom” energy.
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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Summer may not technically arrive until June 20, but our longing has. Here, three warm-weather favorites to help you get ready.
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Out of the Woods
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We love these hip, lightweight, affordable, and responsibly made coolers from Out of the Woods. Order now to get 15% off your order with code BLUEDOT.
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Buy now or
read our review.
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Summer Essentials
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It turns out that Tommy Bahama has a rigorous sustainability and water-use-reduction program, which makes us like their great beach chairs and breezy clothes even more.
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Buy now or
read our review.
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Great Towels
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Nomadix has diverted nearly 17 million water bottles from landfills, reclaiming the plastic to use in their cheerful picnic blankets and quick-drying towels.
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Buy now or
read our review.
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If you read the Q&A with USC professor of anthropology Craig Stanford and found yourself inspired to make space in your garden for native plants, milkweed is a great place to start. Milkweed is the host plant for monarchs, the only plant that female monarchs lay their eggs on and the food source for growing caterpillars. But it’s been wiped out by pesticides, and as a result, the monarch butterfly
population has declined dramatically over the past two decades. As Bluedot gardening columnist Laura McLean explains, though, there’s still hope for the monarch, and anyone can help. “Committing your green space to become a Monarch Waystation might feel small and insignificant in this vast world,” she says, “but to each butterfly that finds milkweed to lay an egg on or nectar-rich flowers to fuel their migration, it matters.”
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We might be able to get pretty good asparagus almost year-round here in Southern California, but the quintessential spring veggie is at its freshest this time of year. Chef Catherine Walthers brings us a yummy asparagus pasta salad, and Karen Covey, author of The Coastal Table: Recipes Inspired by the Farmlands and Seaside of Southern New England (on Amazon), helps us use up the ends of a
loaf of bread in this asparagus panzanella (aka bread salad).
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Photographer Yasmin Namini recently returned from Costa Rica, where she visited eco-lodges and photographed the Central American country’s vibrant butterflies and birds, and even a few bats. Her breathtaking images provide a glimpse of Costa Rica’s natural beauty — and illustrate the importance of conservation.
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Take Me Out |
When baseball season’s in full swing (pun intended), it’s time for Dodger baseball pretty much all the time in my household. Still, for years, my family stayed away from Dodger Stadium for two reasons: food and traffic. We eat vegan as much as possible, and for a long time, there weren’t a lot of options for us at the concessions stands. That’s changed: This season, you can find plant-based Dodger Dogs and brats on almost every level, along with plant-based soft serve and the always-vegan Dole Whip. As for the traffic, it’s as bad as ever. But we found a solution in the Dodger Stadium Express shuttle buses from Union Station, which leave
every 10 minutes starting 90 minutes before game time and drop you off right in front of the gates. Better yet, the service is free for ticket holders. Enjoying a Dodger game in a sustainable way? Better than a Shohei Ohtani home run (well, not quite, but close). Hope to see you in the stands this season.
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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