Eco-friendly expo Green West opens

Eco-friendly expo Green West opens

The Los Angeles Times

May 21, 2008
Zero-flush urinals, soybean-based cleaning products and bamboo fiber bathrobes were among the hot items Tuesday at Green West, a convention to promote eco-friendly business and healthful living.

Going green "seems to be a huge bandwagon that everybody's jumping on right now," convention attendee Lesley Sattin said. Her Santa Ana company, Monkey Joe Speak, sells promotional items such as pens made from recycled currency.

"It's such a wonderful concept and people are getting it -- they're finally getting it. Recycling is no longer hokey," Sattin said.

More than 3,000 people are expected to attend the three-day convention, which began Tuesday at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Architects, landscapers and solar panel companies were among about 120 exhibitors at the inaugural event.

The idea for Green West grew out of a realization that most eco-friendly conventions catered to a niche group instead of showcasing "all components of the green market," said Diane O'Connor, president of Green Media Enterprises, the Los Angeles multimedia company that put on the convention.

Green West is "a one-stop shop for the industry," O'Connor said, noting that it also serves to help business owners develop a workable model for going green.

"When we hear 'green,' we just think 'recycle,' " she said. "From a business standpoint, it has to be part of a business plan."

Real estate broker John Moriarty III said he signed up for the convention after noticing that his clients were increasingly concerned about their energy bills and water consumption and wanted ways to cut back on household expenses.

By checking out sustainable products such as rubber sidewalks at the expo, Moriarty said he hoped to provide owners with green ideas for their homes.

"There's a growing awareness," he said. "People are trying to find ways to go natural or spend less."

At the demonstration kitchen, Chef Shigefumi Tachibe prepared a burger made with a whole-grain brown rice and vegetable patty, soy mozzarella cheese and sprouts. Tachibe, of M Cafe de Chaya in Los Angeles and Culver City, said the dishes -- prepared without dairy products or meat, except seafood -- often surprised diners who had misconceptions about healthful eating.

"It's not boring food," Tachibe said. "Regular people can eat it."

One of the largest exhibitor displays allowed attendees to walk through a model home made with recycled materials, water-based paint and bamboo. Architect Eric Lloyd Wright, whose company designed the installation, said reusing products was "essential for how we live today."

"The vision is to show how various items can be used in an interesting setting. It's a piece of architecture, but it's more than that," said Wright, whose grandfather was famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. "We can't go living the way we have in the past."

H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press

San Francisco Chronicle

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson rejected the characterization and said that while he frequently discusses EPA matters with the White House, the decisions are his.

But Johnson, appearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee for nearly three hours, repeatedly refused to discuss conversations he had with the White House and refused to provide a number of documents that have been subpoenaed by the committee concerning the smog standard and his refusal to allow California to proceed with rules to cut greenhouse gases.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, the committee chairman, said depositions provided by senior EPA staff members suggest that Johnson was overruled or heavily influenced by the White House on recent EPA decisions on the smog standard, its rejection of a waiver for California on global-warming regulations, and the EPA ongoing deliberations on whether to regulate carbon dioxide.

"You have essentially become a figurehead," Waxman told Johnson. "In each case, you backed down."

He said that in each of the EPA cases, "the pattern is the same. The president apparently insisted in his judgment and overrode the unanimous recommendations of EPA scientific and legal experts," said Waxman. "You reversed yourself after having candid conversations with the White House."

Johnson, a 27-year career EPA scientist himself before being elevated to head the agency, repeatedly insisted that he was the final decision-maker on the issues cited by Waxman, although acknowledging frequent discussions with the White House on those and other matters.

But Waxman's committee can only guess on the details of those conversations and communications.

Johnson declined repeated requests by Democrats on the panel to provide any details about conversations he had with the White House, refusing at one point to even acknowledge whether he did or did not discuss the smog, California waiver or carbon dioxide rule making with the president.

"'I don't think it's appropriate for me to discuss the conversations," said Johnson.

Johnson acknowledged that in at least one case he had been overruled directly by the president.

He had sided with the EPA staff and the agency's science advisory board that preferred a "seasonal" standard to determine smog air minimums as they apply to protect vegetation, forests, farmland and wildlife, suggesting such an approach was better than using the one designed for protecting human health.

White House staff disagreed and just hours before the standard was announced last March, President Bush weighed in on the side of the staff, and Johnson relented, according to documents and depositions cited by Waxman's committee.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/21/MNB110PS0K.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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