No Brainer

Libraries, people! Libraries!

It's books for free. What else is there to say? Sure you have to give them back in the end, but how many books do you read more than once anyway? Save trees, save money...go get a library card.

Also, the excuse that "they never have what I'm looking for" is no longer valid. Most libraries now allow online book reservation, and you are notified by email when your request shows up at your local branch. I picked up two last night that were available a mere five days after I posted my requests (though a third is going to take a while to show up, but it's a new release). In the meantime, I'll keep myself busy with less popular but equally as satisfying oldies but goodies.

Splurge Alert

Sometimes it's worth blowing your well-earned cash on something special, and on August 30th, I will be spending mine on a fabulous dinner at Saison with Eric. Saison is a new restaurant located in the Mission that "is a place where one can come and dine on the finest local bounty and where wines are poured with the same care as a Michelin starred restaurant yet be totally at ease in a casual environment. We have decided that we should remove the unnecessary frou-frou and provide what is most important to us in a dining experience." The food is all local and organic, as are the wines. I'm SO excited, and a review will definitely be posted on the 31st (I'll be in a food coma until at least Monday).

And actually, compared to what we would pay for a similarly amazing meal at almost any other highfalutin restaurant here in SF, $90 for a four course meal with wine paring is a straight-up deal.

GoodGuide: Your Guide to What's Good

I happened upon a great new website today, GoodGuide.com. The story of how I happened upon it will have to wait, but the effect that GoodGuide can have on your life should not. According to the NYT, Newsweek, and may other sources, GoodGuide provides the world's largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of the products in your home...FREE! Using criteria tied to three overarching performance areas (health, environmental, and social), GoodGuide assigns scores to consumer products, deeming them good, iffy, and/or bad choices based on their criteria. The results can be surprising. For instance, who would have guessed that a Kashi cereal would be at the bottom of the cold cereals list, while plain Cheerios are near the top (the complete list is here). See, you're already learning things... So next time you're thinking about changing shampoos or buying your nephew a present, you can look at GoodGuide to assess the impacts of the products you're about to buy. You might rethink that Nerf Rocket Pass you were eying.

It's official: Save money, reduce carbon emissions...Go veggie

Since the Copenhagen Climate Congress in March, there has been a fair amount of hubbub about the climate benefits of changing one's diet. The bottom line, as put by Treehugger, is that a vegetarian diet, or one at least that radically reduces meat consumption, can have massive climate change mitigation benefits. According to a presentation at the Congress/Treehugger, if this transition of dietary norms was started in 2010 and completed by 2030, and that pasture and cropland was allowed to regrow as forest, it would soak up such large amounts of CO2 that, in combination with the resultant reduction of methane emissions due to the animals themselves, the costs of climate change mitigation would drop by 70% by 2050, as compared to a business-as-usual scenario.

In addition to reducing carbon emissions/climate change mitigation costs, being a vegetarian saves you SO much money (I can speak from experience). I don't need to go into the cost-savings of cutting meat from your diet...we all know that veggies cost way less than meat. So, even if you aren't going to full-time veg, think about cutting meat out of your diet a few days a week. You'll be doing both yourself and the environment a favor.

Kindle Goes to Princeton

Also in the NYT today:

"In May, Amazon introduced the electronic book reader Kindle DX, touted as a new way to read textbooks, newspapers and other large documents. This fall, six colleges and universities will test the technology in a pilot, which includes making the textbooks for certain courses available online.

The Kindle DX (for “deluxe”) is searchable and portable, a plus for students accustomed to toting heavy backpacks. But there is another reason that some institutions jumped at the chance to try it out: the technology could substantially reduce their use of paper.

“Sustainability is the driving force behind Princeton using the Kindle,” said Lauren Robinson-Brown, the assistant vice president for communications at Princeton University, which is participating. She explained in a telephone interview that the Kindle pilot project was part of a Princeton initiative to use less printed paper."

I'm very interested to see how this turns out...

White is the New Black

I love when an environmental piece is the most popular article on a news website. All day today, NYT readers have been loving this piece about white roofs being the new, hot thing in energy savings. In fact, the article states that "studies show that white roofs reduce air-conditioning costs by 20 percent or more in hot, sunny weather." Awesome, now to see if I can convince my parents to buy into this trend. Since we don't have AC in SF, they'd probably benefit a bit more, you know, living in Atlanta and all.

PS puns intended.

Restaurant Review: Tataki

One of the main reasons that I'm an "almost vegetarian" instead of an honest-to-goodness vegetarian is that I'm obsessed with sushi. I can't live without it. I NEED it (yes, getting a bit dramatic, I know). So, when I found out about Tataki on Yelp, I got super excited. What enviro-pescatarian wouldn't jump up and down and squeal about a sustainable sushi restaurant? I immediately jumped over to Tataki's own website, and, as if I needed more reasons to love them, their mission is as follows:

Our Mission at Tataki is simple: to showcase the beauty and delicacy of Japanese cuisine while respecting the sanctity and fragility of our environment. If we are to preserve the art of sushi, we must also safeguard the health and biodiversity of our oceans. With this in mind, we strive everyday to integrate the concept of sustainable dining into our menu options.

Yes, yes, YES! Now I only needed to actually go there and fulfill my dream of gorging myself on fully sustainable sush. The dream became a reality on a ordinary Thursday night. Having been warned the place was very small, my BF, brother (recent addition to the Bay Area population), and I showed up with our ready-to-wait pants on, and I'm sure glad we did. We were told by a very snobby host/server that it'd be at LEAST a 30 minute wait, and that we should put our name on the list and clear out. Yikes, that wasn't a very good first impression, but undeterred, we put our name down and headed next door to Solstice to have a beer (I should mention that said waiter scoffed at us when I mentioned writing down my phone # so he could call us when a table was ready, despite their being no waiting area thus requiring us to vacate the premises). Two beers and three check-ins later, we headed back to Tataki to squeeze ourselves into the sushi bar. To make a long story short, I will grade the meal on three factors:

Sustainability - A
- Seafood Watch cards everywhere, menu limited to seasonal and sustainable fisheries, press about fisheries conservation all over the walls, etc.

Food - B
- While the fish was fresh and generally good the portions were tiny and expensive for what we got. None of it was really anything to get terribly excited about.

Service - F
- If this place wasn't aggressively supporting a cause about which I feel strongly, I would have walked out. The service was abysmal. Not only was all the staff snobby and too busy for us (it's a SUSHI restaurant for goodness sake), but the service was extremely slow. I saw a roll for one poor table sit at the window for 10 MINUTES!!! before getting taken to them. Also, the waitress was constantly bumping us and twice spilled water on us without saying sorry. Finally, they tried to charge us for things we didn't order.

Sooo, needless to say, I was a little disappointed by my experience. I plan to try again on a different night of the week to see if we simply had a bad crew, but until then, I'll be taking my Seafood Watch sushi pamphlet to my fave mom & pop sushi hole-in-the-wall...and eating sush that IS worth getting excited about.

Carbon Offset Cheat Sheet

To accompany my post from about a week ago concerning carbon offsets and Terrapass, I found this handy-dandy website that rates offset providers, Offset Consumer. It talks about different providers, carbon calculators, reasons to offset, etc, etc. According to OC, NativeEnergy is the best US offset provider...but Terrapass isn't on there, so I don't know what to think about that (I'll do more research and get back to you...it's late).

Happy perusing. Night.

Reduce, reuse, and train your dog

For those of you with a dog, you know the trials and tribulations of reliable recall (i.e. coming when called) from your four-legged-friend. If there's another pup or an interesting patch of grass to sniff, the chances of your dog coming to you the moment you call are pretty slim (at least they are in my case). But, as we recently learned in obedience class, all that can change the moment you bring high-quality treats into the mix! Seriously, give your dog something really special every time he comes to you, and you'll immediately see a difference in recall response time and enthusiasm level.
"What does this have to do with being YBG?" you might think. Well, there's no treat my puppy finds more special than people food...of any kind...we're talking everything from ribeye to corn to salad dressing. So these days, we've taken to putting all our inedible (from a human standpoint) leftovers into plastic bags and putting them in the fridge for future use with Wally (our dog). This means we spend a lot less on expensive, packaged doggie treats, and we have to take fewer trips to the compost bin (cause you're not throwing that organic refuse away, right? RIGHT???). An important note though: Not all human foods are dog-friendly. Chicken/fish bones and chocolate immediately spring to mind, so be mindful about what you give your pup.

Carbon Offsets: A Globetrotter's Best Friend

Hello my thousands (and by 1000s, I mean 4) adoring fans,

I've been traveling a LOT recently. A trip to Denver/Boulder for the 4th of July, a trip to Ohio for work (which was AWESOME, btw. We were electrofishing as a part of stream community surveys), and now I'm headed to Vegas for a friend's bachlorette party. Given the fact that I'm already dishing out all kinds of $ for these trips, it's sometimes hard to also think about the added cost of buying carbon offsets for my trips...However, Terrapass is making it just a little easier for all of us to get that much closer to carbon-neutral traveling. They have an air travel option in which you by one year's worth of flight carbon offsets. In this package, $50 buys offsets for 4 short, 3 medium and 2 long-haul flights, and luggage tag is included (so that you can show off your commitment to reducing global warming, obvs).

Given the thousands of dollars that you'll spend on the 9 flights accounted for by your air travel package, $50 really isn't much when it comes down to it. Air travel is an individual's single largest contributor to their carbon footprint, so do the right thing and take steps to make yours that much smaller.