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I asked my daughter this question back in the summer of 2011 as we stood in the bathroom tissue aisle at Safeway. Surrounded by a sea of rolls in various incarnations—single-ply, double-ply, extra-soft, quilted, patterned, recycled—we couldn’t find what we wanted. You see, my daughter and I were on a quest. Concerned with the plastic pollution devastating our oceans, we had decided to live plastic-free. In that toilet paper aisle, it dawned on me just how difficult that might be. The plastic problem: Between the 1950s and the present, approximately 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced worldwide and only 9% of that has been recycled. Every minute, the equivalent of a truckload of plastic enters our oceans. If we do not drastically reduce our plastic consumption, by 2050, the oceans will contain more plastic than fish by weight. Micro-plastics are everywhere: in our water, our air, our fish and even human stool. Can’t we simply recycle our way out of this mess? With China no longer buying much of our scrap plastic, according to Bloomberg, “By 2030, an estimated 111 million metric tons of used plastic will need to be buried or recycled somewhere else—or not manufactured at all.” Better to refuse plastic at its source before it can become waste. But how? Once you decide to kick the plastic, you’ll notice it everywhere—because it is everywhere. Don’t be discouraged. Start small. Make a change. Adjust to the new routine. Make another change. And then another. After we had successfully broken up with plastic, we then went zero-waste. Although everyone’s definition of zero-waste will differ, I think we can agree that we all want the same thing—to both conserve resources and to prevent waste from entering landfills, incinerators and the oceans. In reality, you never actually reduce your waste to zero. Because unless you move off the grid to a farm and grow your own food and plant the hemp to grow the fibers to weave the cloth to sew your clothes, you will contribute to the waste stream via the supply chain. The final goods you buy—such as staples from bulk bins—may be free of packaging but they arrived at the store in packaging. The staff doesn’t grow your oats out in the parking lot after all. The term “zero waste” represents a goal, something to strive for, like straight A+’s in every class you took in college. Yes, it is possible. But remember the saying, “C’s get degrees.” You don’t have to do zero waste perfectly to make a big difference. And as you’ll discover on your journey, you’ll reap all sorts of personal benefits as you tread more lightly on the planet. Anne Marie Bonneau wrote this as a guest blogger for GreenTown Los Altos. She lives in Mountain View and writes the blog The Zero-Waste Chef . You can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter at @zerowastechef.

by Samantha Enos Three years ago, my family of five decided to go vegan after watching a few documentaries on food. It was a challenge at first with three kids (ages 2 to 7 at the time) but now I’ve developed a list of some of my family’s favorite recipes. I want to share it with you as a starting point for those who want the best health for their families and our planet. Enjoy! Breakfast/baked goods Banana pancakes (thebigmansworld.com). Note: throw in a few pieces of previously cooked beets for a pink pancake Berry scuffins (dreenaburton.com) Banana bread/muffins (Plant-Powered Families cookbook) Cinnamon french toast (Plant-Powered Families cookbook) Almond granola (Plant-Powered Families cookbook) Super eggy vegan tofu scramble (lovingitvegan.com) Avocado toast (plant-based4health.com) Gluten-free (GF) yeasted breads (glutenfreebakingacademy.com).  Note: no recipes on this site, but for those that want GF breads, the course is very complete. Snacks New mama glo bars (ohsheglows.com). Note: Although they were designed to be great for new moms, my kids love these, especially with chocolate chips. Caramel corn (dreenaburton.com) Chickpea nibbles (Plant-Powered Families cookbook).  Note: these are great, but for my kids there is an even better recipe in author, Dreena Burton’s, Plant-Powered Snacks ebook (scroll down on web page for ebooks) Polenta croutons (Plant-Powered Families cookbook) Vanilla chia pudding (simple-veganista.com). Note: I use ½ almond and ½ coconut milk. Kids love it! Top with berries. Seedy sourdough crackers (scratch-eats.com). Note: these use sourdough, which is a bit time-consuming, but simple to make.  Check out Fresh is Real for a starter recipe with brown rice flour for the GF version. Main meals Chickpea/buckwheat nuggets(yumUniverse.com) with a side of ranch (thevegancorner.com). Note: these nuggets have a few steps, so a bit more advanced, but my kids love them! ( Zucchini fritters (dreenaburton.com) No-tuna salad sandwich (forksoverknives.com) Potato salad (Plant-Powered Families cookbook) 20-min Vegan alfredo or Best garlic alfredo (thevegan8.com). Both great! Minestrone soup (Forks over Knives cookbook) Lentils ragu (thevegancorner.com).  Note: use this under mashed potatoes for a shepherd’s pie or over pasta as two meal options. I double this recipe and freeze left-overs for another meal. Nutty burgers (dreenaburton.com) Supergreen pesto pasta (Pantry to Plate cookbook) Broccoli risotto (vegandad.blogspot.com) Creamy tomato barley risotto (ohsheglows.com).  Note: not GF, but easily modified to rice. Sauces/dressings Tzatziki sauce (Plant-Powered Families cookbook) Ranch (thevegancorner.com) Lemon tahini dressing (cleanfooddirtygirl.com) Mozzarella (thevegancorner.com).  Note: made with tofu and tapioca, this one melts and is perfect for pizzas Desserts Nanaimo bars(dreenaburton.com).  These are more time consuming, but the recipe can be doubled, cut into small squares and frozen for keeping. Orange chocolate pudding (dreenaburton.com).  Note: this recipe uses avocado, which sometimes can leave an aftertaste. The use of orange juice and zest removes this taste beautifully. Crazy brownies (dreenaburton.com) with chocolate ganache (Plant-Powered Families cookbook) or chocolate sweets frosting (see chocolate cake below) Chocolate sweet potato cake with chocolate sweets frosting (dreenaburton.com) Vanilla chocolate chip cookies (Plant Powered Families cookbook) Rice krispies (dreenaburton.com) Vanilla cake, paired with strawberry buttercream frosting (thevegan8.com).  Note: This frosting is one of the few I found that uses no oil / butter / shortening, and we love it. 1-bowl vegan GF vanilla cake (minimalistbaker.com) Drinks Creamy horchata (Thug Kitchen cookbook) Additional notes Most, if not all, recipes above are GF or can easily be modified Plant-Powered Families book is written by Dreena Burton, so many recipes on the book are also available on her website dreenaburton.com.  Most of her recipes use no oil or refined sugars or flours. The website Fork and Beans has a great guide for GF flours Some of these recipes use aquafaba, which is nothing more that the chickpea cooking water (or the water in the can of chickpeas). I freeze it in ice cube trays whenever I have left-overs, so I always have them available to use. The book, Pantry to Plate, offers basic recipe structures and how to make variations.  Great for learning. Resources Vegan food web resources used in this guide (in alphabetical order) include: The Big Man’s World Clean Food Dirty Girl DreenaBurton.com (author of Plant-Powered Families) Fresh is Real Forks over Knives Loving It Vegan Minimalist Baker Oh She Glows Simple Veganista The Vegan 8 (8 ingredient vegan recipes) The Vegan Corner Vegan Dad YumUniverse Other good vegan food blogs include: Ceara’s Kitchen Lazy Cat Kitchen Sweet Simple Vegan Vegan Richa (Indian foods)

GreenTown has teamed with Silicon Valley Bike Exchange (SVBE) and Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition (SVBC) to provide essential workers with essential transportation (bicycles). The #BikeMatchSV program is inspired by New York’s Transportation Alternatives’ Initiative. How can you help? Donate gently used bicycles. If it’s in perfect working order, we’ll match you with a recipient. If it needs a bit of work? No problem, that’s what SVBE and GTLA do! We’ll refurbish the bike and give it new life. We’ll make an appointment for your drop-off. Email info@greenTownLosAltos.org or fill out the #BikeMatchSV form here. Donate your time. Take home a homework bicycle! Using safe social distancing practices, we can arrange for you to pick up a bike, fix it at home, and even supply you with parts you need to fix it! Don’t be afraid to take a bike home. If you are challenged by a repair issue, GreenTown’s resident expert, Paul, can provide guidance to you by phone or video chat, or refer you to videos that can help you complete the job for #BikeMatchSV! Donate $$. So we can buy parts, helmets and locks for folks who receive one of our #BikeMatchSV bikes. The average bike we refurbish requires $40 in parts. To receive a bike, donate or volunteer to help fix a bike, fill out the #BikeMatchSV form here. And please share this program broadly to anyone you think may be in need of a bike, have bikes to spare, or are able bike fixers. Questions? Email info@GreenTownLosAltos.org. And by the way, apparently, bikes are the new toilet paper!

The bike competition Cycle September finished with a strong push by the GreenTown Los Altos Bike Team. We finished in 15th place out of 187 Bay Area teams. Pretty impressive considering that we never did a ride with the full team. The event was organized by the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition, a nonprofit that promotes bicycling in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties and has an overarching goal to see that 10% of trips are taken by bike by 2025. The GreenTown team helped achieve that goal with all the rides we took and all the miles we rode. A high five to Jimmy Gao, Arnold Ambiel and David Gong with a combined total of almost 1000 miles. If you look in the background you’ll see lots of kids on bikes at Bay Lands. That’s a wonderful sight! Especially now. Despite the recent miserable air quality, Gary Hedden rode on 27 different days and Jimmy on 23. Other team members were Willem De Lange, Don Weiden, Denis Koush, Jana Schlansker and Scott Vanderlip. Thanks team, for a job well done! ~ Gary Hedden

Have you been cooking a lot during the pandemic? Tired of the same old, same old? We’ve got some new recipes to spice up your life, just in time for Fall! What’s Cookin’? Instant Pot Cauliflower and Butternut Squash Curry Sorta Classic Pot Pie These recipes are from two of our favorite cookbook authors: Angela Liddon, author of the Oh She Glows cookbook and more. Visit her blog here. Isa Chandra Moskovitz, author of Vegan with a Vengeance and other cookbooks. You can find more of her recipes here. And for Dessert? Perhaps you want to try chocolate mousse? Check out Isabelle Cnudde’s video of a vegan chocolate mousse. Isabelle is a volunteer with GreenTown’s Eating Green team and founder of Clorofil in South Los Altos, a micro sanctuary for rescued animals. (You may also want to check out her new game Rescued). And if you’re done with video, as many of us are, you can try a similar chocolate mousse recipe here, from the blog Chocolate Covered Katie. Let us know if you have questions about what to cook for dinner and beyond at info@greentownlosaltos.org.

This year’s National Drive Electric Week is from Sep 26-Oct 4, 2020.  In recognition, GreenTown is hosting an informational webinar Oct. 6 at 7pm (REGISTER HERE). Participants will get an overview of the key reasons to drive electric, hear from local electric vehicle (EV) owners, and be able to engage with them about their experiences. One of GreenTown’s strategic objectives is to eliminate fossil fuels in transportation by encouraging electrification and other modes of transportation (walking, biking etc.).  This webinar is one of GreenTown’s Go Electric! program events that advances this objective through public advocacy and education. Locally focused events like this provide a forum for the community to share concern over environmental issues, learn more, and collectively take action. Increasing the Percentage of EVs in Los Altos/Los Altos Hills Although Los Altos/Los Altos Hills has one of the highest rates of EV adoption in California, only about 8% of the vehicles registered are EVs according to the 2019 data published by the DMV. We envision everyone in our community considering buying an EV when they are in the market for their next vehicle. GreenTown would like to ensure that people can get educated as to why EVs are an excellent choice for the environment, learn about the latest product offerings, and get first hand information about EV owners’ experience. Outline of Event Normally GreenTown would host such an event in person, but given the state due to the pandemic, the webinar is a great format to educate and engage with the community.  Here is what’s in store for the webinar: Introduction (15 mins): Overview of GTLA and its Transportation objectives Poll attendees about their current vehicles and intentions regarding EV Featured Speaker: Main Talk (30 mins) – Janelle London will discuss the motivation for EVs and the latest developments (30 mins) Janelle London is the Co-Executive Director of Coltura. She is vice chair of the Environmental Quality Commission for the city of Menlo Park, advises Peninsula Clean Energy and Green  Ninja, and has taught a course called Energy, the Environment and Chocolate. She has presented to audiences of thousands, and published the first op ed in California calling for a phaseout of gasoline-powered vehicles. Janelle is a graduate of Stanford University and the University of California Berkeley Law School. EV Driver Testimonials: Panel Discussion (25 mins) Wrap-up You won’t want to miss it! To REGISTER, click HERE. Hope to see you online.

We had another great Lawn Be Gone Bike Ride on Saturday, April 13. We saw some yards without a blade of grass and lots of green and colorful plants. It can be done, and one yard had a ‘meadow lawn’ that had not been mowed in two years and it looked great. We started at the Living Classroom garden at Oak School. Caroline Chan told us that their program has been educating students since 2008 with garden-based lessons in science, math and social studies. The kids look forward to it and whenever a volunteer with a brown Living Classroom visor shows up, they cheer. An added benefit for the community are the descriptive signs that have been provided with each plant and tree. It’s a big help for anyone planning their own yard. One homeowner was especially proud of her collection of succulents. They are so easy she said as she plucked and handed out pieces to every rider to take home for their own personal collection. Long-time GreenTown supporters Barbara and Kevin O’Reilly enjoyed showing off their many plants, and in a brief diversion, Kevin proudly showed how well their newly installed permeable concrete driveway quickly made the water disappear into the ground. They didn’t have any puddles this year despite the heavy rainfall.

On National River Cleanup Day, May 19, 2018, GreenTown Los Altos gathered a group of volunteers at Heritage Oaks Park to remove debris from Permanente Creek and the adjacent diversion channel. We were part of a countywide effort of 1274 volunteers at 44 sites sponsored by the Santa Clara Valley Water District. Although our section of the creek and channel appeared to be quite clean, we removed 20 pounds of trash that will not make its way to San Francisco Bay. In addition, we collected and sorted : 5 lb. recyclable plastics 16 lb. recyclable glass 3 lb. recyclable aluminum 5 lb. wood 5 lb compost 60 lb. scrap metal including a 40-lb. antenna …and 50 tennis balls. Preliminary results from all sites are 44,768 pounds of trash removed and 1,1985 pounds of recyclables. This was about 12,000 pounds more trash than last year. (cleanacreek.org)

Master Arborist Dave Muffly told a packed room at the Los Altos Library about the importance of planting resilient trees, trees that will do well now, and continue to do well in a future shaped by climate change. He started his talk describing his experience as chief arborist at Apple Park, the new Apple campus in Cupertino. Dave shared how Steve Jobs wanted to incorporate an apricot orchard as part of the campus to reflect the region’s history as the Valley of Heart’s Delight. He described how the final orchard, while incorporating apricots, included 31 varieties of fruit that would ripen throughout the seasons, rather than all at once. Dave went on to describe how the rest of the campus was planted with evergreen varieties indicative of those found throughout California. One more thing, we need to plant a lot of trees. Trees take up carbon dioxide and to meet the climate change challenge Dave wants to plant one billion trees in California by 2030! Unfortunately, we are losing trees at an alarming rate. In 2018 we lost 18 million from warming, drought, insects, and fires. We have a lot of work to do. What should we plant? He thinks oaks are part of the answer, but the ones that do well here now, Coast Live Oak, Blue Oak, and Valley Oak don’t thrive with the higher humidity predicted by several climate change models. Dave’s answer is to look to areas that are already warmer and wetter, to the south and east. He thinks Shreve Oak, Island Oak, Engelman Oak, and Southern Live Oak might work. In addition to planting some pilot projects with these varieties, he and others are growing them in nurseries around the state selecting those that do well and resist things like mildew. Dave is always on the lookout for oa ks and other trees that are good candidates for resilience. One of his favorite spots is Mt. Lemmon, north of Tucson, Arizona. As you climb this mountain you’ll find bands of discrete ecosystems. It is a laboratory for tree selection where he has found Mexican Blue Oak, Silverleaf Oak, and Chisos Red Oak doing well. There is a lot of interesting information on his website, https://www.oaktopia.org/, including his billion tree challenge and soon, notes from his talk. Check it out. Asked what we can do, he said to get the city to hire an arborist, replace trees that are dying, plant the resilient trees from his tree list, and remove the dead trees from our forests. GreenTown wants to help. One billion is a stretch, but maybe we can shoot for 500? Let us know if you want to help.

162 Trees. That’s the count for the 500 Trees Campaign this planting season – 159 trees in the ground and three more to be planted at the schools, but delayed by the COVID-19 school closure. The response to the GreenTown Los Altos 500 Trees campaign was wonderful. We planted all kinds of trees – big trees like Valley Oaks, medium sized trees like the Chinese Pistache, and lots of fruit trees, our most popular category. We planted in every part of Los Altos and Los Altos Hills and achieved a nicely balanced distribution. Our mission was to educate about the environmental benefits of trees and lead by example, by getting trees planted. In this we succeeded. It was a long campaign, starting in 2018, when we at GreenTown observed that while our trees are beautiful, and we are fortunate to have so many, after several dry years there are too many dead and dying trees. We decided to do something about it. Here is our story ... A college student, Naomi Zimmerman, home for winter break from Barnard College, and in a lucky break for us, asked if she could help with an environmental project. We jumped at the chance and that is how in January 2019, the campaign to plant trees moved from a simple idea and began to take shape. Naomi worked with Gary Hedden, project leader, and Michael Hawkins and Elise Willis from Canopy, a Palo Altos nonprofit that has been planting trees since 1996, to come up with a proposal to plant 500 trees. Naomi presented it to the GreenTown Board, the Board liked the concept and voted to proceed. The Board talked about the scope of the project and how to fund it, but even more importantly, how to get volunteers to make it work. GreenTown hosted a community talk by Dave Muffly in May that helped solve that challenge. Dave is a respected master arborist who worked with Steve Jobs to get more than 9000 trees planted at the Apple campus in Cupertino. Dave told a packed room at the Los Altos Library about the importance of planting resilient trees; trees that will do well now, and continue to do well in a future shaped by climate change. Inspired, several volunteers stepped up to join GreenTown’s 500 Trees campaign. The first team meeting was held in June and some goals were set: Reach out to like-minded people and groups for support, arrange for grants and donations, launch the campaign in the fall, host demonstrations and Team volunteers Gary, Kris Jensen, Christine Keller, Roy Lambertson, Kathy Radford, Autumn Looijen, Katie Dellamaggiore, Birgitta Indaco, Meri-Beth Bird, and Richard Lanman took on a numbers of tasks – meeting with council members and staff from Los Altos and Los Altos Hills, along with commissions and committees, groups like the Rotary, Kiwanis and the Newcomer’s Club, and school PTAs. The team also researched pricing from local nurseries and identified grant opportunities. Another volunteer, an important one, came from the four summer interns we hired in 2019. The internship program was started in 2018 under the leadership of Arnold Ambiel, and has been both valuable and inspirational. One of the 2019 interns, Ellen Hu, a student at Denali High School in Sunnyvale, made 500 Trees the focus of her 10-week internship. She worked on the details of the campaign – the initial design for flyers and hand outs, the project scope, and a detailed budget. She also worked with Canopy to create a list of 23 trees expected to be resilient to a warming climate. The list included evergreen and deciduous trees, in all sizes, and both natives and non-natives. It included Valley Oak, a hearty native, and Island Oak, a native to southern California and Mexico that should do well now and into the future. Likewise, the list included the Oklahoma Redbud, a variety expected to do better than the native Western Redbud in the years ahead. Ellen added pictures and descriptive text for each of the 23 trees and made this into a booklet. We call this our “Flipbook” as we flip through the pages to discuss tree selection and placement. The Flipbook is on our website. The team settled on a scope of work – to plant trees in Los Altos and Los Altos Hills in parks, at schools and at homes, and as an incentive, to offer the trees at less than wholesale cost and plant the trees for free. We obtained funding from GreenTown and from the Los Altos Community Foundation to make this possible. The homeowners pay most of the cost of their trees, allowing the program to succeed. We also worked with a local hardware store, True Value, and store owner Henry Nesmith generously offered a discount on tree planting supplies. We took advantage of his generosity many times. A very important volunteer joined the team in August, Jill Woodford, a landscape designer and our connection to the wholesale nursery, Devil Mountain Nursery. In addition to ordering trees and offering solid advice, Jill and her son Lucas helped with tree planting. Canopy offered a Community Forestry class in September led by Natalie Brubaker and Katie Rummel. It was an eight week course with a class every Wednesday evening and outside activities every weekend. Gary and Autumn took the class and learned how to pick a tree – the mantra is “right tree, right place,” how to plant a tree and how to run a tree planting campaign. In preparation for the launch of the campaign, the team developed a site checklist, an important document to determine the right tree for a property owner. It asked what the homeowner would like in terms of shade, privacy, fall color, fruit and appearance. It evaluated overhead lines and underground services, the look of the tree at full maturity, some general advice about trees and tree care, and the cost. We started our site visits in September with team members Gary, Roy and Christine. Not every site visit resulted in an order for trees, but most did, and it was always fun to meet homeowners, talk about trees and introduce people to GreenTown. Getting the word out to the community is simple in concept, less so in practice. We posted information on our website, including a landing page for people seeking information, and online with our Facebook page. As mentioned above we met with the Rotary, Kiwanis and other groups, we were interviewed by the Town Crier for a news story, we placed ads in the Town Crier using graphic design by Jan Davis, we were mentioned in a Mission Trail quarterly statement and in a Chamber of Commerce monthly newsletter. We were introduced to the seniors at Grant Park by Lynette Lee Eng, mentioned in Nextdoor posts, in church bulletins and by school PTAs. To get tree planting help we reached out to youth groups. The Los Altos High School Green Team, with Audrey Chang and Elena Atluri helped on several occasions, along with Lexi Crilley from the Climate Action Team. We connected with Living Wisdom High School, a school in Palo Alto that heard about us from Canopy. Kshama Kellogg and Shanti Pollacek and their students helped us plant trees on two occasions, including our first tree planting at a private home, a pair of Strawberry trees planted November 22. We worked with Boy Scout Troop 75 and Brian Boggs for two tree plantings, the SLOBS (Service League of Boys) with Tyler Huang twice, and the girls’ service group, Together We Can, a delightful group led by parents Amanda Boschken and Jennifer Springer, that planted three trees for us in February. These students and scouts love getting into the dirt and an hour later seeing a beautiful new tree ready to start its life. We all get a thrill from planting a tree. We planted our first tree November 9, a Coast Live Oak at Rosita Park. This was a demonstration planting led by Ron Reynoso with the City of Los Altos. It was attended by a number of team members and provided a good lesson for all. A picture was published in the Town Crier, helping with our outreach. We had a lot of success planting a tree at each elementary school in town. With the help of Marlene Shafran, and the principals and front office staff at each of the LASD schools, we got eight trees planted in early February. We planted Western Redbuds at these schools in response to a special request by Caroline Chan, as it fits better with the lesson plan of Living Classroom and their emphasis on native Californian plants. Lino and Tony, two long-time, dedicated school facility employees planted these trees, and it was a pleasure to work with them. Planting at the elementary schools was always a special treat. We met the student ambassadors at Springer, the Green Team at Blach and the Photography Club at Egan. At Almond, we were carefully watched by four kindergarten classes. When asked why we plant trees, one little girl immediately answered, “Because they give us oxygen.” Wow, she’s six years old. A little boy added, “It is like breathing, except they take in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen.” Wow again, I’m so impressed with the next generation! Still to be planted at the schools, the two Cedars at Montclair Elementary, in an effort led by parent Emma Tweddell, and the Valley Oak at the Living Classroom garden at Oak School. This will be a memorial tree in honor of the husband and daughter of Living Classroom founder Vicki Moore. The major effort has been planting trees at homes. Our target was front yards, or side yards with a street view, as we wanted visibility for our trees as a benefit to the community. We planted these trees with the help of the student groups mentioned above and several adults from our team, Gary, Jill, Roy, Brian, Autumn, Mike Schlansker, and Wayne Hooper. We also hired day workers from the Day Worker Center in Mountain View from time to time because some of us don’t like heavy lifting and hard digging very much anymore. We planted 152 trees at 78 homes between November and March, and the response from the homeowners has been 100% positive. “This is so wonderful.” “Incredible.” “Thank you for helping us make a positive contribution to Los Altos.” “We’re thrilled with the tree.” ”The team did a great job.” All of this work has been tracked by two people working in the background, Jana Schlansker with Salesforce and Lesley Williams, who got a tree and then asked to help, using Numbers. We planted our first tree in early November and tree number 159 on March 19. Once we plant the two Cedars and the Valley Oak we will reach number 162, and after planting 162 trees at 78 homes, one park and nine schools, we know a thing or two about trees. We know there is an interest in getting more trees planted so we are collecting names to continue the campaign. Once we secure grant funding, we will reach out to the wait list and start another round of tree planting in November. We are looking forward to it!

162 Trees. That’s the count for this planting season for our 500 Trees Campaign – 159 trees in the ground and three more to be planted at the schools, currently delayed by Covid-19 school closures. The response to GreenTown Los Altos’ 500 Trees campaign was wonderful. We planted all kinds of trees – big trees like Valley Oaks, medium sized trees like the Chinese Pistache, and lots of fruit trees, our most popular category. We planted in every part of Los Altos and Los Altos Hills and achieved a nicely balanced distribution. Our mission was to educate about the environmental benefits of trees and lead by example, by getting trees planted. In this we succeeded. It was a long campaign, starting in 2018, when we at GreenTown observed that while our trees are beautiful, and we are fortunate to have so many, after several dry years there are too many dead and dying trees. We decided to do something about it. Here is our story. A college student, Naomi Zimmerman, home for winter break from Barnard College, and in a lucky break for us, asked if she could help with an environmental project. We jumped at the chance and that is how in January 2019, the campaign to plant trees moved from a simple idea and began to take shape. Naomi worked with Gary Hedden, project leader, and Michael Hawkins and Elise Willis from Canopy, a Palo Altos nonprofit that has been planting trees since 1996, to come up with a proposal to plant 500 trees. Naomi presented it to the GreenTown Board, the Board liked the concept and voted to proceed. The Board talked about the scope of the project and how to fund it, but even more importantly, how to get volunteers to make it work. GreenTown hosted a community talk by Dave Muffly in May that helped solve that challenge. Dave is a respected master arborist who worked with Steve Jobs to get more than 9000 trees planted at the Apple campus in Cupertino. Dave told a packed room at the Los Altos Library about the importance of planting resilient trees; trees that will do well now, and continue to do well in a future shaped by climate change. Inspired, several volunteers stepped up to join GreenTown’s 500 Trees campaign. The first team meeting was held in June and some goals were set: Reach out to like-minded people and groups for support, arrange for grants and donations, launch the campaign in the fall, host demonstrations and workshops, plant trees October-March and finish with a flourish on Arbor Day, April 24, 2020 with a grand celebration and party. Most of our goals have been or will be met, although the shelter-in-place order means the party is off. Team volunteers Gary Hedden, Kris Jensen, Christine Keller, Roy Lambertson, Kathy Radford, Autumn Looijen, Katie Dellamaggiore, Birgitta Indaco, Meri-Beth Bird, and Richard Lanman took on a numbers of tasks – meeting with council members and staff from Los Altos and Los Altos Hills, along with commissions and committees, groups like the Rotary, Kiwanis and the Newcomer’s Club, and school PTAs. The team also researched pricing from local nurseries and identified grant opportunities. Another volunteer, an important one, came from the four summer interns we hired in 2019. The internship program was started in 2018 under the leadership of Arnold Ambiel, and has been both valuable and inspirational. One of the 2019 interns, Ellen Hu, a student at Denali High School in Sunnyvale, made 500 Trees the focus of her 10-week internship. She worked on the details of the campaign – the initial design for flyers and hand outs, the project scope, and a detailed budget. She also worked with Canopy to create a list of 23 trees expected to be resilient to a warming climate. The list included evergreen and deciduous trees, in all sizes, and both natives and non-natives. It included Valley Oak, a hearty native, and Island Oak, a native to southern California and Mexico that should do well now and into the future. Likewise, the list included the Oklahoma Redbud, a variety expected to do better than the native Western Redbud in the years ahead. Ellen added pictures and descriptive text for each of the 23 trees and made this into a booklet. We call this our “Flipbook” as we flip through the pages to discuss tree selection and placement. The Flipbook is on our website. Scoping Out The Campaign The team settled on a scope of work – to plant trees in Los Altos and Los Altos Hills in parks, at schools and at homes, and as an incentive, to offer the trees at less than wholesale cost and plant the trees for free. We obtained funding from GreenTown and from the Los Altos Community Foundation to make this possible. The homeowners pay most of the cost of their trees, allowing the program to succeed. We also worked with a local hardware store, True Value, and store owner Henry Nesmith generously offered a discount on tree planting supplies. We took advantage of his generosity many times. A very important volunteer joined the team in August, Jill Woodford, a landscape designer and our connection to the wholesale nursery, Devil Mountain Nursery. In addition to ordering trees and offering solid advice, Jill and her son Lucas helped with tree planting. Canopy offered a Community Forestry class in September led by Natalie Brubaker and Katie Rummel. It was an eight week course with a class every Wednesday evening and outside activities every weekend. Gary and Autumn took the class and learned how to pick a tree – the mantra is “right tree, right place,” how to plant a tree and how to run a tree planting campaign. In preparation for the launch of the campaign, the team developed a site checklist, an important document to determine the right tree for a property owner. It asked what the homeowner would like in terms of shade, privacy, fall color, fruit and appearance. It evaluated overhead lines and underground services, the look of the tree at full maturity, some general advice about trees and tree care, and the cost. We started our site visits in September with team members Gary, Roy and Christine. Not every site visit resulted in an order for trees, but most did, and it was always fun to meet homeowners, talk about trees and introduce people to GreenTown. Getting the word out to the community is simple in concept, less so in practice. We posted information on our website, including a landing page for people seeking information, and online with our Facebook page. As mentioned above we met with the Rotary, Kiwanis and other groups, we were interviewed by the Town Crier for a news story, we placed ads in the Town Crier using graphic design by Jan Davis, we were mentioned in a Mission Trail quarterly statement and in a Chamber of Commerce monthly newsletter. We were introduced to the seniors at Grant Park by Lynette Lee Eng, mentioned in Nextdoor posts, in church bulletins and by school PTAs. To get tree planting help we reached out to youth groups. The Los Altos High School Green Team, with Audrey Chang and Elena Atluri helped on several occasions, along with Lexi Crilley from the Climate Action Team. We connected with Living Wisdom High School, a school in Palo Alto that heard about us from Canopy. Kshama Kellogg and Shanti Pollacek and their students helped us plant trees on two occasions, including our first tree planting at a private home, a pair of Strawberry trees plant ed November 22. We worked with Boy Scout Troop 75 and Brian Boggs for two tree plantings, the SLOBS (Service League of Boys) with Tyler Huang twice, and the girls’ service group, Together We Can, a delightful group led by parents Amanda Boschken and Jennifer Springer, that planted three trees for us in February. These students and scouts love getting into the dirt and an hour later seeing a beautiful new tree ready to start its life. We all get a thrill from planting a tree. We planted our first tree November 9, a Coast Live Oak at Rosita Park. This was a demonstration planting led by Ron Reynoso with the City of Los Altos. It was attended by a number of team members and provided a good lesson for all. A picture was published in the Town Crier, helping with our outreach. We had a lot of success planting a tree at each elementary school in town. With the help of Marlene Shafran, and the principals and front office staff at each of the LASD schools, we got eight trees planted in early February. We planted Western Redbuds at these schools in response to a special request by Caroline Chan, as it fits better with the lesson plan of Living Classroom and their emphasis on native Californian plants. Lino and Tony, two long-time, dedicated school facility employees planted these trees, and it was a pleasure to work with them. Planting at the elementary schools was always a special treat. We met the student ambassadors at Springer, the Green Team at Blach and the Photography Club at Egan. At Almond, we were carefully watched by four kindergarten classes. When asked why we plant trees, one little girl immediately answered, “Because they give us oxygen.” Wow, she’s six years old. A little boy added, “It is like breathing, except they take in carbon dioxide and breath out oxygen.” Wow again, I’m so impressed with the next generation! Still to be planted at the schools, the two Cedars at Montclair Elementary, in an effort led by parent Emma Tweddell, and the Valley Oak at the Living Classroom garden at Oak School. This will be a memorial tree in honor of the husband and daughter of Living Classroom founder Vicki Moore. The major effort has been planting trees at homes. Our target was front yards, or side yards with a street view, as we wanted visibility for our trees as a benefit to the community. We planted these trees with the help of the student groups mentioned above and several adults from our team, Gary, Jill, Roy, Brian, Autumn, Mike Schlansker, and Wayne Hooper. We also hired day workers from the Day Worker Center in Mountain View from time to time because some of us don’t like heavy lifting and hard digging very much anymore. We planted 152 trees at 78 homes between November and March, and the response from the homeowners has been 100% positive. “This is so wonderful.” “Incredible.” “Thank you for helping us make a positive contribution to Los Altos.” “We’re thrilled with the tree.” ”The team did a great job.” All of this work has been tracked by two people working in the background, Jana Schlansker with Salesforce and Lesley Williams, who got a tree and then asked to help, using Numbers. We planted our first tree in early November and tree number 159 on March 19. Once we plant the two Cedars and the Valley Oak we will reach number 162, and after planting 162 trees at 78 homes, one park and nine schools, we know a thing or two about trees. We know there is an interest in getting more trees planted so we are collecting names to continue the campaign. Once we secure grant funding, we will reach out to the wait list and start another round of tree planting in November. We are looking forward to it!

Over the summer GreenTown Los Altos sponsored 154 participants in a sustainability encouraging program called Carbon Bootcamp. Carbon Bootcamp encourages a sustainable lifestyle through simple, easy daily changes. Carbon BootCamp’s a fun, text-based, real-time six-week program designed to help participants lower their carbon footprint via small changes in how they live, eat and move.  It featured delivery of boxes containing gifts, tools, goodies and tips, as well as carbon footprint facts and kudos for accomplishments. Based on comments like these, participants enjoyed the program: “This was a fantastic program!  Thank you so much!” “Interactive, informative, and encouraging, while remaining non-judgmental.” “I think you are onto something good here. I like the code words, challenges, text-based.” “For the home energy part, I unplugged twenty devices, ten unplugged completely that I had not used in years….. joined Ohm Connect and got smart plugs.  For the transportation part, I walked to do a few errands…….I avoided driving for four days……..For the food part, it was easy to go veggie/vegan for a week………and I chose my foods as locally as possible.  Altogether, I REALLY enjoyed the Carbon Bootcamp. Thank you so much and thank you GreenTown Los Altos for sponsoring.” Did The Program Truly Work? To gauge its effectiveness, Carbon Bootcamp measured changes at the end of the participants’ session, then a few weeks later to determine if the changes were likely to stick.  The biggest changes by participants measured were: Purposely shifting electrical use to when electricity is most available and cheaper Increasing walking when running errands Decreasing consumption of red meat, increasing vegetarian meals The smallest changes were still significant, although a switch to mass transit was tough: Participants implemented some air clothes drying and shorter showers A few participants increased mass transit use Half of respondents chose vegan meal options more frequently Carbon Bootcamp is a program developed by Anna Michalak, a Los Altos Resident and climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford.  Carbon Bootcamp is copyrighted by CrownTheCrowd.