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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.

The grownups in the room were few and far between but each was wide-eyed in amazement at the power of youth at the sixth annual Students for Green High Schools Conference held on Saturday, January 25. Organized by the Los Altos High School Green Team, led by co-presidents Audrey Chang and senior Elena Atluri, the conference boasted 120 attendees, about 10 booths, and a dizzying amount of energy, enthusiasm and calls for action to help protect and preserve our planet for future generations. Inspiring is an understatement! The conference started with an introduction by Andrew Chang, the Samsung host and dad of Audrey, who shared the company’s the sustainability practices. You could tell just when entering the campus that Samsung is leading the charge in sustainability: LEED platinum building, efficient recycling and composting stations, no single-use waste, etc. New This Year: Booth Displays Organizations and school clubs had an opportunity to display and discuss their accomplishments through booths and all conference attendees were given ample time to peruse the booths to learn details about initiatives that interested them. This was followed by standout student speakers: Jamie Minden, leader of St. Francis’ environmental club and co-founder of Silicon Valley Youth Climate Strike Peri Plantenberg, a student activist with the Sunrise Movement which advocates for aggressive policy change to combat the climate crisis. Next were breakout sessions on topical issues focusing on what can be done at school and how can they take the learnings home. These were skillfully led by LAHS Green Team facilitators using guiding questions prepared in advance to help prime the pump. Little priming was needed, however; I witnessed many lively and engaging discussions — from approaches to conserving water on campus to best approaches for legislative advocacy — as I traveled from one session to the next. Several middle schoolers attended and were equally engaged. Following the breakouts, each group presented key findings for others to learn from. The communication and outreach team even offered up a rap to share its findings! This is the sixth conference that I’ve attended and I have to say, it gets better each year. It’s a testament to the youth of today and the dogged determination they have to take control of their fate and the fate of our precious planet. We should all follow their enthusiasm lead!

She’s funny. She’s exuberant. She’s plant-based. On January 14, Colleen Patrick-Goudreau entertained a crowd of more than 75 people at the Los Altos Library for GreenTown’s monthly community forum. Patrick-Goudreu, who has written a slew of books, including the popular, “The Joy of Vegan Baking”, “The Vegan Table”, and, “The 30-Day Vegan Challenge”, shared her stories of becoming vegan and how to combat some of the cultural and social challenges of staying vegan. Her primary motive: compassion for animals. Her most recent book, “The Joyful Vegan: Everything You Need to Stay Vegan in a World that Wants You to Keep Eating Meet, Dairy and Eggs”, focuses on the practical aspects of living compassionately and healthfully. This talk represented the third talk about plant-based eating from GreenTown’s Eating Green team. The first, with Ocean Robbins focused primarily on the health benefits. The second, with Nil Zacarias, highlighted the environmental benefits of plant-based living, and Colleen Patrick-Goudreau examining the benefits to animals and our return to compassion. If you’re interested in learning more about plant-based eating, email us.

by Josephine Martensson and Donna Staton The California Assembly is packed with bills for eliminating single-use plastics. The first is Assembly Bill No. 619 (AB 619), AKA the “Bring Your Own” bill is good news for the fight against single-use plastics! AB 619 went into effect January 1st, 2020. This law amends sections of the California Health and Safety Code, and clarifies existing sections, to make it easier for consumers to use their own containers at restaurants when buying food “to go” or taking home meal leftovers. The containers used must be in compliance with Section 3-304.17(B)(1) of the 2017 Food Code published by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But fear not, it is simpler than it sounds! It just means that your containers must be clean and designed for, and capable of, reuse. This applies both to dine-in restaurants and vendors at concerts, festivals, and other events. You can also bring your own reusable container to grocery stores (bulk items, deli items) which choose to allow this. Ways You Can Help: Take advantage! Bring your own containers, bring your own reusable items, and use them when you carry out food. Spread the word! Tell your friends and family about AB619 and encourage them to “bring their own” too. Next time you eat out, don’t forget to grab your reusable water bottle and straw, utensils, and food storage containers! Senate Bill 54 and Assembly Bill 1080: Tackling single-use plastics in a BIG way. In 2019, the California legislature adjourned before voting on Senate Bill 54 (SB 54) and Assembly Bill 1080 (AB 1080). These bills, known as the California Circular Economy and Pollution Reduction Act, would require that 75% of single-use packaging of consumer products and foodware sold in the state be reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2030. The bills will come back to the Senate and Assembly floor of this session. To end our reliance on single-use items, which have disastrous effects on the environment, please share your concerns with our state legislators and representatives and let them know that you want their support in reducing single-use plastics. Want to do even more? Take action on SB 54 and AB 1080 here.

Thanks to the sustainability conscious residents in our community, what a great start to the 500 Trees campaign! We’ve planted more than 100 trees and will plant more in March. That will mark the end of the planting season for now, but we will be back encouraging and helping plant new trees in the fall. Trees are important – good for the environment and they look beautiful. We’ve enjoyed helping homeowners plant a tree or two but the best part is working with the kids. We’ve had scouts, the service league of boys, the girls service group Together We Can, the High School Green Team, students from Living Wisdom High School and more, and they’ve all been thrilled to plant trees. They love getting into the dirt and an hour later seeing a beautiful new tree ready to start its life. We’ve planted trees at the local schools too. The kids get it, trees are important as well as beautiful. I always ask why do we plant trees? One little girl at Almond Elementary, a kindergartener, immediately answered, “They give us oxygen.” Wow, she’s six years old. I was impressed. That’s why we will be back planting again next fall!

Last spring, in the spirit of reducing waste, GreenTown’s Waste Reduction Team held several sewing circles, creating produce bags from leftover fabric and handing them out at the Los Altos Farmers Market. It was a big hit! Team members’ new and improved sewing skills have come in handy during this pandemic as GreenTown volunteers have taken to sewing masks for healthcare workers. Kim Jelfs, a long-time Waste Reduction Team member, has been churning out masks – 40 so far! “But are these being put to use?” One organization notes that “Many hospitals are accepting donations of handmade masks for patients and providers who are not treating confirmed or suspected COVID-19 patients. This ensures proper protective equipment is available for those most at risk of spreading or contracting the virus.” They maintain a list of hospitals throughout the country that are accepting masks here. Kim’s masks have been delivered to a friend who works in the ICU at Valley Medical and indicated that hospital’s need. Other volunteers, heeding our call to sew masks, have delivered masks directly to other local hospitals. GreenTown has researched or contacted local hospitals and hospitals that we know are accepting homemade masks include: Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara –  In addition to accepting direct donations and donations of unopened critical personal protective gear, is accepting homemade masks. They ask that donors follow their recommended directions here. Valley Medical– Is accepting homemade masks for non-patient care staff. In addition, they are accepting monetary donations and donations of personal protective equipment. Their specifications for homemade masks can be found here. “I want to get started. How do I make one?” One post that spurred the homemade mask-making craze was this one and the first masks that Kim made followed this protocol. The pattern can be found here and instructions here. Another option that also includes a nose clasp (made of a small piece of pipe cleaner or garden wire) can be found here. Joann Fabrics is offering free kits to make masks here. On their website, you can also find patterns for different style masks. Plus, Joann’s offers curbside pick up on any online orders! No big surprise, but it turns out that different materials have different effectiveness. Most homemade cotton masks are not up to the task of an N-95 mask, but can be used by non-patient staff or over an N-95 mask to help it last longer. Researchers at Cambridge University weighed the benefits of different materials in protecting against virus particles. They found that vacuum cleaner bags, particularly those with HEPA filtration, were highly effective with a mean filtration efficiency on par with a surgical mask. So some sewers have taken to using vacuum bags as their fabric of choice or creating a mask insert so that a vacuum bag or other filter can be inserted into the mask. “What hospitals are not accepting masks and what do they need?” A number of hospitals in the area are NOT accepting homemade masks, but instead, like the hospitals listed above, are looking for monetary donations and donations of new, unopened personal protective gear such as: gloves, isolation gowns, goggles, eye shields, shoe covers, nurse caps, disinfecting surface wipes, and N95 and surgical masks. Stanford Health Care – Donation Guidelines El Camino Hospital has created a COVID-19 emergency response fund for monetary donations. Thanks for your efforts to date to stem the tide of COVID-19 and to help keep healthcare workers safe! Happy sewing.

We all were thrilled when last summer California Assembly Bill AB619 took effect, allowing customers to bring their own cups, containers for bulk and deli items, and to-go containers to stores and restaurants. Then… COVID 19 hit, and restaurants and stores have now, understandably, limited use of such reusable containers. Theoretically, there should not be an extra risk because the reusable container should not contact goods for other customers, but given the possible severity of this disease, no one wants to take chances. But let’s not despair! All the efforts we still make in our shopping and at home to avoid single use plastic and reuse non-plastic items are still worth it! This is a temporary situation. We look forward to when we can resume our campaign to educate the community about the many ways we can reduce single use plastics at stores and restaurants. Stay tuned for more on our efforts to introduce reusable returnable multi-vendor cups in Los Altos! One potentially positive outcome from COVID 19–the severe shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) for our valiant health workers has renewed interest in hospital quality reusable gowns, masks and gloves—which would greatly reduce the amount of single use synthetic materials heading by the ton to our landfills. Moreover, these items could be washed/disinfected onsite, reducing transport needs. Some good may come out of all this after all. We sure hope so.

A Reach Code ordinance is scheduled to come for a vote before the Los Altos City Council in the next couple of months, and while it is receiving push back from a small but vocal and organized group we are optimistic about its passage. To accomplish that, we need your help to voice support of these codes. Reach Codes are City selected enhancements to the state-mandated building codes that are revised every three years and were adopted by the City in late 2019. Reach Codes help California and its cities reach their climate action goals of greenhouse gas reduction. Without Reach Codes, these goals will be more difficult to meet which is why we’re hoping you’ll read up about it and support it. Behind vehicular traffic emissions, buildings are the single largest contributor to greenhouse gasses in our community. In our homes, gas powered appliances are the worse culprits (furnaces, water heaters, dryers, and yes, our beloved gas stoves.) Reach code researchers have built prototype homes and measured the cost/benefit of switching to electric versions of these appliances. Adoption of all-electric Reach Codes are being considered only for new construction in Los Altos even though GreenTown supports the inclusion of major remodels or additions where these systems might be replaced as a course of the construction. For a great primer on what Reach Codes are, click HERE for detailed text provided by the city of Cupertino. The actual Reach Code research, for those who like more data, can be found at the California Energy site. The Los Altos City Council has taken the forward-looking steps to vote for an all-electric version of the Reach Codes for new construction. While that represents only a drop in the bucket of our overall housing stock, we need to pass it. Email the council here by April 30th to show your support of the Reach Codes. For questions or more information, contact Connie Miller here. Watch for a separate e-blast for an invitation to a webinar Q & A on the subject hosted by City Council. Look for an article on the negative health effects of natural gas in the home in our May GTLA Newsletter.

I LOVE my gas stove. But as a pediatrician, I also love keeping families healthy and working to leave our children a clean environment for their kids. So how do I think about Reach Codes and the switch to all electric appliances in new construction in Los Altos? Two realizations convinced me that we must make the change, and the sooner the better. For background, I should tell you I moved here from Boston, where I lived in a wood house built in 1796. We heated with a wood stove and an oil burning furnace. So when I moved here to a home with gas heat and a gas stove, I thought, wow! This is so much cleaner—and it smells better too. A huge improvement in the indoor air quality my lungs were used to. I believed that gas energy was a bridge to a cleaner future, one where all our energy would be electric from renewable carbon free sources. The first thing that convinced me to support Reach Codes was understanding that our energy sources here in California are getting cleaner and cleaner all the time. Put in gas appliances, and the home burns fossil fuel for the life of the home, contributing to global warming. Put in electric appliances, especially modern induction cook tops, heat pumps for heating and cooling, etc., and as the energy grid becomes cleaner, the energy use for that home becomes cleaner and cleaner too. These Reach Codes will not take away gas from those homes that use it now. But going forward, the homes in Los Altos will contribute much less to global warming. It’s our way of helping the planet, and the time is now. For those who need more convincing, I highly recommend this short, beautifully written piece in the New England Journal of Medicine: The False Promise of Natural Gas Secondly, I realize that in addition to the community and global benefits of cleaner energy, there are very real direct benefits to one’s own health, in one’s own home. My work with the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Environmental Health has given me a much better appreciation of the negative health effects of burning fossil fuel inside our homes. Did you know that: After cooking for one hour with a gas stove and oven, peak levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) inside the kitchen are so high they exceed both state and national outdoor acute air-quality standards in more than 90 percent of the homes modeled. Children who grow up in a home with a gas stove are 42 percent more likely to develop asthma than those who don’t. Even for adults, exposure to the combustion pollutants of gas stoves (carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, fine particulate matter and volatile organic compounds) increases wheezing, cough, bronchitis and vulnerability to infection (like COVID-19). Exhaust fans should be used every time we turn on a burner, but most people don’t realize this. There are so many exposures we can’t avoid, it’s all the more important to avoid the ones we can! I’m convinced that adopting Reach Codes for Los Altos is the right thing to do. Better for the planet, better for Los Altos, and better for our lungs and general health. No one is forcing me to give up my gas stove—but I’m going to use the exhaust fan every time I cook from now on, and when it comes to replacement, I’ll go electric.

Dear Friends, On behalf of GreenTown Los Altos, I wish you health and happiness during this challenging time. Too often environmental organizations have been harbingers of doom, while there might be a time for that, this isn’t that time. So, in the midst of all the craziness, I wanted to share with you glimmers of hope I’ve seen as, ultimately, the work we do at GreenTown is about hope for a better future for everyone. Each of you reading this is a messenger of that hope and have made it possible for us to do our work in good times and bad. With all the worthy causes appropriately demanding your attention, we hope that you consider GreenTown a cause worthy of your support and make a tax-deductible donation today. Around the world people are sheltering in place and with far fewer cars on the road the air is much cleaner. That’s not even taking into account the work out Clean Air Teams have done to enforce the gas leaf blower ban and encourage folks to stop idling their cars. Many of us are trying to live more simply and are cooking at home more. With the extra time you have, maybe you’ve even considered eating more of a plant-based diet. Our Eating Green Team has been busy posting cooking videos to help, like this one about a delicious tofu scramble. We are also getting outside to take walks and dusting off our bikes for those rides we’ve always wanted to take. Just this past year, you made it possible for 150 more people, mostly kids, to be able to take those rides, too, through our ReCycle Bike Drive. And, as you walk or ride, we hope you enjoy the more than 150 trees we planted in front yards, schools, and parks throughout Los Altos and Los Altos Hills. Each tree is a beacon of hope for the future, storing carbon, providing habitat for animals, and adding to the visual appeal of our already beautiful communities. It’s because of you and your support over the years that we’ve been able to do any of these things. We still need that support both financial and otherwise. So, if you are able, please consider a gift to GreenTown to help us continue spreading hope well into the future. And finally, where are you finding hope these days? Please do let us know as we’d love to hear from you. You can write me directly here. Be well, Kris Jensen Executive Director kris@greentownlosaltos.org