Los Altos passed its first version of Reach Codes two years ago. These greenhouse gas reducing improvements to the building code update every three years. The cycle is starting now for Reach Codes 2.0, which would be implemented in January 2023. Regional utilities are working on producing a unified code that all cities can adopt to address climate change by reducing methane (natural gas) use. Los Altos is considering updating their current Reach Codes to be more aligned to the Bay Area regional code which we expect to be fully defined late this month. There are several ways to learn the facts and get involved. Read the Executive Summary (or more) of Los Altos’ Climate Action and Adaptation Plan. https://tinyurl.com/LosAltosCAAP2022 Watch the webinar the Environmental Commission has on the subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L41np51ff6s&t=19s Attend the special session where the Environmental Commission discusses Reach Codes 2.0 with the Los Altos City Council meeting. We expect this meeting to take place on July 12th, but the calendar has yet to be confirmed. Email us at info@greentownlosaltos.org if you want to be involved in helping to get these important Reach Codes passed. It could take no more than a few minutes of your time and contribute greatly to reducing Los Altos’ greenhouse gasses.

On a nice spring Saturday, a few of us volunteers along with Glenda Chang and Linda Ziff from GreenTown Los Altos, helped clean up the Permanente Creek diversion channel starting from Heritage Oaks Park and going 0.7 miles to a sewage pond near Highway 85. The diversion channel connects to Stevens Creek at Highway 85 which then flows to the San Francisco Bay. The cleanup was pretty easy as all we used was a grabber and a big blue trash bag for the debris in the creek. While we were picking up trash, there were some notable observations that we made. Near the beginning of the cleanup, there was a dying squirrel lying in the creek which we had to leave and there were many citrus droppings from fruit trees along the fences of the channel, cut logs, overgrown tree branches blocking the creek bed and other compostable debris. Also there were plants and weeds all over the place in the creek bed and on the upper level along both sides, as well as in the drainage which could easily disrupt the flow of water and the pH in the bay. Most of the plants are invasive plants, but occasionally, we'd find a flowering native one, like this valerian taking root inside one of the many drains into the channel. These will be cleared at a later date by Valley Water. However, natural trash was just the tip of the iceberg for unusual finds in our creek cleanup project. We also found a sliding door frame, metal fencing, and a couple wooden platforms, possibly pieces from a home renovation nearby, which were so big that they even ripped our trash bags! It serves to look up, as well, because we rescued mylar balloons tied up in the tree branches. There was, of course, graffiti on walls within the creek bed walls especially under Grant Rd, Milton Ct and Drericx Dr. Near the end, closer to Highway 85, a baby crow who couldn’t fly was trapped in the channel that mom and dad crows hovered over us to shoo us away. We waited and almost turned around, but we were determined to continue so we quietly walked fast not looking at the chick while covering our heads. We also found various sorts of balls likely from school children that lost them including tennis balls, baseballs, soccer balls, and more. It was truly astonishing the variety of trash that was in the creek and how much a small crew of us could find. I kept some good balls for myself. Once we had gotten to our end point for the day, we walked back to Heritage Oaks Park to sort and weigh all the types of debris that we had found. In total, most of what we found was trash (84.96 lbs) not even including the 20 pound metal fence, 15 lbs of other metal pieces, and 5.2 lbs of glass, as well as 86 tennis balls, 5 baseballs, 15 other miscellaneous balls, 49 cigarettes, a couple sweatshirts, and even a couple spray cans that were used for the graffiti we found along the way. In total it amounted to just over 120 pounds in trash from less than a mile's worth of the creek! The 86 tennis balls we saved will be donated to a Los Altos assisted community for their walkers. It was a very successful and fulfilling task in doing our part to make the world a little bit cleaner and healthier both for the environment and our drinking water.

We are excited to introduce our 2022 summer interns! Our summer intern program is now in its 5th year and we are delighted to welcome our interns - Ellie El-Fishawy, Farida Abdelhak, Naina Srivastava and Hannah Cushing. Farida and Ellie will be working on the 500 Trees Campaign to help prepare for future tree plantings and help the city of Los Altos create a Tree Planting Master Plan in support of its Climate Action and Adaptation Plan (CAAP). Of course this impacts us all given per the USDA, "one large tree can provide a day's supply of oxygen for up to four people. Trees also store carbon dioxide in their fibers helping to clean the air and reduce the negative effects that this CO2 could have had on our environment." Naina and Hannah will be working on Drought Tolerant Landscaping to develop resources to help influence and support homeowners in the community to transform their lawns to drought-tolerant landscaping. They will be writing a case-study on what it takes to transform lawns and gardens to drought-tolerant landscapes. Given our current drought, minimizing or eliminating watering will benefit us all. Ellie El-Fishawy Hello! I am Ellie El-Fishawy, a rising senior at Menlo School. I am so excited to be a part of GreenTown, specifically the 500 Trees Campaign. I have always cared deeply for the environment and now more than ever is an important time to enact positive, tangible change. Last summer I interned at Grassroots Ecology, and am looking forward to tackling a similar issue through a different avenue. Outside of school I love to play soccer competitively. I recently started a project that combined my passion for the environment and soccer. The project, RePlay, works to help combat excessive waste in fashion, more specifically in sports. It does so through the redistribution of unused sports uniforms to under-resourced teams whilst recycling unusable, or single uniforms to repurposing and recycling programs. So far we have collected around 400 lbs of uniforms! Through this internship I really hope to get people to care just as much about the state of our planet. Some fun facts about me are that I love poetry, playing the guitar, and my favorite book is Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. Farida Abdelhak Hello! I am Farida, a rising Junior at Los Altos High School. Growing up I was introduced to environmental issues through my science classes with a underlining dim tone. It was not until my freshman year of High School when I discovered Green Team, LAHS’s environmental club, that I got more involved in environmental activism. It gave me a platform to direct my desires of creating a safer world and avoid an existential crisis! I mainly worked on the Food Waste project my freshman year and went on to leading it in my Sophomore year. Through Green Team, I learned about Grassroots Ecology which I partook in a stewardship program with. Since my family don’t generally engage in outdoor activities, stewarding was my way of spending time in nature which I found therapeutic. A few facts about me: My favorite plant is the Cleveland Sage because it has a beautiful smell and I love the color purple. My favorite book is Night because it gives a raw perspective into the reality of the Holocaust while also portraying a story of self-discovery the average person can relate to. Naina Srivastava Hi, my name is Naina and I'm a rising senior at Mountain View High School. I've always been really interested in the environment; when I was younger I'd often go camping and hiking with my family. Nowadays, it's hard to find the time to do all of that, but I've been able to explore my interest in the subject further through my extracurriculars and the AP Environmental Science class, which I took last year. In my free time, I'm usually typing away on a Google Doc, aka writing articles for The Oracle, my school newspaper, and the Midpeninsula Post, an independent student newspaper, both of which I'm the editor-in-chief. Hannah Cushing Hello there, I’m Hannah! As a rising senior at Saint Francis High School, I am so excited to be interning for GreenTown. For as long as I can remember, caring for the environment has been really important to me. I’ve grown up hiking and have scaled peaks from Lake Tahoe to Northern Italy. I’ve enjoyed learning to identify native flora and fauna wherever I go and am always amazed at the biodiversity that exists all around us. I also enjoy sea kayaking, especially when I get to see sea otters. I am so appreciative of being able to work on GreenTown’s drought-tolerant landscaping projects and hope that my work raises community awareness. Outside of school, I play competitive softball and relish spending time with my friends and my high-energy German Shorthaired Pointer, Percy.

Are you confused about heat pumps? Read on for a non-technical overview. Heat pumps have been around a long time and are the dominate technology households outside of the U.S. use for heating and cooling homes and heating water. They are far more efficient and safer compared to traditional natural gas (methane) powered furnaces and other types of water heaters. They come in many shapes and sizes, depending upon what your lifestyle and house dictate. For space heating, they can come in a style that serves only one room or they can connect to your existing ductwork and heat or cool your entire house similarly to how a gas furnace does. The heat pump for heating the water in your home looks a lot like your traditional water heater. The heat pump for space heating can look a lot like your furnace if it ties into your ductwork. Heat pumps for space heating also have an outside box that looks like a small A/C unit outside your house. In fact, all heat pumps for space heating automatically include A/C in their function because of how they work. Like furnaces and water heaters, they come in different prices and sizes and various noise levels. While heat pumps tend to cost more on the front end, they are far more efficient in the long run. Every household is different as to when they recapture the up front costs in energy bill savings. For some it can be as little as a few years. For others it might take ten or more years. Buying a heat pump over a furnace is not unlike buying dual pane over single pane windows. You pay more for the dual pane windows up front, but over time they pay for themselves in reduced energy bills and comfort. There are increasingly more contractors who specialize in heat pumps as well as traditional plumbers and HVAC technicians who carry both gas-powered and heat pump appliances. Your utility company offers rebates, in some circumstances, to offset the upfront costs. Perhaps the best reason to love a heat pump is that is does not use any methane gas, which we now know is bad for your health and about the worst greenhouse gas we can pump into the environment. For more information on how to get started on heat pumps, please contact us at info@greentownlosaltos.org and we’ll point you in the right direction.

GreenTown's been working with E3 Youth Philanthropy to create planter boxes, produce web content and an educational video that highlight the importance of drought-tolerant plants in addressing the ongoing drought in Northern California. LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR LAWN-BE-GONE PROGRAM AND DROUGHT-TOLERANT PLANTS These planter boxes are part of an art installation, curated by Arts Los Altos, including "Inflorescence," by Liz Hickok and "Waveforms," by Phil Spitler and Victoria Heilman. Read more about the art here. Meet and greet the artists and the E3 students who helped with the planter boxes at the opening of the installation on May 6th at 7:30pm in the paseo adjacent to Akane Restaurant on 3rd Street in Los Altos. Arts Los Altos approached GreenTown as a partner for planter boxes in the paseo project that GreenTown saw as an opportunity to expand its public education on climate-suitable plants beyond its Woodland Library Native Garden. The E3 Youth Philanthropy team conducted research (on planters, wood for the facades, drought-tolerant plants with appropriate soils), built and painted the planter facades, and planted the planters! They look amazing with the art. Next steps for the project include creating placards for the planter boxes and finishing the web content and video. The placards will point you to the web page with content and a video that will provide info on the importance of drought-tolerant and native plants for conserving precious water resources while mitigating and adapting to climate change. Some details on the plants in the planters can be found here. Many thanks to Vicki Moore, founder of Living Classroom and a supporter of both the arts and the environment, and to Nikki Hanson of California Sisters Landscapes, who worked with GreenTown on the Woodland Library garden, for their design work on the project and for helping to make the planters a reality! This project wouldn't have been possible without the initial idea and community consciousness of Maddy McBirney and Karen Zucker of Arts Los Altos and the artistic vision of Liz Hickok, Phil Spitler and Victoria Heilweil!

After a two year absence, we could finally hold a group event, and in early April, 25 bike riders visited landscapes in the community featuring drought-tolerant plants and no lawn. LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR LAWN-BE-GONE PROGRAM AND DROUGHT-TOLERANT PLANTS At the first home, Susan Moss, an experienced gardener, showed us the yard she designed. It was beautiful and by using the Cal Water Service rebate program (visit calwater.com), she recovered most of her cost. The second home’s landscape was designed by Tyler Furuichi (tylerfuruichi@gmail.com) and incorporated large existing plants with new plants, completely removing the lawn. Donwload plant list for this home: The third home showed us a yard that has been native and drought-tolerant for many years. The plants were labeled and many riders snapped pictures to help them with their own plans. The final home also featured natives and many were in full bloom. The plants were labeled and there were even resource books available. The final stop was at the Woodland Library Garden. We got a chance to see the plants that were planted five years ago by GreenTown as part of a girl scout gold award project. The manzanitas and ceanothus have done well and are now large. With the help of landscape designer Nikki Hanson (nikki@cal-sisters.com), GreenTown recently cleaned up the grounds, planted some new plants and made some adjustments to the drip irrigation system. It will get some wood chips and some new labels soon, and be ready for another five years! You can see the plant list for the Woodland Library here on Calscape or download the pdf below.

Encouraging biking and walking to school can be so much fun, as evidenced by Gardner Buliis' amazing Walk or Wheel (WoW!) Day held on March 18th. Organized by parents, Nick and Melissa French, the event featured a race finish at the end of students' morning school commute. (Nick is a longtime runner). Students who walked or biked that day crossed under a large blue inflated Finish line and were greeted with fanfare and an announcement on the other side. They then made their way to tables with orange slices, muffins, some swag, like frisbees, bags, and bike bells, as well as an opportunity to pledge to bike and walk more. What a way to start the day! GreenTown Support GreenTown provided background to the French’s on organizing a WoW! Day - though clearly they know how to throw a party! A week prior to the event, they shared a short safety presentation at the school’s morning assembly. On the day of, we brought out the always-popular GreenTown blender bike, where kids use their own pedal power to blend smoothies then enjoy the fruits of their labor. We thanked the students for biking and walking, encouraged them to keep it up for the good of the planet, and handed them a sticker to remind them that WoW!, they did it! When the numbers were tallied, more than half of the school participated with 168 students walking and biking that dayl! Sixth grade teacher, Devik Schreiner, who was on traffic duty that morning, noted that it is usually crazy in the drop-off zone and emphasized, "This was my easiest day ever!" Recently Fewer Kids Biking and Walking It seems that habits formed during the pandemic have put a damper on elementary school kids’ walking and biking to school. Garner Bullis has begun to turn the tide. Let’s extend that example to other schools and get back to healthy school commutes. Active school commutes are: Fire up your child’s brain and muscles for the school day Reduce carbon emissions and air toxins around school pick-up/drop-off areas, and Reduce traffic congestion around school, making it safer to walk and bike. Bike/Ped Safety Instruction Needed…and Coming Anecdotal reports suggest kids (and parents) are in need of more instruction on how to walk and bike safely. Los Altos School District (LASD) plans to pilot a bicycle and pedestrian safety curriculum by the end of May. The curriculum, developed by Alta Planning for the Los Altos Safe Routes to School program, and with input from LASD PE staff, targets 4th, 5th and 6th graders. This is a great start, for sure! Fingers crossed, following the pilot, LASD will refine the program and deliver it more widely throughout the District by next fall. In the meantime, GreenTown has a wealth of resources on its website to help improve pedestrian and bicycle safety. Visit www.greentownlosaltos.org/schoolswow. May is Bike Month - Learn More about WoW!! May is Bike Month and a great time to hold events to encourage biking and walking to school. One option is participating in the May 4th, National Bike & Roll Day. Whether you choose to hold an event on that day or any day in May, we’re here to help. If you’d like to learn more about the WoW! Program, help improve bike and pedestrian safety around your school or organize a WoW! event, contact us at info@greentownlosaltos.org.

Wow! What an event! Thank you so much to all our donors and volunteers for coming out and helping to make the 2022 ReCycle Bike Drive a huge success! We collected more than 80 bikes from our community and cleaned and repaired most of them. Thank you cleaners, that's a big job! (The few that we didn't clean we had pulled aside because we knew we wouldn't be able to repair them on Saturday.) The bike repair team was impressive, as always. A giant shout out to our loyal bike fixers and the Bicycle Exchange team! We fixed lots of bikes, most of which made it through the quality control phase. ; ) As a result, we have a great start on bikes for students in need, a bit more work to do on some bikes to add to that bucket, and we are set to donate 20 or so bikes to several other organizations working to help get folks on bikes. Special thanks to those who volunteered for yet another bike drive, to the Bike Exchange team, to newbies who we hope we'll get back next year, and to the students and former students who we love to share this event with! Finally, we couldn't ask for a better location for the drive than LAHS. It works out so well. Thank you to LAHS for supporting the event and for the generous storage space afterwards. We know that the kids and others who receive bikes will treasure them and end up cycling more and driving less! And that is, after all, a large part of why we do it. Thank you for doing your part in making this year's drive such a success.

Lights, camera, action! GreenTown is teaming with E3 Youth Philanthropy to bring a sustainability message to a new Arts Los Altos installation. The team will create planter boxes and produce an educational video, highlighting the importance of dought-tolerant plants in addressing the ongoing drought in Northern California. The art, Inflorescence, created by Liz Hickok and Phil Spitler, and curated by ArtsLosAltos will be installed off of 3rd Street in the paseo adjacent to Akane Restaurant. The installation will evoke the process of flowering using augmented reality, lighting and projection technologies, and feature illuminated benches that light up and enable viewers to enjoy the paseo. Read more about the project here. GreenTown and E3 will create and install planter boxes with modern climate-suitable plants that fit the modern aesthetic of the installation. The planter boxes will include a QR code that enable viewers to quickly access GreenTown’s website, which will include background on the project, the plants chosen and why, as well as an educational video on the project. Arts Los Altos approached GreenTown as a partner for the paseo project, particularly the planter boxes, and GreenTown saw it as an opportunity to expand it’s public educational on climate-suitable plants beyond Woodland Library, which includes an interpretive native garden. The E3 Youth Philanthropy team is implementing the project from researching plants and soil types to writing and creating website and video content. The installation in the paseo should be completed by the middle of April. Stay tuned for more information about this project!

In January, GreenTown Los Altos partnered with Acterra for an event called "Plentiful New Year" aimed at promoting plant based eating at any level you feel comfortable with in your home. The event is over but your ability to participate is still wide open! Here's some of what you can do: Continue the Plantiful dietary challenge, pledging to eat more foods that are friendly to, and for, the environment. Do it at your own pace and feel free to reach out to healthyplate@acterra.org for any help. Sign up for Acterra's Healthy Plate, Healthy Planet newsletter for exclusive interviews with local Bay Area plant-based chefs and for the event announcements like the next dietary challenge, recipes and resources. Check it out here. Also check out GreenTown Los Altos' Eating Green blurbs in the newsletter which offer activities through the year like the Eating Green Foodie Club in the spring. Sign up for the newsletter here. One easy "on ramp" is Meatless Mondays, where you skip meat on Mondays. Check out Acterra's Meatless Alphabet or GreenTown's Plant-Based Guide for Families website, if you need ideas for what to whip up for any meal. Listen to Dana Ellis Hunnes' January webinar here. She's an environmentalist and dietitian who gave tips on how to be healthier and be a more sustainably aware consumer. We welcome you to also join GreenTown's Eating Green Team, if you're passionate about promoting Eating Green or would like to learn more about how we can help with the transition to a plant-based diet. Email us here.

Out of sight, under our feet, groundwater (see video What is Groundwater here) is a hidden treasure that enriches our lives. Groundwater fills spaces between sand, gravel and clay in water-bearing formations called aquifers. It is invisible, but its impact is visible everywhere. Our drinking water and sanitation, our food supply and natural environment–all these rely on groundwater. Groundwater is being over-used in many areas,where more water is abstracted from aquifers than is recharged by rain and snow. Continuous over-use leads eventually to depletion of the resource. According to the Water Education Foundation, 30% of California’s total annual water supply comes from groundwater, and up to 60% in drought years. Want to learn more about California’s groundwater? Click here. Groundwater is polluted in many areas and remediation is often a long and difficult process. What we do on the surface matters underground. We must only put harmless, biodegradable products on the soil and use water as efficiently as possible. Groundwater will play a critical role in adapting to climate change, especially drought. We must protect and explore groundwater, balancing the needs of the people and the planet. We need to work together to sustainably manage this precious resource. Learn more about it (in a fun way) here and share, act and make it fun! Shoot your 60 second groundwater story and share it. What do you know about the groundwater in the Los Altos area? Do you have a well? How has drought affected the groundwater levels where you live? Is a spring a groundwater? (Video tip: I’ve seen a couple on the trails at Hidden Villa) What ideas do you have to protect it locally? What simple ways can you do to preserve it? Upload your video to YouTube or Vimeo with hashtags #MyGroundwaterStory #WorldWaterDay #GreenTownLosAltos or simply share what you know in the comment section below. Find out more at www.worldwaterday.org.

Congratulations to the Los Altos High School Green Team for hosting an outstanding “Students for Green High Scho ols” conference on February 5, 2022! In its ninth year (and second time held virtually), this student-led annual event provides a platform for local student groups to discuss environmental issues, brainstorm ideas, and share resources. The overall theme for this year’s conference was conservation. On the impressive speaker panel and joining live via Zoom from the Netherlands was Dr. Irene Dedoussi, Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology. Focusing on the environmental impact from aviation, her presentation was educational and thought provoking. Who knew that changing an aircraft’s flight plan could mitigate its environmental impact? Or that business class has a higher environmental footprint than coach as it requires more space per passenger? After a short break, attendees were divided into seven break-out rooms to discuss land ecosystems, marine ecosystems, water waste, urban waste, energy, agricultural waste, and Indigenous communities. Green Team leads kept the discussions lively and tracked collaborative input. The second speaker was Dartmouth College student Amanda Sun (Homestead HS alum). Sun’s youth-run nonprofit Green2Go works with universities to replace their 8-plus million single-use plastics per year with reusable alternatives. Launched just a few months ago, Green2Go is already implemented in more than 20 universities, including Stanford and UC Santa Barbara. Wow! After Sun’s presentation, attendees shared their break-out room presentations. I was impressed by the knowledge and passion from these students! Discussions included monocropping, ocean acidification, fast fashion, and the increased waste of all kinds during the pandemic. Students suggested action items for their schools such as adding solar panels, fixing water leaks, adding water bottle refill stations, supporting school gardens by including photography and other groups, and educating students on trash/compost sorting and the importance of reducing food waste. Good ideas for homes as well. Youth activist Peri Plantenburg (Homestead HS) wrapped up the conference with an energized presentation and call to action. As student leader of Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action, Plantenburg has been involved in creating a climate change curriculum that has reached more than 8,000 HS students and more than 240 teachers. The group also offers a workshop to help students advocate for a climate action plan at their school. Wow again! The message from our youth came through loud and clear — the time to act is NOW! Let’s do all we can to join them in the fight against climate change! Email us here with your ideas which we will share on our social media.