Los Angeles

Contessa Premium Foods will officially open the doors of its $35 million Green Cuisine™ Plant in Los Angeles sometime this fall. According to Contessa, the four million square foot plant is the world’s first and largest environment-friendly frozen food manufacturing facility, as well as the first such project to earn a LEED rating from USGBC. Contessa expects to produce 150 million pounds of product at the plant in its first year of operation and is committed to sustainable practices throughout its operations. The company harvests its shrimp by acquaculture, a harvesting practice that sustains the maintenance and replacement of seafood stocks without damaging the ocean floor, inadvertently capturing other species, or otherwise degrading the marine environment.

The plant boasts a variety of interesting green design elements, fashioned specifically for the building’s unique needs.

The June 2007 issue of Urban Land included a list of ten "green building firsts", ranging from a LEED Certified police station in San Diego to a Gold convent (designed by Perkins Eastman) in Corapolis, Pennsylvania. As Charles Lockwood noted in the introduction to his piece, the diversity of projects - both by use and geographic locale - demonstrates the adaptability of sustainable architecture no matter the design challenge. (Interestingly, one of the projects is a gas station in Los Angeles - the BP Helios House, which received a Certified rating earlier this year.

The State of California has once again taken the lead through its proposed How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act, which would ban incandescent light bulbs by 2012. California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine is expected to introduce the legislation this week. Incandescent light bulbs are inefficient because they convert only about five percent of the energy they receive into light. Compact fluorescent light bulbs, on the other hand, use about twenty-five percent of the energy of conventional bulbs and generate seventy percent less heat than incandescents. Considering that one fifth of the average home’s electricity bill pays for lighting, the use of fluorescent light bulbs (while potentially, at least initially, costs more than conventional bulbs) means that the average consumer still saves money and preserves precious environmental resources—not a bad trade-off.

After chatting with me about yesterday's post, my good friend ND out in Los Angeles pointed me to a terrific project that's taking place across the City of Angels right now. The Million Trees LA Initiative is a collaborative program spearheaded by the city, community groups, local businesses, and residents with the goal of planting one million new trees across L.A. Preference is given to native and other drought-tolerant species, and the initiative will work in concert with other existing local tree programs.