Candace Seu of Pasadena Complete Streets Coalition (PCSC) had nudged me a couple of times: Would Transition Pasadena's Beautiful Swales project partner with PCSC? And so I finally called a public meeting of what had been just a couple of people and a ‘raising awareness’ project on Facebook. Can we even do that? Evidently yes, we can.

The backstory: Sept 12, 2015, I went to a TEDx at Art Center College of Design. My goal was to be inspired to do something, anything, with swales. (A swale is a water-harvesting ditch.) Success! After hearing Youmna Chamcham, founder and designer of LiveLoveBeirut, I went home and created the Facebook page Beautiful Swales. Like LiveLoveBeirut, the page invites visitors to post pictures — though of beautiful swales not of Beirut. Then I went back to Art Center for the rest of the TEDx. 

Two and a half years later, because of Candace’s nudges, I created the first Facebook event for Beautiful Swales: a public Beautiful Swales meeting. Candace, in turn, announced the meeting to Pasadena Complete Streets Coalition (PCSC). 

I was excited for the meeting at Peet’s Coffee on May 2. There were five of us, a full-fledged action committee and a collaborative partnership between PCSC and Transition Pasadena! We went over existing local swales projects and came up with some of our own. We had a lot of questions such as “What are the rules for putting in swales?” Everyone agreed to do a little homework.

Homework got done. Emails flew between us. Then, on May 31, two of us met with Pasadena Water and Power and Pasadena Public Works in the persons of Ursula Schmidt and Sean Singletary. Questions got asked. Answers were given, such as “Rules for swales have yet to be written.” It’s the Wild West out there right now, people!

On June 4, during the regular PCSC meeting, I made an impromptu report. It’s a whole new Beautiful Swales, and there will be more public meetings to follow. Thanks for the nudge, Candace.

—Sylvia Holmes

“Transition is a movement of communities coming together to reimagine and rebuild our world.” – from Transition Network

After watching the heart-wrenching viral video of a turtle with a straw stuck up its nose, I swore off plastic straws. That was a few years ago, and ever since then whenever I order a drink in a restaurant or bar I say, “no straw please.” It has become a mantra: “no straw please.”

I used to be almost apologetic when I asked, not wanting to bug the waiter or bartender with a special request or to make my friends uncomfortable — uncomfortable because behind the request is the story of that poor turtle and the crisis of plastic pollution… not exactly light dinner conversation. I’d say it anyway. I was glad I wasn’t personally contributing to plastic pollution that could potentially harm marine life, but I knew it was a lost cause as a one-person crusade.

Each day, 500 million plastic straws are discarded in the U.S. Plastic straws are one of the top 10 items picked up on International Coastal Cleanup Day. That may add up to a small percentage of the eight million tons of plastic dumped into the ocean each year, but plastic straws represent the worst of our throwaway society, where an unnecessary item has become ubiquitous, used for just a few minutes and discarded with utter thoughtlessness, convenience trumping consciousness and stewardship of the planet.

The crisis of plastic pollution can fill me with despair. Transition Pasadena has given me a way to channel that sense of helplessness into advocacy, strengthening my connection to the community and offering a way to “reimagine and rebuild our world,” starting at the local level. A few of us in Transition Pasadena leave information cards at local restaurants from the Last Plastic Straw project, which encourages serving straws only upon request, but I don’t know any that have changed their practices based on our suggestions. Our Eco Breakfast planning team decided to amp up our efforts by gathering for Eco Cocktails in the hopes we’d make a stronger case as a group.

Our first gathering was at Trejo’s in May. I contacted the manager beforehand to give her a heads up about our “no plastic straw” gathering. She was friendly but seemed disinterested in the campaign, a disinterest that played out with our waiter/bartender. Although we emphasized we all wanted our drinks without straws, he delivered our first round of cocktails with plastic straws. What?! We couldn’t believe it.​​ I felt disheartened and expressed my dismay to him. At first he laughed it off, but then he apologized and shared something very telling: “It’s just so automatic for me to put straws in drinks, I don’t even think about it.” Precisely! He went on to say it would actually save him time if he didn’t have to add straws to every drink. Wouldn’t it make sense for the default to be to serve drinks without straws and only give them upon request?

Fortunately, restaurants around the world — in Bali, Belize, Baltimore, Malibu, Vancouver, B.C., and Hoedspruit, South Africa — are changing the way they serve plastic straws, some eliminating them entirely. In Pasadena, Seed Bakery and Sage Bistro both serve paper straws. Kudos to them for taking the initiative on their own.

Want to join us at future Eco Cocktail gatherings to help us nudge local restaurants to join the movement against plastic straws? Let us know, and we’ll add you to our mailing list. In the meantime, you can be part of the solution starting right now. Just say “no straw please” every time you order a drink. ​

—Susan Campisi

My husband and I are mulling on getting an electric car. There is much to consider. One consideration is that the electricity the city provides us is only 30 percent renewably sourced from solar, wind and hydroelectric generators. The remaining 60 percent is still sourced from fossil fuels: coal and fracked gas. Is an electric car still the wisest choice? Well, compared to walking or biking or staying home no. Compared to driving a gas hybrid, as I am doing, yes. But hubby and I have gotten by, sharing one car for almost two years. So maybe it is wiser to stick with the occasional inaccessibility of a car and drive less. 

The City of Pasadena is having a related internal conversation right now. Pasadena Water and Power is about to make a plan for where we will source our energy for the next 20 years. The state has put a deadline of December 31, 2018, on this Integrated Resource Plan. By state mandate, the City must choose to achieve at least 50 percent renewables by 2030, but may select up to 100 percent renewable energy as 70 other cities across the United States have done.

Clearly, the city wants to make the most cost-efficient, reliable and environmentally sound decision. But our City Council members readily admit that City finances are dire and top priority. So the question at hand becomes what percentage of renewables will cost least. But how do we measure the environmental cost ? We can measure rising CO2 in the atmosphere but what about the other costs: increasing drought will negatively impact food and water access. There are  human health costs. The list is lengthy. For me this is a moral and ethical debate. Are there numbers to weigh in for the moral thing to do? 

Pasadenans have an opportunity to give our opinion on how important it is to have renewably sourced power in our city. Do you have  outside-the-box ideas?  Source solar locally on our City buildings and buses? Join LA County’s Community Choice Aggregation as 31 SoCal communities have? Live with a little less electricity, like my husband and I have been living with a little less car access? It’s not so painful, and it will slow the acceleration to an unlivable climate for our children and for us. 

Pasadena Water and Power will hold two public presentations of this plan. The first will be July 18, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., at the Pasadena Central Library (Donald Wright Auditorium). The second will be in August, date not yet set.
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Showing up at the community meetings sends the message that we are paying attention. Speaking up has even more impact. 

—Therese Brummel