Resident Stories

Submitted by Steve Richard (steve.richard@gmail.com) Challenge A few years back I wrote a success story titled “Home Lighting Audit” that shared our experience transitioning much of our house to CFL light bulbs.  At the time of the story we had replaced 51 incandescent bulbs with CFLs.  Starting around 2010 I realized that CFLs were a [...]

Submitted by Linda Riebel Challenge When my husband and I were relocating to Lafayette in 2006, we had at lot of stuff to condense and move — we married in our 50s, and each had accumulated a lifetime’s worth of material goods. To clean up our jam-packed San Jose house to show to realtors and [...]

Submitted by Graham Parkinson-Morgan (g.parkinson-morgan@comcast.net) Challenge When I was a kid growing up in the North of England, Olive Oil meant Popeye’s girlfriend. Later on, when I was old enough to go down the pub, olives were things that people put in their Martinis, and not knowing their origins of these strange green things, there [...]

Submitted by Linda Riebel (linda.riebel@earthlink.net) For years, we never got Christmas trees. Even though some are grown sustainably, we winced at the thought of cutting down a perfectly good tree. When we moved to Lafayette to a home with plenty of land around it, we were inspired to buy little living evergreens, decorate them for [...]

Submitted by Linda Riebel with additions and photographs from Alison Hill   Challenge In 1983 I moved into a house that had a washer but no dryer, so I learned to use a drying rack and an outdoor clothesline.  When I bought the house some years later, I didn’t want to write a large check [...]

Submitted by Steve Richard (steve.richard@gmail.com) Challenge For the past few years our family has been trying to reduce the amount of waste we generate and have to put in our blue waste bin.   We’ve been successful enough to switch to the smaller 32-gallon container, even though we have a family of four with two teenage [...]

Submitted by Linda Riebel (linda.riebel@earthlink.net) Challenge Here in Lafayette we are blessed with a delightful mix of people and other creatures. Far from the urban jungles of asphalt and concrete, we have nature at our doorstep, even downtown, with trails, trees, and creeks that offer habitats for wildlife. On my own property my husband and [...]

Written by Linda Riebel of Sustainable Lafayette, based on an interview with Manager, Shelley diGiovanna (shelleydigiovanna@yahoo.com). Acalanes Apartments comprises 5 buildings at the top of Risa Road, not far from the reservoir. The owners’ green consciousness was already high when they erected the first building 40 years ago – around a living tree! I went [...]

Submitted by Will Thorn (A Third Grader) My name is Will Thorn. I am a Third Grader at Happy Valley School and have lived in Lafayette all my life.   I love to build and my favorite project is my sustainable fort. I have been building it for years using recycled lumber from my Dad’s building [...]

Submitted by Jacqueline Florine CHALLENGE As a family of four, we generate approximately 8 cups a week of kitchen food waste. When our waste management company delivered a kitchen countertop food waste bucket, we were excited about the program but didn’t have any place to dump the collected food scraps.  Our condo complex doesn’t have [...]

Submitted by Sharon Richard (snrichard@comcast.net) with input from Alison Hill. Challenge Over the past couple years, our family has made a big effort to make the switch to organic foods; in many cases “locally produced foods”; and to support companies who have embraced sustainable practices. Thanks to an array of stores that provide these foods [...]

Submitted by Christina Meinberg, Managing Director of Triple Bottom Line Strategies (www.tblstrategies.com) Challenge When I became a first-time homeowner recently, I found the amount of mail I started getting to be overwhelming. It reminded me of a discussion I had overheard during my “past career” in corporate retail. I distinctly recall being in a meeting [...]

Submitted by: Leslie Golden, RLA, LEED AP, BFL QP (lgolden@goldenlandarch.com) Challenge When we buy an appliance or car – we usually inquire about the energy cost or miles to the gallon. These are operational costs, which help inform our purchase decisions. Why don’t we use the same logic in our own backyards? When my family [...]

Written by Maureen Isaacs (summer intern) based on interviewing Jude Parkinson-Morgan (j.parkinson-morgan@comcast.net).  Challenge: The Parkinson-Morgans had a challenge to face when they first moved into their home: the front lawn consisted of ivy and unhealthy grass. The ivy was abundant in both the back and the front yards, and the previous owners had left them [...]

Submitted by:  Brad Wade (bradwade@alum.pomona.edu) Challenge We knew that we would install a solar photovoltaic system “sometime,” but the need to replace the roof and gutters provided the motivation to actually go and do it.  Rightly or wrongly, we figured that the new roof would be more weatherproof if the supports for the solar panels [...]

Submitted by Brad Crane (bcrane1@comcast.net) Challenge Having kids means being an example, for all things at all times. As a parent I wanted to set a better example for our kids. Specifically, I wanted to demonstrate what it means to be environmentally responsible.  So, my challenge was to find a kid-friendly way to reduce our [...]

Submitted by: Kim Curiel (kimmcuriel@gmail.com) Challenge How to prepare a family meal on a hot day yet keep the house cool while making the best use of the hot summer sun and not polluting the air with barbeque smoke? My Nana Jessie first introduced me to solar cooking when I was in the first grade [...]

Written by Maureen Isaacs (Sustainable Lafayette Intern) Challenge When Gwenn and John Lennox looked into remodeling their house, they found that the costs were almost equivalent to demolishing their house and starting from scratch. They decided to take this opportunity in disguise to create a house with minimal initial and future environmental impacts. Solution Details [...]

Submitted by Karen Maggio (kjmaggio@pomrg.com) Challenge: At some point, in our wooded community, we need to remove or prune trees. Finding a solution for the resulting wood can be challenging. Wood burning fireplaces are seeing less use with “spare the air” days and are being phased out through greener building ordinances. Hauling wood away can [...]

Submitted by John Hall (jdhall@mac.com) Using LED technology lighting, you will never have to change another light bulb and you may save on your house heating bill. We have essentially unlimited energy from the sunlight.  Only 7 billionths of the Sun’s energy strikes the earth but that energy striking the earth is 3 billion billion [...]

Submitted by Karen Maggio (kjmaggio@pomrg.com) Challenge: We packed up the car this September to take our youngest child to college and, before we drove away, shoved a FOR SALE sign in the front yard. We all talk about that day when the kids are grown and what we will do and where we will eventually [...]

Submitted by: Bart Carr (bart_carr@yahoo.com) Challenge I am always looking for new ways to get around without using my car.  Our 2009 summer vacation took my family to Italy.  While stuck in a traffic jam trying to get from the airport to central Rome, I noticed quite a few commuters on their Vespa scooters riding through and around gridlocked traffic.  [...]

Submitted by: Michael Dawson (mdawson@gmail.com) Challenge I constantly try to find ways to make our home more energy efficient, but the benefits of these changes aren’t easily measured. There’s a large information gap between incremental improvements and the monthly arrival of the electricity bill. I wanted to know: how can I track the effects of [...]

Submitted By: John Kiefer (jhkiefer@comcast.net) NOTE: Sign up for Papa John’s Chicken Workshop. View the workshop flyer. Let me tell you, ‘It’s something special! Holding that miracle in your hands, sometimes still warm. Into the morning pan with a splash of golden sun filled with essential health. What a way to start school or work. [...]

Submitted By: Steve Richard (swrichard@comcast.net) Challenge Like many in Lafayette I often find myself driving into town to Trader Joes, Diablo Foods, and other “hot spots.” Traffic can be thick on Moraga Road and Mt. Diablo Blvd., especially when school is getting out. And then there is the groan when you try to turn left [...]

Submitted By: Bridget Wellerstein (bwellers@mac.com) Challenge What to make for dinner that’s healthy, fast and tasty. It was near the end of the week and I was exhausted and out of dinner ideas. The boys and I had been running around town all afternoon. I had just dropped Ethan at his baseball game. Daniel and [...]

Submitted By: Tina Goodfriend (email: tgoodfrnd@aol.com) CHALLENGE My journey with food has been a long time in the making. Growing up with strong food traditions and sitting at the dinner table every night nurtured a sense of belonging and stability in my childhood. When my three children were born, I wanted to pass on the food [...]

Submitted By: Steve Richard (swrichard@comcast.net) Challenge I think we installed our first CFL light bulbs in the spring of 2006. I recall putting my first bulbs on a couple lamps and a few outdoor lights. That was a good start, but I didn’t feel particularly confident about what to do next. I was full of [...]

Submitted By: Tina Tankka (TinyT74@comcast.net) Challenge To make changes around our home that conserve energy, reduce waste and generally make it more sustainable. Solution Details We’ve just changed all our bulbs to the compact fluorescent ones. The lighting is remarkably “not blue” and pleasing. And it certainly makes turning on a light a lot less [...]

Submitted By: Greg Wikler (gwikler@gepllc.com) Challenge Practicing what we preach has always been an important concept that my wife and I have learned throughout our lives. As a professional consultant in the energy efficiency field for over 20 years, I have to confess that on the home front I wasn’t making a sincere effort to [...]

Submitted By: Steve Richard swrichard@comcast.net Challenge One of my goals has been to reduce our home’s overall energy consumption by 25% through efficiency and conservation. There are all the standard recommendations like a) adding insulation and generally sealing your home better, b) changing light bulbs, c) adjusting your thermostat, d) replacing old appliances, etc. etc. [...]

Submitted By: Louise Clark (LouiseClark@comcast.net) Challenge I had a simple goal: to upgrade my 52 year old house so that it would burn no fossil fuels. This might sound a little overwhelming, but fortunately I have an engineer son who was willing to tackle the challenge for me. Our home feels a little like a [...]

Submitted By: Vali Frank (frank.niyogi@sbcglobal.net) Challenge We moved to Lafayette last September during a heat wave, and fairly quickly were horrified both by the heat and shortly thereafter our power bill.  One month it topped out at 1800 kw per month, for a power bill that was over $600.  After living in Berkeley and Oakland for [...]

Written by Sustainable Lafayette based on an interview with Joanne Tan (tan-toudic@comcast.net) Challenge Joanne Tan is as enthusiastic as anyone that we’ve met about making her home more energy efficient and reducing her contribution to global warming. Besides that her 30 year old furnace was often malfunctioning and left her family in coldness for a [...]

Submitted By: Bart Carr (bart_carr@yahoo.com) Challenge I’ve been interested in solar power for many years. Early on, the expense and effort of setting up an “off-grid” solar power system was a real obstacle. An off-grid system relies on batteries to store whatever power is generated. Since off-grid systems are totally isolated from PG&E’s electrical distribution [...]

Submitted By: Becky Shafi (fun4shafis@yahoo.com) Challenge A few months ago my dad told me I should get a solar clothes dryer. I said “Oh, that sounds interesting. How does it work?” He says, “It’s great! It’s so easy. It works fast, and your clothes will smell really good.” “Hey, I want one of those,” I [...]

Submitted By: Steve Richard (swrichard@comcast.net) Updated: August 2008 UPDATE: We have now been running our solar system for 17 months. Over that period our electricity bill has averaged $46/month, compared to $200-250 before (reduced 80%), so we have saved over $3,000 so far. Our lowest bill is in the middle of the summer (negative) and [...]

Submitted By: Jeff Kent (Jeff.Kent@rhi.com) Challenge As the world warms up and our climate continues to change, reducing our personal carbon footprint will become ever more increasingly important. Changing the way we commute to is probably the biggest single change an individual can reduce his or her own footprint. For 30 years, I’ve biked to [...]

Submitted By: Hugh R. Winig, MD (hrwinigmd@yahoo.com) “There are times when we probably do not need a car, yet are just in the bad habit of using one.” Recently I learned of a study comparing the average walking speed of people from different countries. The people with the fastest pace are in Japan. The U.S. [...]

Submitted By: Claude Aiello (claudelind@aol.com) Challenge To contribute more to preserving our environment and feel good about it. Solution Details I travel often in Europe and I noticed how many people use their bikes instead of cars to do their shopping, visiting, going to work or just recreation.  While there, my friend, who uses her bike for [...]

Submitted By: Dana Wilson (dsimi@comcast.net) Challenge How to get my kindergartener to school without contributing to global warming. Solution Details For 2 years my 6 year old daughter and I have biked to school on a tandem bike. It seemed crazy to be taking my SUV to school when we live so close, so we decided [...]

Submitted By: Len Curran Challenge How to commute to work in the most environmentally-friendly way. Solution Details Hi. My name is Len Curran and I ride my bike to BART as part of my commute to work as much as I can. I live in Burton Valley which is minutes from the Lafayette Moraga Bike [...]

Submitted By: Steve Richard (swrichard@comcast.net) Challenge I’m one of those people who has finally trained myself to bring reusable grocery bags to the store every time, but never really thought much about the produce bags that end up inside them. Somehow they never seemed as significant. But the reality is that every time I shop [...]

Submitted By: Kim Curiel (kimcuriel@yahoo.com) After hosting Thanksgiving dinner for 28, we realized we hadn’t taken down the trash can, and in fact, had forgotten to take the can down for two weeks prior. Could three weeks of trash possibly fit in that small blue can? It did. A small miracle perhaps, but one that [...]

Submitted By: Many families – see below. Challenge Believe it or not, about 15-20% of all residential waste in California is food scraps. In 2005, just the Lamorinda communities sent more than 8,000 tons of food scraps to local landfills. If you do the math on this, it means that a family of four in [...]

Submitted By: Sharon Richard (snrichard@comcast.net) Challenge I have two boys that are now 17 and 13 years old. For years, I’ve packed their lunches using baggies, saran wrap, aluminum foil, and whatever else I needed to protect each item. Besides the things I wrap, I often included packaged items like yogurt and granola bars. And [...]

Submitted By: Rosalind Kim (rosalind.kim@gmail.com) Challenge Like many in Lamorinda I’ve become adept at filling our brown recycling bin with glass, cardboard, paper, plastic, and aluminum. But there are still many odd items around the house that can’t be put in the brown bin and don’t seem like they should be thrown away. I’ve become [...]

Submitted By: Becky Shafi (fun4shafis@yahoo.com) Challenge Plastic shopping bags are a huge problem. When not disposed of properly they end up in waterways and eventually in the ocean where birds, dolphins, fish and turtles are eating them and dying. If they aren’t eaten by sea life they may end up contributing to the great Pacific garbage [...]

Submitted By: Steve Richard (swrichard@comcast.net) Challenge Recently we remodeled one of our bathrooms. The first step as in any remodel was to remove all of the existing cabinets, sinks, tub, tile, and other fixtures. We put everything that we removed out on our driveway and I wondered how to best get rid of it. We [...]

Submitted By: Kim Curiel (kimcuriel@yahoo.com) Challenge I was sick to death of seeing half empty plastic water bottles left throughout my house. At first I made lots of noise at my kids to finish their water then put the bottles in the recycling bin. Very quickly the bin filled to overflowing. Then I had them [...]

Submitted By: Kim Curiel (kimcuriel@yahoo.com) Challenge I wanted to change my habit of using the paper and plastic bags at grocery stores. My pantry was full of paper bags, I had sacks and sacks of plastic bags even though I tried to reuse them whenever possible around the house. I kept forgetting to bring the [...]

Submitted By: Kana Ryan (kana@steveandkana.com) Challenge “Honey, I turned the kids green!” Being “Green” is not just a catch phrase uttered by lovable Kermit but rather an important focus in our culture today. To help my children learn more about environmental efforts and to do something constructive we embarked on a battery collection community service [...]

Submitted By: Bart Carr (bart_carr@yahoo.com) Challenge Weekly curbside recycling has been available for many years to Lamorinda residents. Recycling bottles, cans, newspapers, and other household recyclables has become almost second nature for many of us. For my family, recycling is part of our weekly routine. However, improvements to the curbside recycling program has made a [...]

Submitted By: Bart Carr (bart_carr@yahoo.com) Challenge Like many homes in Lafayette, we have a large, well landscaped front and back yard including grass lawns, shrubbery, lots trees, and a seasonal vegetable garden. All of this requires weekly maintenance producing yard waste for disposal. Using our 65 gallon yard waste recycling cart as a measure, our [...]

Submitted By: Emily Carr (5th grader at Burton Valley). Challenge Well, it started as a dream, in early January 2009. I love animals. Especially farm animals like cows, goats, horses, and chickens. I wanted a farm but I don’t have the land or the time. Wake up at five, milk the cows, feed the horses [...]

Submitted By: Cheryl Bowlan (cbowlan@comcast.net) Challenge Somehow, without noticing, we all became full-time meat-eaters. Two sons, one husband and I. It was way too easy. Always health conscious, I pushed chicken and turkey until the kids squawked like guinea hens. Occasionally, even I’d tire of primping the birds, working the flesh for every ounce of [...]

Submitted By: Jody Howe (jodyshowe@comcast.net) Challenge We own a wonderful opportunity to create a home for organic food, medicinal herbs, and flowering environment for our family of 3, right in our backyard. I use the garden for summer vegetables but never thought the garden would get enough winter sun behind the ever growing pines and [...]

Submitted By: Kim Curiel (kimcuriel@yahoo.com) Challenge How to develop a model where most of the food we prepare is local, organic, and in season. Solution Details Our primary source of local food is the Moraga Farmer’s market, which is every Sunday from 9 to 1pm. We have tried to shift our mindset to “doing our [...]

Submitted By: Jody Howe (jodyshowe@comcast.net) Updated on June 17th 2008 Challenge How to obtain fresh, local, seasonal produce that is grown right in Contra Costa County. While the produce at the Farmer’s Markets is great, some of the farmers come from more than 100 miles away. The local farmer depends on their community to remain [...]

Submitted By: Jeff Peacock (hiveman@hotmail.com) What low-key hobby helps ensure a beautiful garden, relieves a variety of disorders such as multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, arthritis, chronic pain, and rheumatic conditions, and supplies a delicious, healthy alternative to processed sugar which alleviates allergies, ulcers and skin problems, soothes sore throats, and is a natural antiseptic that helps [...]

Submitted By: Lisa Ota (www.sacredbite.com // lisa@sacredbite.com) Challenge As a nutritionist, I have a deep interest in health. As we continue to learn more and more about the threats facing our planet, it has become a primary challenge to determine what actions regarding food I and my family could take to reduce our impact on [...]

Submitted By: Renee Emerson (rmkemerson@aol.com) Challenge We have always been interested in recycling everything possible. A little over three years ago we looked into using our gray water to water the yard, but found the plumbing changes necessary to make a permanent system cost prohibitive.   Meanwhile, we had three teenage girls who all loved [...]

Submitted By: Michael Dawson (mdawson@gmail.com) Most of us know the thrill of finding a new way to become sustainable, each step a small but significant step which makes us feel proud of our efforts. On one recent rainy day I decided to undertake an experiment which hopefully will reap even greater rewards of a different [...]

Submitted By: Karen Maggio (kjmaggio@pomrg.com) Challenge Having been involved in planning, teaching and green building for many years, I often use my own home as a test site for new ideas, colors and technologies. I have experimented with solar lighting, rain chains, rain barrels, composting, mulching, nitrogen fixing plants for a class demonstration, bio swales [...]

Submitted By: Jeff Kent (Jeff.Kent@rhi.com) Challenge I stumbled on a program from EBMUD where they pay you to replace your old water guzzling toilet. If you have a toilet that uses 3.5 gallons (or more) of water per flush, EBMUD will give you up to a $150 credit towards a WaterSmart high-efficiency toilets (HET). The program [...]

Submitted By: Rosalind Kim (Rosalind.Kim@gmail.com) Challenge How to conserve water at our home without spending a lot of money. Solution Details One day while reading the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) newsletter that comes with our bill, I saw a small notice indicating that EBMUD offers free conservation adaptors for the home. I went [...]

Submitted By: Kim Curiel (kim_curiel@yahoo.com) Challenge What sustainable flooring to choose for our new home. Solution Details We looked into cork but didn’t feel confident about its durability. We tried reclaiming some hardwood from a house that was being demolished, but ended up far short of what we needed for our house. We’d looked at [...]

Submitted By: Kim Curiel (kim_curiel@yahoo.com) Challenge Our family was searching for sustainably made clothing for reasonable prices. The hemp clothing that we’d seen previously were often not made well, not stylish, or were way over-priced. My three teenage daughters wanted clothing that looked cool, fit well, but that they could feel proud of wearing, knowing [...]

Submitted By: Kristen Altbaum (kaltbaum@comcast.net) Challenge We were trying to heat and cool our home more efficiently. After adding 450 sq feet of living space to our kitchen/family/great room, our a/c unit was no longer strong enough to effectively cool the area on the hottest days of the year. This 9 ft. tall room is [...]

Submitted By: Mary Ransdell (mbransdell@comcast.net) Challenge: To conserve water and still have a front “lawn”. When my family purchased our home in Lafayette in 2008, about 900 square feet of the front garden was made up of a patchy, grass – and the sprinkler system had long been defunct. With water being such a precious [...]

Submitted By: Linda Riebel (linda.riebel@earthlink.net) Challenge: In the typical home in the U.S., air conditioning uses more electricity than anything else — 16% of total electricity used. In warmer regions, AC can easily exceed 50% of your summer electric bill. In Lafayette, many homes have central air conditioning, which typically uses 3500+ watts. That’s a [...]

Submitted By: Bart Carr (bart_carr@yahoo.com) Challenge Last November, our old water heater died.   A dead water heater is something that can’t wait to be fixed or replaced.  We (my wife Surinder and I) moved quickly and decided to explore “tankless” gas water heating systems.  We knew that a growing number of people were turning to [...]

Submitted By: Terry and Jeff Black (terryannb98@yahoo.com) Challenge “It’s too cold in this house! I am turning up the heat!” One of us was always making these comments during the winter. Finally we decided to have our attic insulation checked. We had not done anything about it in the 11 years that we had lived [...]

The Strand family in Orinda is typical of many families in Lamorinda–they have three active kids and a live-in parent, and are always on the run. With so much going on how do they find time to stop and think about how to live more sustainably?

Submitted By: Steve Richard (swrichard@comcast.net) Challenge Every time our weekly “mow and blow” lawn service came to cut our grass and blow our leaves around, I felt somewhat annoyed by all the noise, but put up with it anyway, figuring our lawn was too large to cut myself. After reading about the amount of emissions [...]