Fast approaching is the strangely spook-tacular holiday when the land of the living dances with the dead. When a quirky, costume-clad celebration culminates on the eve of November 1, a night when all sorts of bizarre is bound to happen. That’s right, Santa Cruz, Halloween is almost here. No matter how you chose to celebrate this year, The Local Green has some fantastic eek-o-friendly tips to help you kick-start a Green Halloween. So before we get to solving the million dollar question of ‘What are you going to be for Halloween?’, let’s start things off with a little getting into the holiday …

With Halloween less than a week away, the holiday season has officially begun—which means the time is right to consider the effect of the holidays on our environment. The Green Halloween™ mantra could help kick-start the season with a goal of lessening the impact while keeping the fun. It goes like this: Do It Yourself. Support Organic Farmers. Reduce, Reuse, Compost. And Give Back Conscientiously. The first rule of thumb is to resist the urge to buy toxic, petro-plastic decorations. Halloween is about crafting and creativity, and the best decorations can be made using your mind, natural …

For the past five years, Santa Cruz locals and the many marine species of the Central Coast have had at least one thing in common – a federal environmental protection called Marine Protected Areas that was put in place to promote healthy ocean ecosystems and revitalize our fisheries after years of misuse and over-harvesting. The Central Coast Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), otherwise dubbed as our underwater state parks, span from Año Nuevo in the north, all the way down to a place called Vandenberg south of Morro Bay.  There are currently 5,000 Marine Protected Areas all around the world, yet…

It is now being called the Great Recession. State budget cuts continue to hit hard, California's unemployment rate still hovers at nearly 12 percent and the first list of California State Park closures was just announced last week. In an effort to manage the state’s $15.4 billion deficit, Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget-cutting plan includes the July 2012 closure of 70 out of 278 California State Parks. The approved plan cuts $11 million from the parks budget for the current fiscal year and another $22 million in the next. John Laird, Santa Cruz local and natural resources secretary for the state, …

Santa Cruz is home to many an eco-entrepreneur, from vitamins to hemp, solar to biodiesel – this town has green living covered. Nubius Organics is a woman-owned, local, green business flying under the radar of many a Santa Cruzian because they don’t have an actual store front. They are an online business with customers all the way to the Atlantic and back, but us locals have the opportunity no East Coaster ever will – the option to pick up their wares at the Nubius office and never pay another shipping charge again. The owner of Nubius Organics is Judy Sambrailo, born and raised here on the …

Biting into my first, ripe strawberry of the year is an unofficial mark that summer has almost begun on the Central Coast. This sweet, annual experience also serves as a friendly reminder to one of the primary reasons I chose to live in Santa Cruz so many years ago—the culture and abundance of farm fresh, organic, locally grown produce. Our organic growers keep us happy and well fed with some of the best produce in the nation, but the battle between corporate agri-business and sustainable food systems wages on in every nook and cranny of the food business. The battle affecting many of our …

The 41st annual Earth Day takes place this year on Friday, April 22, an almost eerily spot-on, one-year anniversary to the BP oil spill that continues to devastate the Gulf of Mexico today. It’s an interesting, albeit tragic, parallel to the roots of the initial, official Earth Day holiday in the US, which was first celebrated in 1970 in the wake of one of the most memorable and disastrous offshore oil spills in the nation, the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969. The Santa Barbara oil spill shook the nation much like the BP oil spill in the Gulf, and in the year following the spill, the …

Streets, driveways, yards and gardens are flooded. Retaining walls have collapsed. Some local residents have been without power for days. Mudslides and rock slides created impassable roadways, and tree limbs, branches and post-storm debris are nearly everywhere you turn. Many of our local residents have weeks of hurdles ahead of them with the damage caused by these ferocious winter storm, and those more severely affected, unfortunately, have a much longer recovery time in store. It’s cleanup time in Santa Cruz County. So whether you’re simply removing debris from rainstorm-clogged gutters or …

Tsunami surges hit the Central Coast on Friday leaving behind a wake of 18 sunken vessels in the Santa Cruz Harbor. Surfers dropped in on some gnarly tsunami waves, coastal residents fled to higher ground, and the Santa Cruz Harbor suffered an approximate $17 million in damages due to the ocean’s post-earthquake force. Our other area waterways, such as the San Lorenzo River and Capitola River, were far less affected by the force of the ocean that day. Elkorn Slough, the tranquil, tidal salt marsh just south of Santa Cruz, is known as one of the most relevant and beautiful ecological treasures…

A visit to the Wildlife Protection Area at Ano Nuevo State Park during the winter months feels like you’ve stepped right into a film project of the Discovery Channel. With a northern elephant seal colony into the thousands, Ano Nuevo is a place unlike any other here on the Central Coast. In fact, there are only a few places on earth so special that elephant seal colonies return year after year to breed and give birth, and we just happen to be lucky enough to have one of them some 25 miles North of Santa Cruz on our famed Highway 1. The Life and Times of Ano Nuevo’s Northern Elephant Seals The…

Everybody seems to be talking about Groupon these days. I first heard about Groupon over the holidays this year. As it turned out, my sister was hip to the Groupon buying experience and had used it to purchase a four-pack of massages from her local massage place. I was one of the lucky recipients of this half-priced deal. So last week, I'm not even quite sure why, I signed up for Groupon. All I did was go to its website, enter my e-mail address, set my location to Santa Cruz, and now I get an e-mail each day with the Daily Deal for Santa Cruz. I don't usually open the daily e-mails, because, …

It is one of largest migrations in the entire world, and, like instinctual clockwork, it has made its way back to the waters of Monterey Bay. Each winter, after the excitement of the holiday season dies down and we begin to settle into the New Year once and for all, the majestic Pacific gray whale population hits the Central Coast of California on its way to the warm waters of Baja, Mexico. There are few things more spectacular than this.  The journey begins in late fall, when the polar ice begins to re-form for the winter in the nutrient-rich feeding grounds of the Arctic Seas. It is then …

The case for biodiesel is an easy one—it's clean, it's green, and it’s domestically produced from renewable resources. It’s the true alternative to petroleum and running one’s car on biodiesel, and, thus, supporting a real green energy future will not increase greenhouse gas emissions, will not support oil wars that last for nearly a decade, and will not pollute the Gulf of Mexico and endanger thousands of marine species for immeasurable amounts of time. Nope. Biodiesel won’t devastate coastal economies or the communities that rely on properly functioning marine ecosystems and fisheries. …

It's not exactly Easy Street, this living a sustainable, environmentally conscious lifestyle. It's guided by responsible decision-making and often plagued by visions of domino-effect impacts caused by every action we make. But the rewards are immeasurable, and that's why we chose this road, where once we embark, there's nowhere to go but further. The turn of the New Year is a fitting time to take a little breather, give thanks and learn from our mistakes of  the past year, committing to forge ahead with a new sense of purpose. For some, the first few weeks of January lend themselves to …

If you fit the description of a year-end giver, you know the time is right for making charitable donations to your favorite nonprofit organizations. For some, it's that feel-good holiday feeling during the season of giving that inspires us to donate to our causes. For others, it's being able to count the year-end, tax-deductible donations on one's tax statement for the current year. Whatever the reason, year-end giving traditionally gives charitable organizations a substantial boost for the holidays just as much as it offers donors the opportunity to take advantage of tax benefits by …

Dating back to ancient times, somewhere around the origins of agriculture, rainwater catchment systems were used to harvest and store rainwater for practical, agrarian reasons—like water retention, irrigation and erosion control. In today's day and age, rainwater harvesting systems can also increase property value, decrease dependence on municipal water sources, provide homeowner rebates and help with fire protection. And, surprisingly, they can be practical and cost effective, with small, do-it-yourself systems costing as little as $50 to start. Winter is the most bountiful of the seasons …

The November streak of summer-like weather has given way to wet, winter storms here on Monterey Bay, quickly reminding us of the imminent change in seasons, the holidays fast approaching and 2011 waiting patiently to stake its claim. At the end of this week, Black Friday will officially kick off the season of giving in the retail world. Shop owners and gift buyers alike are bracing for the effect that the season creates.  But as we move into the third year of this economic downturn, with an unemployment rate of 10.6 percent here in Santa Cruz County, money is tight, credit card bills are high…

The 2010 race for Santa Cruz City Council came to a close last week, and for the green-minded majority of Santa Cruzans, the biggest win could just be the defeat of Republican Kevin Moon. Our two new council members, Hilary Bryant and David Terrazas, as well as the re-elected Lynn Robinson, are each considered friends of the environment, community supporters and positive leaders for the future of Santa Cruz. Bryant led the charge for City Council this year. As a former Long Marine Lab volunteer, community fundraiser and member of the Santa Cruz Parks and Recreation Commission, Bryant vows to…

Sit back, relax and get inspired for change. UC Santa Cruz will host two environmental events that are both free and open to the public, each aimed to get you thinking about the state of our oceans in more ways than one. Dr. Amber Mace, executive director of the California Ocean Protection Council, will give a presentation at 7:30 p.m. today, Oct. 20, at UC Santa Cruz's Music Recital Hall. It's called "The Future of Our Oceans: The Time is Now" and is the fifth Fred Keeley Lecture on Environmental Policy, an ongoing series of events hosted by UCSC. Mace is an expert on ocean protection and …

Whether it's because of our progressive City Council, our abundance of organic farms, or our outspoken community members, Santa Cruz is in a green league, or bubble, of its own. For the past few years, the City of Santa Cruz' Climate Action Program has been working out the details of the city's Climate Action Plan — and with the main goal of reducing CO2 emissions 30 percent by 2020, it's an incredible plan worth fighting for. It's called 30X20, and its all about drastically cutting emissions, increasing access to green energy, and improving efficiency. But a real green energy future for …