TAKE THE LANE.

The tour is taking over LA! We spent our weekend preparing for the busiest week of outreach, while cycling down the coast from Carpinteria to Calabasas. We've been greeted in LA with two of our coldest nights of camping, packs of coyotes howling throughout the night, and 8 flat tires on Monday. But otherwise, the weather has been wonderfully mild this entire trip and we are all very lucky to call sunny California home!

Monday began with the tour visiting Viewpoint School in Calabasas where we ran Aquaponics and Urban Homesteading workshops for the 7th graders that attended CELP. On Tuesday, the tour split and visited two schools! The first was Bridges Academy where the riders stayed in the school’s dorms and worked with the high school's green team to build a tumbler compost bin from a 50 gallon almond oil bin. The second half of our group visited Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy (FSHA) in La Canada where the riders worked with the 9th grade biology classes to squirrel-proof the school's panoramic garden. As a FSHA alum, I was impressed with FSHA's persistence in installing a garden even though the faculty and students were only granted a space where a parking lot would probably be built in the next few years. One of our CELP dreams is to see all of the schools that attend our program maintain their own garden. Although I was disappointed to see the students’ failure in properly sorting compostable items at lunch, it was fun to hear the girls reminisce about their experience on Catalina and hear from those who also hope to work at the program some day, just like yours truly : )

Throughout our outreach visits, the program I have facilitated is Urban Homesteading. In this workshop, we try to instill a value in simple living where we teach students how to make things on our own, as if we were pioneers! One of the core activities has been making lip balm from all-natural ingredients; refer to the blog post from Nov 21st for the easy recipe – a great Christmas gift idea. We've also played a cosmetic game with many of the older students, where ingredients found in everyday cosmetics are listed on cards and students must match up ingredients to the corresponding displayed products, by reading the ingredients list. Some of the ingredients are beneficial, like coconut oil. Yet many of the ingredients listed in our sunscreens, lip balms, shampoos, soap, and lotion may have potentially harmful effects. The activity not only teaches students to watch out for potentially harmful ingredients, like sodium laurel sulfates and parabens, but to instill a curiosity about the origin of the products that we put into our bodies every day!

A great resource that many of the tour's riders rely on heavily is the Cosmetic Database, a bible for anyone who uses body products (and cares about their health). This website rates a product’s toxicity and lists the harmful ingredients within the product. The writers dig deep by thoroughly researching the product’s safety for both humans and the environment.
Another easy resource that is available to compare different consumer items and businesses can be found in book form or app form: the Better World Shopping Guide . Many companies are guilty of “green washing,” a business tactic that tricks consumers into believing that a business is not harming the environment and potentially even beneficial for the planet. However, the easiest way to cut costs and increase profits is by funneling costs into externalities. Externalities are costs included in producing a product that are often not included in the market price paid for a good. Common externalities are laborers and the environment. Factory and field workers are often paid wages that are not enough to cover basic living costs and are often exposed to hazards like toxic chemicals and pesticides. In addition, costs burdened by the environment are rarely included in the costs consumers pay; for example, pollution that contaminates our ocean, rivers, and air doesn’t show up on a price tag. These environmental and social external costs are not indicated on a product and can be difficult for consumers to discover. But luckily there are organizations researching the ethics of products that we use! So remember that with every dollar you spend, you can choose to support companies that are paying the true costs of producing goods and services and doing so in a responsible way! And the Better World Shopping Guide takes all of these issues into consideration when constructing their extremely user-friendly categorized lists. Btw, this book makes for a great Christmas gift : )

Happy Holiday Shopping!

Best,

Katie