Downtown Diversion is a company which will recycle construction waste: http://www.downtowndiversion.com/

Install solar power panels - to help promote solar power in Los Angeles and decrease our dependence upon traditional, scarce energy resources, LADWP offers a solar incentive program to make solar power more affordable. (Click Here)

Use compact fluorescent bulbs which use only a third of the energy of an incandescent bulb.

Travel less, use public transportation, carpool, buy hybrid car or alternative-fuel car, and demand a plug-in hybrid car (No Plug-No Deal). Every gallon of gas you burn puts 20 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and for every additional mile you get to the gallon, you keep one ton of CO2 out of the atmosphere in a year.

Buy Organic and reasons are: (source www.wholefoodsmarket.com)

Organic farming meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations.

Growing organically supports a biologically diverse, healthy environment.

Organic farming practices help protect our water resources.

Organic agriculture increases the land's productivity.

Organic production limits toxic and long-lasting chemicals in our environment.

Buying organic supports small, independent family farms.

Organic farmers are less reliant on non-renewable fossil fuels.

Organic products meet stringent USDA standards.

Buying organic is a direct investment in the long-term future of our planet.

Organic farmers preserve diversity of plant species.

Organic food tastes great.

Buy recycled products and pledge to reduce your carbon footprint by taking "eco-action" steps every day. You will make conscious decisions to reduce, reuse and recycle, and to choose products from companies that support the environment, such as Whole Foods Market.

Find out what is your Carbon Footprint.  These easy-to-use online carbon calculator will calculate and track your carbon footprint associated with your electricity and natural gas usage, driving and air travel.  

Some more ideas that we in City of Los Angelels and Wilshire Center can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

produced by the buildings and vehicles that we use and thereby reduce our dependence on oil.

For Existing Buildings:

              The City of Los Angeles should encourage existing City private building owners to install photovoltaic solar panels, to recycle of construction materials waste, use drought tolerant landscaping, replace regular light bulbs with fluorescent bulbs, using recycled materials, use waterless urinals in commercial buildings and encourage their tenants to recycle their waste. 

              The City, particularly LA DWP, could develop an Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program that promotes energy audits for building owners.  Work energy services companies, Johnson Controls, Honeywell, Siemens, and Trane, will offer performance guarantees on the building retrofits that they manage and audit. The purpose of these performance guarantees will be to financially ensure that promised energy savings will materialize upon completion. See: Clinton Climate Initiative, clintonfoundation.org   

              ABN AMRO, Citi, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, and UBS have committed to arrange $1 billion each to finance cities and private building owners to undertake these retrofits at no net cost. These banks will work alongside energy efficiency finance specialist Hannon Armstrong and CCI to develop effective mechanisms to deploy this capital globally. Building owners will pay back the loans plus interest with the energy savings generated by the reduced energy costs thanks to the building retrofits. An initial group of fifteen of the WCBIC’s largest buildings would be asked to agree to participate in the retrofit program, and offer their buildings for the first round of energy retrofits.

For Vehicles:

              Each of us needs to be producing below 2.3 metric tons of CO2 per year by 2050. A major source CO2 that each of us contribute is by the cars we drive and by the trucks that deliver our goods.  Currently a typical SUV produces 18 metric tons of CO2 per year.  Flexible-fuel plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) can produce less than 0.9 metric ton of CO2 per year. Source: “Plug-in Hybrids” by Sherry Boschert

              “To reduce US dependence on imported oil and avoid potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change, the US will need to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector by 2025 and drastically reduce them by 2050.  The only plausible strategy for doing that by 2025 is to improve fuel efficiency, and the most plausible strategy for doing that by 2050 is to promote plug-in hybrid vehicles that run on a combination of electricity made from low-carbon sources and a fuel made from low-carbon biomass, not gasoline”.  Former US Undersecretary of Energy Joseph Romm

              The City should join the City of Austin as an active partner to make a commitment to support local, state and federal policies that will promote flexible-fuel plug-in hybrid vehicles; and the City could initiate, through active leadership and outreach, an effort to promote the Plug-in Partners National Campaign, www.pluginpartners.com, and require that all future city vehicles be PHEVs.