Greenopia: The Ultimate Green Guidebooks
If you are lucky enough to live in or around New York City, San Francisco or Los Angeles and are on the hunt for an all-natural hair salon, organic locavore restaurant, recycling center, green realtor, ecofashion boutique, or even, ahem, Earth-friendly burial services, the Greenopia guides are the one-stop guide to green businesses in your area. (I use the NYC guide all the time!)
Each business is leaf-rated from 1 to 4 leaves: more leaves mean the company is greener- the criteria for each category- restaurants and bars, salons, financial services, chocolatiers, green builders, and more, is different, so what makes a cafe get four leaves, and a dry cleaner are different. All the listed buildings have been vetted by Greenopia staff, and checked by the board of advisors in their area of specialty, so these are ratings you can really trust. Nobody pays to get listed in the books or the website.
In addition to being able to search tons of categories and listings in each of these cities (lots more cities coming soon), you can check out local and national green news and restaurant reviews in the Greenopia Eats It Up blog, the Green Gripes blog, which is all about how to solve those little green problems, and read through inspiring interviews of all sorts of cool green people like green media star Simran Sethi and raw food guru David Wolfe.
Starre Vartan
Starre Vartan is founder and editor-in-chief of Eco-Chick.com and the author of the Eco-Chick Guide to Life. She's also a freelance science and environment writer who has published in National Geographic, CNN, Scientific American, Mental Floss, Pacific Standard, the NRDC, and many more. She lives on an island in Puget Sound with her partner and black cat. She was a geologist in her first career, and still picks up rocks wherever she goes.
