LOHAS 11

LOHAS is an acronym for Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability. Read more about it on the LOHAS website. To me, it represents our target audience for much of what we are doing now including Playa Viva, Casa Viva, Calakmul, Rainforests2Reefs and more. I call them the "Whole Foods Shopping, Prius Driving, Yoga Class taking" consumers. The conference reinforced my belief that this group shops based on their values first.

Two big highlights from this conference:

1. TerraCycle - You got to love these guys. Their product is Garbage (Worm Pop and Worm Tea used as organic plant food. Their packaging is garbage (recycled plastic bottles). They develop a recycling program with schools and other organizations to raise money by recycling bottles for them. We hope to work with TerraCycle to develop a recycling program in Mexico. Mexico has a huge problem due to the cultural habit of burning trash. Now that PET Plastic bottles are part of the trash (rather than traditional all organics), the burning of PET releases poisonous and cancer causing dioxins into the air and ground water supply.


2. LivingHomes - We visited with Steve Glenn - founder and user of LivingHomes. His house is the model and it is a model. It is a prefab green home, so green that he achieved Platinum LEED Certification. Steve has thought of everything, from xeriscape roof garden, solar radian heat, denatured alcohol fume free fireplace, undersink composter and my favorite system of all is his computer system for tracking energy usage in real time. I thought watching and working the MPG meter in my Prius was a challenge befitting the Accidental Environmentalist, try monitoring and optimizing all the electrical use in your home. It woudl be nice to create pre-fab, modern green beach home project...maybe we can convince Steve to join us on our next project.

This was my first LOHAS conference, it was VERY LA (sitting in on Mariel Hemingway pitching her new book was just one example). Looking forward to this event moving back to Colorado next year.