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From organic intimate lubricants to fair trade condoms, eco-sexuals are greening up the act

latimes.com/business/la-fi-cover-greenjobs15-2009nov15,0,4846377.story

latimes.com

So you want a green career?

The giant push for eco-friendly practices has created job opportunities for those with little or no experience.

By Tiffany Hsu 

November 15, 2009

Although the recession has emptied shopping malls and filled jobless centers, the call has only gotten louder for renewable energy, environmentally gentle products and eco-friendly practices — and for people to make all of that happen.

President Obama has said that he hopes to create 5 million green jobs within a decade. The U.S. Conference of Mayors estimates that the “green economy” could account for as much as 10% of job growth over the next 30 years.

The job description casts a wide net. The green ranks can include autoworkers making hybrid cars, building consultants, home energy auditors, environmental studies professors, wind turbine engineers, lawyers for biofuel companies and many more.

Some will be new positions; others will involve workers from traditional industries tweaking their former skills.

So here’s a look at where to find green jobs, how to prepare for them and how to land a spot.

The rundown

Even before the recession, the green-jobs market was growing at a faster pace than overall employment in most states, with California leading the trend, experts say. The growth rate of green jobs nationwide was 9.1% from 1998 to 2007, compared with a 3.7% increase for all jobs during the same period, according to a recent report from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

A UC Berkeley study concluded that “the renewable energy sector generates more jobs per megawatt of power installed, per unit of energy produced and per dollar of investment, than the fossil fuel-based energy sector.”

Even bastions of traditional industries, including the United Steelworkers union, support teaching green skills to preserve manufacturing and combat outsourcing.

Billions of dollars from clean-tech venture capitalists have poured into California — $3.3 billion in 2008, more than double the amount in 2007, according to Palo Alto research group Next 10.

There’s room for workers of all backgrounds and income brackets on that rising tide. In 2007, the nearly 125,500 clean-energy workers in California were pulling in $21,000 to $111,000, Pew found.

Daniel Morabito, 29, who was recently hired as a solar panel installer, said his salary at SolarCity is competitive with and far more stable than his paycheck from his previous commission-based job closing film deals. Now he has full benefits, stock options and more potential for long-term growth, he said.

After spending three years wearing a suit and tie in a downtown Los Angeles office, the Hermosa Beach resident recently toiled with two co-workers on top of a Westwood home.

Since June, the Foster City, Calif., company has hired 120 people, 41 of them in Southern California. An additional 180 hirings are expected in the next three months.

Morabito had no experience working with electrical wiring, but he researched the company and marched into the SolarCity warehouse with his resume, he said.

“Everyone’s talking about solar these days,” he said. “I missed being outside and really wanted to work with my hands. But I didn’t know what to expect.”

And now, a splash of cold water: Despite the potential of the green industry, the economic rough patch has saturated the job market with applicants. And some researchers caution that the green economy’s potential has been exaggerated.

“Indeed, the green jobs literature claims resemble the promises of long-term financial prosperity offered by Ponzi schemes,” concluded a study titled “Green Jobs Myths,” released by the University of Illinois and Case Western Reserve University.

The range

Green positions run from the predictable, such as eco-activism work, to more unconventional careers.

“Nobody really knows what green jobs are anyway,” said Tom Savage, a managing partner at Bright Green Talent, a job-search firm in San Francisco. “There’s a whole gradient of color between the greenest jobs and the non-green. But it’s more important to get excited that more jobs are greening in general.”

Many of those positions involve skills that can be transferred from other lines of work.

Some companies are scooping up laid-off employees from other industries. Serious Materials in Sunnyvale, Calif., which makes energy-saving construction materials and has the ambitious goal of avoiding 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions, bought a bankrupt window company in Pennsylvania in January and rehired some of the workers.

Green job seekers need to be imaginative. Potential employers can be found in unexpected areas, even the adult entertainment industry, said Alliyah Mirza, who launched her Earth Erotics website out of Portland, Ore., three years ago.

Demand for her wares — natural lubricants, recycled-rubber whips and plastic-free sex toys, among them — has grown at a rate that is “almost hard to keep up with,” she said. Mirza’s suppliers include massage oil manufacturers and glass makers that are exploring eco-friendly products.

“As the market grows, there will be a huge open field,” she said.

Sometimes, switching into a green job can cause culture shock.

Although pulling solar panel installers and engineers from roofing and construction industries is usually painless, former home builders used to high profits can be flummoxed by the low-margin, volume-driven nature of the solar industry, said Angiolo Laviziano, chief executive of REC Solar.

The San Luis Obispo company, which started in 1997 with fewer than 10 people, is constantly hiring salespeople and marketers and expanding its crew of more than 400 installers, Laviziano said. Despite a “mixed year” that has included layoffs at the company and a recession, REC has hired 40 employees this year.

But Laviziano, a former investment banker, has also run into trouble finding qualified applicants for mid- to senior-level management. One position, which would involve leading a commercial sales team to make pitches to big-box retailers and government facilities, has been unfilled for half a year.

Training

Around two-thirds of all energy-efficiency jobs in 2004 were considered middle-skill, or requiring less than a bachelor’s degree. Meanwhile, 13% of positions were high-skill and 21% were low-skill, according to a report last month from the Workforce Alliance.

Sometimes, previous green experience is a plus, while other companies prefer to train their new hires on-site. Businesses such as Boots on the Roof in Fremont, Calif., are springing up to offer green courses and certification.

The nonprofit Solar Energy International has a seven-acre campus in Colorado, online courses and worldwide workshops on sustainable building and transportation, hydro and wind turbine maintenance and more. The North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners and Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s PowerPathway program offer similar sessions.

CleanEdison has educated thousands of workers in green building practices, including the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED standard and energy auditing.

Community colleges also are feeding the boom.

Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa is developing a solar installation certification program, with one course already filled to capacity. Water purification and chemical technology are among the certificate and degree programs at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College.

Several for-profit schools have jumped into such training. Anaheim University’s Kisho Kurokawa Green Institute offers several graduate-level certificates and degrees, many of them online.

The unemployed could be eligible for federal grant money for green jobs training.

This summer, the Labor Department released guidelines for distributing $500 million in grants to boost energy efficiency and renewable energy employment. For more information on funding, job seekers should call a One-Stop or WorkSource career center.

Choosing a program can be like trying to infiltrate a secret society, said Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, chief executive of Green for All, a group dedicated to creating a clean energy economy. Caution is key, she said, because some recent entrants to the training business might not have a deep faculty bench and not all jobs require a major investment.

“The skills involved are not as advanced as most people think,” she said. “Most can be achieved through a minimal amount of training.”

Getting in

Some industries, such as algae-based biofuels, are still relatively new and focused on research and development instead of aggressive expansion.

But there are open doors even there, said Riggs Eckelberry, chief executive of OriginOil Inc. The Los Angeles company has only 10 full-time employees, most of them scientists with doctorates, and expects to have only 30 at its peak.

The biofuel market is a magnet for start-ups, which tend to hire in waves as they launch, Eckelberry said. Interested applicants should join networking groups to keep up to date on company debuts and try to slip in by wangling an internship.

“Just get into any company and get some experience on any level,” he said. “Don’t worry too much about whether the company is going to succeed or blow up, because all those people will create your network.”

Successful applicants can also demonstrate their interest by reading about clean tech, renewable energy or the general green market on online forums such as www.greencollarblog.org. Informational sessions at industry conventions are helpful, as is visiting companies.

“Some of the very best people were proactive and just came up to us and gave us their resumes,” said Laviziano of REC Solar. “People who have done their research always impress me.”

Some specialist positions require rigid discipline, while start-ups and consumer-focused businesses often look for people who are quick on their toes. But experts said most employers, especially more established eco-organizations, are gradually shifting to candidates who are more professional and profit-minded than just those with raw energy. Enthusiasm, however, is still key.

“Companies are looking for someone who’s passionate, who’s looking to find meaning in the day-to-day job,” Savage of Bright Green Talent said. “And that’s perhaps unique to the green sector.”

tiffany.hsu@latimes.com

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

Unexpected Ways to Go Green

By Erin E. White

Greening the Sex Toy Industry

When 29-year-old Alliyah Mirza graduated from law school in 2007 with a degree in Environmental and Natural Resources Law, she wasn’t considering a career in the adult novelty industry. Yet, just two years later, she’s the owner of an eco-friendly sex toy company, Earth Erotics.

“My curiosity about the vast array of new and green consumer products eventually led me to start looking into my own sex toy collection. After doing some research on sex toys, I discovered that sex toys and sex toy materials are not properly regulated for consumer safety by the U.S. government,” Mizra says. “They’re considered ‘novelties’ or ‘gag gifts’ under the law. Little consideration is given to the fact that these toys are being used by millions of consumers in the most absorbent parts of the body. Many sex toys on the market contain high levels of phthalates, which are a controversial PVC softener that has been linked to cancers and other negative health effects.”

Mirza’s company doesn’t sell toys made from PVC, containing phthalates or made from secret or undisclosed materials. Instead, her company’s toys are made from 100 percent medical grade silicone. Her whips are made from recycled inner tubes, and her lubricants are made from hemp oil and other organic ingredients. “I think it is important for consumers to buy green sex toys for the assurance that what they are buying is natural, nontoxic and will make them feel good in more ways than one!”

View oprah.com article by CLICKING HERE

Monday, Oct. 26, 2009

Sex and the Eco-City: Getting It On Is Getting Greener

By Kathleen Kingsbury

Correction Appended: Oct. 20, 2009

In many ways, choosing a sex toy is not unlike buying a car. Walk into most adult shops, and the new-car smell is undeniable. Salespeople tout motor speed and durability. And then there are emissions to consider.

That’s carbon emissions, of course. As the green movement makes its way into the bedroom, low lighting is a must–to conserve electricity–but so are vegan condoms, organic lubricants and hand-cranked vibrators. (See five eco-friendly sex accessories.)

Another big enviro-sex trend: birth control that’s au naturel. Like all good Catholics, my husband and I had to attend church-run marriage prep before we tied the knot last year. I was surprised, however, during the hard sell on natural family-planning (NFP), that this updated version of the rhythm method was being advertised not only as morally correct but also as “organic” and “green.” I was even more surprised when I found out that some of the most popular instructors of NFP–known in secular circles as the Fertility Awareness Method–are non-Catholics who praise it as a means of avoiding both ingesting chemicals and excreting them into rivers and streams.

Nikki Walker, 35, an actress in New York City, stopped taking the Pill because of concerns about the effects of excess estrogen on her body and the environment. “I do yoga every day and eat vegetarian,” she says. “Why wouldn’t I go green in this area of my life?”

Walker recently attended her first Tupperware-style pleasure party, thrown by Oregon-based Earth Erotics, where the goods for sale included organic massage oils and whips made of recycled inner tubes. At a time when Americans are just getting used to prime-time ads for Trojan and K-Y, eco-consumers are learning that most of the personal lubricants in the U.S.–drugstores sold $82 million worth of them last year–contain chemicals found in oven cleaner and antifreeze.

“Our taboos prevent us from having the same consumer-safety conversations that are commonplace when you’re making a toothbrush, sneaker or baby bottle,” says Ethan Imboden, founder of Jimmyjane, a luxury adult-toy maker based in San Francisco. This bashfulness is not helped by the fact that the adult-novelty industry is largely unregulated. “Manufacturers can use whatever they want,” says Imboden. “And they do.”

Case in point: that new-car smell. It may connote nice and clean, but the odor comes from phthalates, which are used to soften plastics in many products, including some sex toys. Like bisphenol A, these compounds are endocrine inhibitors that some studies have linked to premature puberty in girls and low sperm production in boys. Europe and California have already banned certain phthalates.

The search for phthalate-free alternatives helps explain the increase in sales of sex toys made of such materials as stainless steel, mahogany–yes, you read that correctly–and glass. Babeland, a sex shop with locations in Seattle and New York City, saw sales of a stainless-steel toy triple from 2007 to 2008. Sales of glass models rose 85% in the same period. Says Babeland co-founder Claire Cavanah: “People want high-quality, renewable materials that they know will last.” (And in the case of Pyrex toys, that they know can be safely warmed in the microwave.)

See pictures of Earth Day.

See video of the TIME 100 green roundtable.

Babeland sells four times as much of its Naked organic lubricant as it does of a national synthetic brand. “It just goes to show that if they have choices, customers pick more eco-friendly and natural options,” Cavanah says. (See 10 odd environmental ideas.)

The Roman Catholic Church is catching on to the organic trend. “People pay $32 for eye cream because they’re told it is good for them and the planet,” says Jessica Marie Smith, who repackaged the NFP program at the diocese of Madison, Wis. “We figured we could do the same with NFP.”

NFP detects ovulation by monitoring a woman’s temperature and the amount of cervical mucus. But this process is not 100% accurate. And several studies on climate change note that the best way to protect the planet is to have fewer children. “Around the world, more than 40% of pregnancies are unintended, and full access to birth control is still unmet,” says Jim Daniels, Trojan’s vice president for marketing. “Meeting that unmet need would translate into billions of tons of carbon dioxide saved.”

To that end, Trojan makes latex condoms as well as ones made of biodegradable lambskin. Other brands offer a vegan variety that replaces the dairy protein in latex condoms with cocoa powder. And no, they don’t all taste like chocolate.

See the effects of climate change.

The original version of this article stated that Babeland sells four times as much of Good, Clean Loves organic lubricant as it does of a national synthetic brand. Good, Clean Love is, in actuality, not the products brand name but rather the manufacturer of Babelands Naked lubricant.

FINDING THE ECOLO-G-SPOT

By SARA STEWART

Last Updated: 2:44 AM, July 30, 2009

Posted: 2:44 AM, July 30, 2009

SAVE the planet, one shtup at a time!

With just a few tweaks to your sex life, the environment can “get lucky” whenever you do. Burn a soy candle when you’re in the mood; regular ones contain petroleum and give off soot. Use organic massage oils. Shower together to save water. (It’s a good line, if nothing else.)

And for those who want to get more, uh, involved, upscale adult retailers like Toys in Babeland are making the switch to products made with renewable materials, all-natural ingredients and plastics that won’t poison your nether parts.

For many brand-new toys, according to Babeland co-founder Claire Cavanaugh, that means going positively old-timey. All the way back to before the advent of disposable batteries — which, given our age of electronic chargers, are so passé anyway.

The company’s newest product, the Earth Angel, is charged up via a hand crank folded into its base.

“I have a hand-crank radio at home, and it’s really good to know you can power something up with your own body!” says Cavanaugh.

“It really is sort of post-apocalyptic: When you really can’t plug anything in, at least you’ll still have your vibrator.”

The Earth Angel does require a tireless arm. (But doesn’t any worthwhile tryst?) To charge up 30 minutes of use, you have to crank it for four minutes. Not a terribly long amount of time . . . unless you’re in the heat of the moment. (We recommend pre-cranking.)

At online boutique Earth Erotics, owner Jasmine is on a mission to spread the word about the evils of phthalates, chemicals used to make the “jelly rubber” in many squishy-looking adult-store items.

“If you look at the packaging, a lot of these products will say, ‘Not intended for actual use,’ ” says Jasmine. “The reason being, these are toxic.”

“They’re just ’sold for novelty’ — that blows my mind,” says video producer Jennifer Prediger. “As if they’re all going to be given out at bachelorette parties, and people will just look at them and giggle.”

Anicia, a 32-year-old human resources manager, stumbled across Jasmine’s company while Googling adult-toy ingredients — as she was planning to buy and actually use one.

“I started researching the harmfulness of that stuff, and you would not believe the damage it does to a woman’s organs,” she says. “That’s how I found Earth Erotics.”

Jasmine’s site features items made from glass, wood and nontoxic silicone. The line of oils and lubricants she sells, Good Clean Love, are made from all-natural ingredients, too.

“People used to sort of snicker at me,” says Good Clean Love owner Wendy Strgar, who’s been in the business for about six years.

“The adult industry is by far the last industry to be touched by what’s green.”

They’re certainly getting touched now. Just last week, a Berlin brothel announced it would give a five-euro discount to any customer who could prove they’d arrived via public transportation or bicycle.

And stores like Babeland are seeing a definite uptick in requests for eco- and body-friendly products. Prediger, who’s covered the greening of the industry, says she’s not surprised.

“I feel,” she says, “like sex toys are a great entry point for understanding environmental issues.”

LINK TO NEW YORK POST ARTICLE

Earth Erotics recycled innertube whips received some recognition in a recent Marie Claire article on green sex. The whips are handmade in the Northwest out of recycled materials and are NOT intended for the feint of heart!

Sacred and Profane

69. SPANK OF THE EARTH: Earth Erotics’ recycled rubber whip

BY KELLY CLARKE | kclarke at wweek dot com

[November 26th, 2008]

69 Spank of the Earth

Portland’s home to a bewildering array of fetishists, from butt-spankers to Earth mothers. Now, the two can play together (in a mutually respectful, safe-word-protected way) thanks to local eco-friendly perv-eyors Earth Erotics’ recycled rubber whip ($39. Eartherotics.com), a 7-inch flogger crafted from old bike inner tubes. With each zinging thwap of the whip’s flexible tendrils, be assured you are satisfying your sustainable bona fides as much as your partner. This is one sex toy that’s touched way more asphalt than ass in its lifetime. (KC)

LINK TO ARTICLE

Ecosexuals do it greener

Violet Blue shows how to have hot eco-friendly sex

Violet Blue, special to SF Gate

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Bouncing around Nob Hill in an old Honda full of fleshy jiggly local exotic dancers, we were talking about boys and cars. From behind the wheel, Pepper suddenly tells us, “I’m thinking I should get a Prius.”

You could practically hear the tires screech to a halt in the lurid boys-sex-cars chatter. After a long moment of consideration, Brandy cattily remarks from next to me, “So not hot.” Pepper retorts, “What the hell do you mean? A Prius would be the right thing to do, plus it would make me look hot to all those eco-bitches who want to get it on with someone who cares about the environment.” At which point, I asked the fatal question to the entire car: “Does a Prius make a guy hot, or not? Would you date a guy who drives a Prius — or a hot sports car?”

Ecobabes might be a city species, but while I let you sit in the same silence that quieted our car, I’ll tell you that being an ecosexual isn’t just for college kids, humpy UC Berkeley law professors or PR flacks trying to sex up climate change. Anyone can green up their sex toy collection, have eco-friendly sex, and even with all those toxic sex toys, make a positive impact on their orgasms, their conscience and — yes — the environment.

Check out the naughty green guides, and I don’t mean the ones at Fisherman’s Wharf who won’t go away if you give them a dollar. Celebrated one-stop information hub for all things environmentally friendly, Treehugger has this fabulous guide, “How To Buy A Green Sex Toy,” in text and video. It’s a few years old but is a great place to start, ye randy log-lovers. Treehugger also wanted to know “How Green is Your Sex Life,” and backed it up with this mini-list of sustainable sex toys, and my pal Brian Alexander at MSNBC did a nice update on the state of sex toys getting greener, prompted by consumer concerns about health issues. And sites like Earth Erotics are taking advantage of what people want to find in one-stop shops.

In the past few years, it seems that now you can’t swing a vegan whip without hitting a rechargeable vibrator. You can visit pretty much any reputable online sex toy retailer and find a rechargeable vibe section; these sections didn’t exist even a few years ago. They’re not cheap but they last and are typically made of hygienic materials, so you really get a lot of she-bang for the buck. My two top favorite brands in order: superior design, replaceable motor, high-end (and high satisfaction) vibes from local vibrator makers JimmyJane, and the exquisite full line of artsy vibes from Swiss company Lelo. Germany’s FunFactory will not be outdone with its incredible line of rechargeables, in whimsical colors and hit-the-spot pleasure engineering.

You can actually recycle your sex toys. There’s the straightforward (though all-orientation-forward) Sex Toy Recycling site. (Friend Dan Savage has the details here.) My favorite and highly recommended sex toy recycling program is LoveHoney UK’s Rabbit Amnesty Program. Admittedly, the site encourages you to recycle and get a new vibe from it at half price, but LoveHoney is quite serious about recycling the toys and materials — even presenting us with video (YouTube) of the recycling process of their first ton of recycled “Rabbit Habit” vibes.

Recycling lube is not recommended. That’s like, ew. However, you can use lubricant that is organic, cruelty-free, made of environmentally friendly ingredients and comes in recyclable containers. Since oil-based lubes break down latex (and will cause latex condoms, dental dams and gloves to fail) and are considered less healthy for vaginal use, I’m just going to mention a few superlative organic, water-based, natural lubes. O’My is a slightly sweet water-based hemp lube (insert “put it in your pipe and smoke it” jokes here), and Yes Lubes are organic, taste- and scent-free (with an emphasis on minimal packaging). But the organic lubes I can’t recommend highly enough are Firefly and Babeland’s Naturals Organic Lube — they got the balance just right in both yummy slick-quids.

Even bisexual omnivore try-sexuals can enjoy vegan sex toys. Basically, the conventional definition of vegan sex toys encompasses adult gear that isn’t made from animal products, isn’t tested on animals (save the humans!) and is generally organic in nature. So, you’re totally cool with glass, stone, wood and rubber sex toys. The Sensual Vegan has a hot store packed with a full selection of animal-free (but perhaps not cruelty-free if you’re using the vegan fetish gear correctly) toys, implements, lubes and more. Veganica’s Sex & Romance links have everything from vegan online dating to vegan erotica and vegan porn, to yet more vegan sex toy resources. When do these people find time to eat?

Use condoms in an eco-friendly manner. Flushing them down the toilet is not only rude to your plumber, but it sends the catch of the day into the water recycling process, either to be transported to a landfill or out into a larger body of water than the one you had previously enjoyed it with — meaning it might eventually end up in the ocean. Although latex condoms aren’t 100 percent latex, they are mostly latex, which is biodegradable. Eventually. (Unless you’re using non-biodegradable polyurethane because of latex allergies.) Lambskin condoms (which are obviously not vegan, if that’s an issue for you) are biodegradable but don’t reliably protect from virus transmission and are not recommended. If you really want to have the greenest stick in the West, use Fair Trade Condoms, which can be found at the French Letter Condom Company in the United Kingdom, and feel happy knowing that a couple months ago, Brazil opened a condom factory to help preserve the Amazon rain forest, and is producing 100 million condoms a year.

So, after our moment of silence on the Prius “hot or not?” conversation stopper — half of us in the car thought hot, the other not. What do you think?

CLICK TO VIEW ARTICLE

 Cleo magazine is the Cosmo for Aussies!  Check out this article titled “The Green Sex Commandments” - touting Earth Erotics 100% elastomer version of the popular Rabbit Habit.  Elastomer is preferred over jelly rubber because it is natural and phthalate free!

CLICK TO VIEW INSET