Would you live a greener life if you knew which coffee shops served fair trade coffee, or where to find environmentally sustainable office supplies, or what farmers' markets and CSAs were in the Bay Area?

You've probably spent some time on the Internet doing searches like, "fair trade" "San Francisco" "coffee" "cafe." Eventually you come up with a site or two that has some suggestions, but you have a feeling that there are more options (we live in the Bay Area for heaven's sake!), but where to find them? Now you can find answers to a lot of your local green consumer questions in San Francisco Bay Area Greenopia: The Urban Dwellers Guide to Green Living. Greenopia is a printed and online guide of environmentally friendly businesses, services and organizations that covers everything from restaurants, to travel agents, to pest control.

According to the inside cover, the guide is not a paid directory, "Companies cannot pay to be included and no sponsorship is accepted. We are not specifically advocating any particular listee; rather we are simply informing you that they performed well in our green filtering process."

I first saw the Los Angeles version of the Greenopia guide in Amoeba Records in Hollywood this past fall, and promptly used it to jot down names of green restaurants and coffee shops to go to while there on vacation. Greenopia guides are also being created for New York, Chicago, Denver/Boulder, Seattle and Portland, as well as a 2nd edition of the Los Angeles guide.

You can browse the online Bay Area guide, order the paper one, or suggest a listing at greenopia.com/sf/.

Britt Bravo also blogs at Have Fun * Do Good, NetSquared and BlogHer.

I recently got a copy of this guide. One glaring mistake is that the maps included don't show transit lines.

Seems like a guide to green living would want to include how to get around without driving a car.

Posted by: Brian Smith on May 30, 2007 10:25 AM

For those of you who are interested in the issue of Fair trade, there is a powerful documentary out called “Black Gold,” that documents the lives of Ethiopian coffee farmers and clearly demonstrates why all of us should be asking for Fair Trade coffee. “Black Gold” was recently released in the theater but is now available to the public on DVD via California Newsreel. You can read more about the documentary or pick up a copy of it here at http://newsreel.org/

Posted by: alicia on June 1, 2007 9:45 AM

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