Howdy, folks. As usual, I've been reading my way around the web, looking for stuff I think you'll like. Here are your latest Green Reads.

Charlottesville's own urban-design expert Bill Lucy goes on record (not for the first time, I'll wager) against cul-de-sacs. They're more dangerous for kids! How's that for busting conventional wisdom?

Virginia's own Senator Jim Webb gets called out as a probable supporter of Lisa Murkowski's moves to keep the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Her "amendment" is now a "resolution," but still. Jim! Stay with us!

Give Del. David Toscano some credit, though, for a good idea that would support the local food movement. Free the pickles! The bill is now stalled in committee, but it sounds like the situation's not hopeless.

Looks like the number of cars on the road is going down, which sounds like very good news. I wonder, though, what effect Cash for Clunkers may have had on these numbers?

Whole Foods, which has come up on this blog a number of times in reference to its lack of local food offerings, may now invest in a Virginia greenhouse. I'd love to see this become a pipeline for more local scallions, tomatoes and cukes in our Charlottesville store. The word "local" on stuff that's grown in Pennsylvania really rubs me the wrong way—not that Whole Foods is the only big grocery guilty of that mislabeling.

Good ol' Grist has a clear-eyed take on the State of the Union, specifically the part where Obama talked about clean energy without mentioning renewable sources. Change you can believe in? Someone get me a beautiful trash bag that's also an art project about environmental awareness! I gotta toss my optimism!

As a (nearly) lifetime myopic, I am chained to some form of technological assistance in order to be able to do almost anything at all without walking into a post. I gotta have glasses or contacts to live my life.

Currently, I wear disposable contacts and store them at night in this stuff:

Clinically proven to be the only contact solution that works for Erika Howsare.

Unfortunately, here's what all's in that box:

A wealth of plastic and cardboard doohickeys.

I wish that, every time I bought solution—which is every five or six weeks—it didn't have to come with a brand-new storage case and a box that immediately gets thrown away. I also wish my poor sensitive eyes could handle non-disposable contacts. But if I don't use those contacts and this solution, my eyes get super dry and take on a red tint that is, frankly, scary.

It's a case where vanity (which keeps me from settling for glasses) runs smack up against eco ideals. And vanity wins big. My penance is to feel pretty damn guilty when I reach for that wasteful package in the Eye Care section.

Anyone else have a bad eco-habit driven by vanity?

One of the less dignified things about my personal brand of environmentalism: routinely carrying half-rotted foodstuffs around in my lunch bag.

Case in point: I bring an orange to work. (Not local: I know.) After lunch, I eat the orange at my desk. I put the orange peel not in the garbage, but in the container in which I transported the yogurt I brought for breakfast. This is so I can compost it at home. So now I have an orange peel covered with traces of warm yogurt, and it sits next to me all afternoon and then travels home with me.

Not a pretty picture.

Same goes for banana peels, tea bags, etc. I can't stand throwing this stuff away.

It probably makes for a somewhat less than fabulous "personal style," but I stand by my hoarding of organic matter. We all do generate a lot of waste, and it shouldn't be entirely convenient to deal with it. We have to confront on some level the reality of our way of life. Of course, if I were truly facing facts I wouldn't be eating that orange in the first place; I'd eat only the apples we bought last fall at the farmers' market. And I'd take the cores home to compost.

Anyone else have a nasty little habit that's good for the planet?