Manhattan Beach's City Council meeting was exceptionally green Tuesday, when practically every agenda item had some sort of environmental focus.
And indeed, Manhattan morphed from a shade of olive to asparagus as city leaders approved a couple of environmentally-minded changes for the upscale community.
By 2013, all taxicabs allowed to pick up passengers in town must be low-emissions vehicles, the City Council decided when it approved a four-year, phased-in requirement that franchised taxis run on Compressed Natural Gas or gas-hybrid technology.
Taxi companies franchised to work in the city will have until July 1, 2010 to get 25 percent of its fleet converted, but disabled-access and other specialty vehicles are exempt from the requirement.
Also, the body unanimously approved the installation of a secure drug drop-off box near City Hall's parking lot, a feature that will allow residents to safely discard unwanted medicines instead of flushing them out to sea for Flipper to catch a buzz.
Keeping the city from moving closer toward chartreuse-status, however, was the decision to delay a discussion about pursuing a ban on environment-hating polystyrene products, commonly known as Styrofoam.
City leaders were supposed to broach the topic Tuesday, about four months after banning plastic bags in town, but pushed the conversation off until next month because they spent too much time arguing about whether the city's stringent tree preservation ordinance was too strict.
In the past year or so, Manhattan Beach has significantly ramped up its efforts at being nicer to the Earth. Check out the city's Web page that nicely summarizes how it's working to improve the planet.
And indeed, Manhattan morphed from a shade of olive to asparagus as city leaders approved a couple of environmentally-minded changes for the upscale community.
By 2013, all taxicabs allowed to pick up passengers in town must be low-emissions vehicles, the City Council decided when it approved a four-year, phased-in requirement that franchised taxis run on Compressed Natural Gas or gas-hybrid technology.
Taxi companies franchised to work in the city will have until July 1, 2010 to get 25 percent of its fleet converted, but disabled-access and other specialty vehicles are exempt from the requirement.
Also, the body unanimously approved the installation of a secure drug drop-off box near City Hall's parking lot, a feature that will allow residents to safely discard unwanted medicines instead of flushing them out to sea for Flipper to catch a buzz.
Keeping the city from moving closer toward chartreuse-status, however, was the decision to delay a discussion about pursuing a ban on environment-hating polystyrene products, commonly known as Styrofoam.
City leaders were supposed to broach the topic Tuesday, about four months after banning plastic bags in town, but pushed the conversation off until next month because they spent too much time arguing about whether the city's stringent tree preservation ordinance was too strict.
In the past year or so, Manhattan Beach has significantly ramped up its efforts at being nicer to the Earth. Check out the city's Web page that nicely summarizes how it's working to improve the planet.
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