(now with an update from the LA Times: 100 goats turned loose on a downtown L.A. plot)

Yes my friends, 100 goats were brought into town by the Community Redevelopment Agency to chew on weeds and brush on a steep portion of Angels Knoll Park.

Lawn-mowers? Who needs them! Not only are the goats cleaning the hillside naturally, they are saving the Community Redevelopment Agency “several thousand dollars.”

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Leave something extra on your plate? Unused eggshells from cooking? What about all those coffee grounds? Los Angeles is asking a group of residents to recycle these and other leftovers for an experimental garbage pickup program.

Here is how it works:

The Bureau of Sanitation will distribute 2-gallon kitchen pails to 5000 households in Harbor Gateway, Lincoln Heights and South Los Angeles and residents are asked to dispose of food and “food-soiled” materials like pizza boxes.

A 2002 survey found that single-family homes generate 230,000 tons of food waste annually that could be turned into compost. That survey found nearly 27% of the garbage in the black bins was food waste.

If this program becomes citywide, it could divert as much as 600 tons of waste from landfills.

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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

TakePart Gang:

Before He Was Indicted, Ted Stevens Was “Tubed” by Blair Golson

Strawberry Fields Forever by Wendy Cohen

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Nicole Hughes:

Green Video of the Week: Crazy Alien Plants

Fat Princess Video Game: The Joke’s Not Really That Funny

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Andy Kondrat:

Alaska’s Northwest Passage to Open For Second Straight Year

Stephen Colbert Interview’s Brendan Koerner, Slate’s Green Lantern

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Jon Popham:

L.A. Bans New Fast Food Joints

Flint Michigan Seeks Sponsors…For Police Surveillance Cameras

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Gina Telaroli:

Veganism in Ohio: Update #2, Photo Diary

An Apology for Slavery and Jim Crow? We Shall See…

The Los Angeles City Council unanimously voted today to put a ban on new fast food restaurants in South Los Angeles. City Officials are hoping the ban will help slow the rapidly growing obesity rate in this impoverished area of the city. Thirty percent of South L.A. adults are obese compared with 19.1 percent of adults in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area and 14.1 percent on the more affluent west side of town. This comes as little surprise when you consider that 73 percent of all restaurants in South L.A. are fast food compared with 42 percent in West Los Angeles. The moratorium will last for one year and is intended to attract other types of restaurants to an area desperately in need of healthier choices. The bill requires the signature of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to become law. The California Restaurant Association is considering a legal challenge to the city ordinance.

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The Los Angeles City Council has voted unanimously to ban plastic bags from stores effective July 1, 2010.  After the ban goes into effect, LA shoppers will have the choice of either bringing their own bag or purchasing a biodegradable bag for 25 cents.

The City of Los Angeles estimates that over 5 billion plastic bags are used each year within the nation’s second largest city, but only 5% of plastic bags in California are recycled.   Said Councilman Ed Reyes who proposed the ban, “We’ve gotten to a point where we need to act as a city, where we can have real results. We’re trying to do it in a way where we can educate and inform the public of what we’re doing.”

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A new documentary that focuses on the controversy surrounding famed director Roman Polanski, his statutory rape trial and eventual fleeing to Europe, may be cause enough to finally close the case:

In a phone interview on Tuesday, his (Polanski’s) lawyer, Douglas Dalton, said Mr. Wells’s (former prosecutor) self-described contacts with the judge appeared to violate California law and legal ethics. At the time, Mr. Wells worked in the Santa Monica courthouse of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, but, after some initial involvement, he was not assigned to the Polanski case.

There could be a motion to dismiss based on prosecutorial misconduct, Mr. Dalton said. [NYTimes]

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Sometimes we forget that even with all our technology and high-techery and the like, still a huge amount of our consumer goods arrive in the United States through plain old ships.   In fact, a whopping 40% of our goods arrive through the ports of Long Beach, Oakland, and Los Angeles.   And now, it looks like California legislators are close to imposing a $60 fee on every container coming through these ports, expecting to raise $400 million a year.   Some of this money, say the legislators, would go towards fighting pollution.

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Trakr, the hero rescue dog who sniffed out survivors from the ruins of the World Trade Center after 9/11, has won a competition to be cloned. The German Shepherd was picked as the “most clone-worthy” dog in a contest presenting dog owners with an opportunity to clone their pet, free of charge by the California company BioArts International. Trakr and his owner James Symington were among the first search and rescue teams to arrive on the smoldering site of Ground Zero on September 11, 2001. The pair also found the last human survivor at the scene of the disaster, located under 30 feet of wreckage.

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Bumper stickers help make Los Angeles traffic a little more bearable…

What is your favorite bumper sticker?

takepart and learn about climate change.

The State of California began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples starting at 5pm PST today. Influential liberal mayors Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles and Gavin Newsom of California are both presiding over ceremonies at their respective city halls that began today at 5pm PST. Neither Mr. Newsom nor Mr. Villaraigosa have stellar records when it comes to marriage, but kudos to them on their efforts to support equal marriage rights for all. This is the first time the state will have same-sex unions since a brief stint in 2004 wherein the County of San Francisco began granting marriage licenses (they were later revoked then unrevoked then revoked and so on and so forth).

So far, the event has drawn little news coverage - probably due to the overwhelming interest in Tiger Wood’s stunning victory at the PGA US Open at Torrey Pines - but surely conservative pundits will be frothy mouthed within the next day or so.

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