I spoke with Paul Mason, Vice President, Policy and Incentives at Pacific Forest Trust, to hear what trends and changes he sees in land management, and for insight into how to think about the role and health of California’s forests in the age of climate change.
Environmentalist Heidi Sanborn.(Photo: Screen capture via YouTube, from California insider)California recently approved three sweeping environmental laws: SB 54, SB 343, and AB 1201. Hopefully, this game-changing legislation will shape national policy about recycling, composting, plastic pollution, and human health. We have many people to thank for the recent measures to reduce plastic pollution and increase plastic recycling, but we citizens rarely know who. Heidi Sanborn is one of those people.
A dog eyes a trove of dumped plastic containers in Moorpark, Calif. (Photo: Alexandra Bilham, via Shutterstock)Approximately 85% of single-use plastics in California never get recycled. By standardizing and clarifying the labeling of recyclable waste, California’s new law aims to align manufacturing standards with state regulations in order to increase the amount of plastic material that actually gets recycled.
A farmers' market in Oceanside, where a heavy emphasis is placed on recycling. (Photo: Dogora Sun, via Shutterstock)In 2019, a Californian named Zuleyka Strasner created a sustainable grocery delivery startup called Zero Grocery. Previously an operations manager at a Bay Area venture capital firm, she got the idea for her low-waste grocery service after seeing a startling amount of plastic trash washing up on the tropical Nicaraguan beach where she’d honeymooned.
A surfer catches a wave in Malibu, where the Surfrider Foundation was launched in 1984. (Photo: JAVS, via Shutterstock)A landmark bill designed to drastically reduce plastic pollution in California, SB54, was signed into law on June 30. It imposes the most stringent plastic reduction rules in the United States. It has to. California, like the world, is enduring a seemingly insurmountable plastic pollution crisis.
The setting for a book-signing event at a Calabasas bookstore, just before the pandemic hit. (Photo: Jesse Watrous, via Shutterstock)On Tuesday March 17, the nation’s first effective coronavirus shelter-in-place order took effect in California. At midnight, non-essential businesses in six San Francisco Bay Area counties – from salons to bookstores – closed. As Pete Mulvihill, co-owner of Green Apple Books, told KQED about the order, “We haven’t closed since the 1989 earthquake and that was only one day.”