Posts Tagged: recycling

Solar power hit in the solar plexus

Workers installing a roof-top solar panel array. (Photo: lalanta71, via Shutterstock)

by JIM BOYD and WINSTON HICKOX posted 04.02.2020

OPINION: On Jan. 1, California became the first state in the nation to require solar panels on all new homes up to three stories high. The unique mandate was approved last year by a state agency, the California Energy Commission. Meanwhile, just down the street in Sacramento, another state agency, the Department of Toxic Substances Control, is intent on designating the same solar panels that will be used to comply with the solar-power requirement as “hazardous waste.”

Proposed scrap metal recycling rules poorly thought out

A big claw crane drops scrap onto a pile. (Photo: llucky78, via Shutterstock)

by ROBERT W. HALL posted 06.26.2019

OPINION: Imagine if a government agency required nurses to endure the same costly and lengthy training as surgeons. Such overreach would result in fewer nurses and the demand for such skilled labor would reach a crisis.  While this extraordinary overreach is not occurring in the health care industry, it is when it comes to California’s regulation of the scrap metal recycling industry.

Innovation, recycling must go hand in hand

Soft drinks in plastic containers for sale at a Montebello, Calif., store. (Photo: Philip Pilosian, via Shutterstock)

by RAY SCOTT posted 04.25.2019

OPINION: Like a lighthouse, California has been a beacon of 21st-century environmental policy, pushing the limits of the impossible by setting ambitious, yet attainable goals for the state and its residents and businesses to work toward a healthier future. So ambitious, in fact, that one major goal, California’s 75% recycling goal, is set to be achieved by 2020.

The drought — with a grain of salt

A parched lake bed at Lake Oroville, about 60 miles north of Sacramento. (Photo: sddatta, via Shutterstock)

by JOHN HOWARD posted 04.08.2015

As drought-parched California withers, salt water captures attention – again. Santa Barbara, which built a desalination plan more than 20 years ago and then abruptly shut it down because of costs, is considering upgrading and restarting the project and provide the city of 91,000 with about a fourth of its drinking water. The tentative price tag is $40 million. In Sacramento, the State Water Resources Control Board is poised to adopt new regulations in May governing desalination.

Money flows in plastic bag fight

A landfill strewn with plastic bags. (Photo: Picsfive, Shutterstock)

by DOROTHY MILLS-GREGG posted 12.05.2014

With California’s law banning plastic bags on hold, the plastic bag industry and its allies already are pouring money into California in hopes of overturning the law in a referendum two years down the road. Referendum proponents have until Dec. 29 to collect enough signatures to put the referendum before voters in November 2016.