Posts Tagged: waste

Facing drought, climate change recycled water is key to survival

Scant water at Granite Island and River Valley along the North Fork of the American River east of Sacramento. (Photo: Lisa Parsons, via Shutterstock)

by AARON GILBREATH posted 08.16.2022

In 2019, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti unveiled what the city calls “The Green New Deal.” This ambitious sustainability plan stipulates many policy and infrastructural changes to prepare the four-million-person city for climate change. To name a few, the Deal includes: transitioning the power grid to 100% renewable energy by 2045; modifying 100% of buildings to be net zero carbon by 2050; increasing zero emission vehicles, and electrifying all Metro and LADOT buses, to reach zero carbon transportation by 2050.

Lawmakers: Don’t trash food recycling efforts

A landfill gas collection site in Sunnyvale. (Photo: Michael Vi, via Shutterstock)

by OSCAR GUTIERREZ posted 07.30.2020

OPINION: Reducing the amount of organic waste that is buried in California landfills is an environmental imperative. As state policy mandates, something has to be done to choke back the production of methane, the gas that is generated when table scraps, yard clippings and other organic materials decompose underground.

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.”

Study raises concern about e-cigarette waste

Discarded e-cigarette pods and vape devices recovered by University of California, San Francisco researchers. (Photo by Jeremiah Mock).

by ELI WOLFE, FairWarning posted 10.29.2019

Nearly two years ago, Jeremiah Mock heard a student in Marin County complain that her school was littered with e-cigarette waste. A health anthropologist by training, Mock did some shoe-leather investigating in a student parking lot, where he found a significant amount of e-cigarette and tobacco trash.

San Bernardino eyes cuts of police retirees’ pensions

San Bernardino police officers, members of the SWAT team. (Photo: Juno Kughler Carlson, omnitrans.org) omnitrans.org

by ED MENDEL posted 12.29.2015

San Bernardino’s plan to exit bankruptcy, possibly next year, cuts the pensions of 23 retired police officers who receive an unusual supplement to their regular CalPERS pension. The supplement boosts pensions to the same amount now common among police and firefighters, a standard set by the Highway Patrol in a CalPERS-sponsored bill, SB 400 in 1999.