Trash trucks fueled by 'trash gas': a growing trend

The company that operates the largest trucking fleet in the waste industry is fueling more and more trucks with so-called trash gas. On Tuesday, Houston-based Waste Management Inc. will add its 1,000th truck fueled with natural gas. Powered with captured and converted methane gas from the company's Altamont, Calif., landfill, the new truck will service Long Beach, picking up recyclables.

North America's largest waste services company, Waste Management operates almost 300 landfills and runs 22,000 big trucks daily, 720 of which are in Southern California. All of the trucks Waste Management runs out of its L.A. Metro fueling station are powered with liquefied natural gas (LNG) derived from the methane generated through decomposition of organic waste in its Altamont landfill. Since November 2009, the landfill has been generating as much as 13,000 gallons of LNG per day.

Later this summer, Waste Management anticipates approval of a similar liquefaction production facility at its Simi Valley landfill. If selected for funding from the California Energy Commission, the Simi Valley landfill could generate at least as much LNG as its Altamont facility -- enough to power an additional 300 trash-gas trucks daily.

Pacific Ocean study finds fish tainted by plastic

Southern California researchers found plastic in nearly 1 in 10 small fish collected in the northern Pacific Ocean in the latest study to call attention to floating marine debris entering the food chain.

The study published this week by scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego estimated that fish in the northern Pacific Ocean are ingesting as much as 24,000 tons of plastic each year.

Although the research found a lower percentage of affected fish than previous studies, it is the latest to quantify how many fish are eating marine garbage — most of it confetti-sized flecks of discarded plastic — that has accumulated in vast, slow-moving ocean currents known as gyres.

The results came from a 2009 voyage a group of graduate students made to the so-called Pacific garbage patch, an area of high concentration of fragments of floating garbage about 1,000 miles off the California coast. Researchers cast nets into the water and collected 141 fish, mostly lanternfish measuring just a few inches, and took them to a laboratory in San Diego to dissect.

Scientists found plastic debris in 9.2% of their stomachs, much of it broken down into multicolored fragments smaller than a human fingernail. However, they believe the actual proportion of fish that have consumed plastic is significantly higher.

“We can’t tell how many fish ate plastic and died, how many fish ate plastic and regurgitated it or passed it out of their intestines,” said Rebecca Asch, a Scripps doctoral candidate in biological oceanography and one of the study's authors.

Because the widespread lanternfish is a common food source for larger fish, the study raises concerns that plastics and pollutants they contain, could be making their way up the food chain into seafood ingested by humans.

California congressman tackles toxic trade in new bill

Modern-day alchemy is alive and thriving. Impoverished populations in China, India, Nigeria and Ghana burn old desktop computers, hard drives and circuit boards, breathing in metallic fumes while searching for minuscule amounts of gold and other valuable metals embedded in computer chips.

Sometimes the men, women and children who spend hours each day burning plastic, wires, tin and lead-laden tubes are rewarded with hard drives holding personal data that they can sell to scammers.  Other days, the tools of the 21st century are ripped apart, then dumped into rivers, in open fields and irrigation canals, their toxins permeating well water, their poisonous fumes pervading entire communities.

Old laptops and cellphones, quickly trashed when their owners upgrade, are called hazardous electronic waste, or e-waste. In recent years, U.S. recycling companies have evaded environmental standards, exporting large quantities of e-waste to developing countries, most of which don’t have the technology to properly salvage electronics or the political will to protect their workers from toxic materials.

“It’s cheaper for e-recycling to take place overseas,” said Mike Enberg, the e-Stewards manager at Basel Action Network, a watchdog organization focused on the “toxic trade,” or American exportation of e-waste to Third World countries. “There are few environmental and safety requirements overseas and labor is very inexpensive.”

The incentive of offshore labor, though, does not factor in the impacts the toxic trade causes, according to Reps. Gene Green (D-Texas) and Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), who have joined forces to corral the practice.

L.A. adds milk, juice, soup cartons to curbside recycling program

Los Angeles is expanding its efforts to be the recycling-est city in the country. Starting Tuesday, residents can throw milk, juice, soup and wine cartons into their blue bins. The inclusion of cartons in L.A.'s curbside recycling program could divert as much as 430 tons of waste from landfills.

New York, Chicago and Philadelphia already have carton recycling programs, as do almost 200 other California cities, including Oakland, Sacramento and Long Beach.

"This is a big deal in the sense that we’ll be the largest city in the state that has a carton recycling program," said L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. "It solidifies our position as the No. 1 recycling city in the nation."

In the 2009-2010 fiscal year, L.A. recycled 211,300 tons of waste through its curbside program. L.A. currently diverts 65% of the 10.1 million tons of trash it generates annually –- more than any other large city in the United States.

"We’ll be at 70% by the time I leave office," in 2013, Villaraigosa said. "That’s our goal. We want to be a zero waste city one day, and although that’s a high threshold, every year we’re working toward that.

California Senate votes to ban foam takeout containers

Sandwiches, milkshakes and other food items frequently packaged in foam takeout containers will have to be packaged in other materials under a bill that cleared the state Senate on Thursday. SB 568 by Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) would prohibit food vendors and restaurants from dispensing prepared foods to customers in polystyrene foam beginning Jan. 1, 2014.

Expanded polystyrene foam, commonly known as Styrofoam, is a lightweight plastic that, when littered, is often carried from streets through storm drains into the ocean. It accounts for 15% of storm drain litter, according to the California Department of Transportation. It is the second-most-common type of beach debris, according to a study by the Southern California Coastal Water Quality Research Project.

Fifty California jurisdictions have already banned foam takeout food packaging, including Huntington Beach, Santa Monica, Malibu and Ventura County.

"There are all these jurisdictions in California that have to control trash and reduce their discharges of trash to waterways, and they're having a hard time complying because foam litter is so hard to control. That's the reason for this bill," said Miriam Gordon, state director of Clean Water Action, a national advocacy group that sponsored SB 568.

"I introduced this bill not just to solve an environmental problem that plagues our state but also because it's a job booster for California," Lowenthal said. He added that many California companies are making alternatives to polystyrene takeout packaging, including compostable materials, aluminum foil and paper.

SB 568 passed on a bipartisan 21-15 vote. The bill is headed to the Assembly this month, with a floor vote by the end of August. 

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-- Susan Carpenter

Photo: A girl runs by a discarded polystyrene foam cup on a beach. Credit: Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times

General Mills, Procter & Gamble pressured to trim packaging [Updated]

The average American generates about five pounds of trash per day, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Now a San Francisco-based nonprofit is asking some of the manufacturers who produce it to accept more responsibility for recycling it.

Last week, the environmental group As You Sow filed shareholder proposals with two of the country's largest makers of consumer packaged goods, urging Procter & Gamble and General Mills to adopt "Extended Producer Responsibility." So-called EPR programs typically establish fees requiring corporations to help pay for the reclamation and recycling of their post-consumer waste.

"It means everything you buy at a grocery store, someone would be paying fees to recycle that," said Conrad MacKerron, senior director of the corporate social-responsibility program for As You Sow. "Right now, it's haphazard by municipality whether something is recycled and who does it and how efficient it is, so [EPR] would really change the infrastructure of waste in this country in a positive way. This resolution is a first step in that direction."

A form of Extended Producer Responsibility already exists for electronic waste in many states to properly dispose of the toxic materials embedded in many electronic devices, as well as recapture valuables, such as precious metals. [Updated 5-9-11, 12:20 p.m.: The original version of this post cited California's e-waste law as an example of Extended Producer Responsibility. It is not an EPR program because consumers, rather than producers, pay for e-waste recycling in California.]

The argument for end-of-life e-waste reclamation has resulted in the adoption of 23 EPR e-waste laws throughout the country, largely because there are precious metals to be reclaimed and hazardous waste to be kept out of landfills. Establishing EPR for commodities such as cardboard could be more difficult.

"We have received a shareholder resolution on the topic, but it has not been made public, nor have we taken any public position on the issue," said Tom Forsythe, vice president of corporate communications for General Mills in Minneapolis.

Although Forsythe had no comment on General Mills' position on Extended Producer Responsibility, General Mills cereal boxes are recyclable. They are also made from 100% recycled content, at least 35% of which is post-consumer.

Procter & Gamble did not return a phone call requesting comment on the shareholder resolution. A new "future-friendly" public service campaign, however, recommends buying nonperishable items in bulk to reduce unnecessary packaging.

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-- Susan Carpenter

Photo: General Mills cereal boxes. Credit: Rick Bowmer / Associated Press

Wasteful packaging: do consumers care?

The number of consumers who think they should be responsible for recycling has declined, according to a study released Wednesday. In 2010, 38% of Americans said consumers should take responsibility for recycling product packaging, down from 42% in 2009.

Consumers are also less willing to pay for environmentally friendly packaging even though most shoppers polled say manufacturers should produce more of it, according to the study "Packaging and the Environment," conducted by the New Jersey marketing firm Perception Research Services.

Although the percentage of consumers interested in buying products made from recycled materials has increased, from 39% in 2009 to 48% last year, just 17% of consumers say they check a package to see if it could be recycled before buying a product. One-third of respondents say they do not recycle any packaging at all. 

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Photo: Don Kelsen / Los Angeles Times

Small fish are ingesting plastic in Pacific garbage gyre

Southern California researchers have found evidence of widespread ingestion of plastic among small fish in the northern Pacific Ocean in a study they say shows the widespread impact of floating litter on the food chain.

About 35% of the fish collected on a 2008 research expedition off the U.S. West Coast had plastic in their stomachs, according to a study to be presented Friday by the Long Beach-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation and the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project.

The fish, on average, ingested two pieces of plastic, but scientists who dissected hundreds of plankton-eating lantern fish found as many as 83 plastic fragments in a single fish.

Floating marine debris — most of it discarded plastic — has accumulated in vast, slow-moving ocean currents known as “gyres.” Researchers worry that the ingested plastic can kill marine life or work its way up the food chain to humans.

Though discarded bottles, containers and fishing line are slowly broken down into small fragments by pounding waves and sunlight, scientists don’t know if they ever totally dissolve.

Researchers already have documented the immediate threats posed by floating trash to turtles, seabirds and marine mammals that eat or become entangled in the litter, but researchers said this study was the first to try to quantify the effect on the smaller fish.

For the study, researchers trawled 1,000 miles off the coast for fish living among floating debris particles in an area of the ocean known as the Eastern Garbage Patch. They dissected and analyzed the fish at a lab in Costa Mesa.

The vast majority of fish they found were lantern fish, deep-sea dwellers that come to the surface after dark to feast on plankton. Lantern fish are the most common fish in the ocean and a food source for such popular game fish as tuna and mahi mahi, both of which are caught for human consumption.

Stepping out on the recycled red carpet

When the Grammys and Oscars unroll their red carpets later this month, they'll be made from recycled water bottles. The power used during the telecasts will be 100% renewable. The food served will be organic and locally grown.

It's all part of an effort to show that  green is no longer niche. It's mainstream. And even people who live large lifestyles are embracing it.

"Hollywood and the music industry helped end the Vietnam war. Hollywood and the music industry heped civil rights advance. They helped advance gender equality. So these institutions when they are mobilized to social reform, they instigate a cultural shift," said Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Hershkowitz has been working with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the past four years to help green its premiere awards program. The effort came about after a producer of Al Gore's Academy Award-winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," approached the nonpartisan environmental group about reducing the event's carbon footprint. Shortly thereafter, the Recording Industry Assn. of America followed suit with the greening of its Grammys.

Embracing the eco mantra "reduce, reuse, recycle," both events serve food items on reusable china and glassware; the silverware is compostable. Organic food waste is composted off site. Plastic, aluminum, bottles and paper are all collected at the event for recycling.

The greening of the events encompasses the weeks-long setup process and post-event breakdown, as well as the Big Night.

"Will this by itself save the world? No," Hershkowitz said. "Every day we’re pumping 90 million tons of global warming emissions into the atmosphere. Those emissions are coming from millions of sources. It’s not one single source that we can reform to get us out of this mess. We need millions of environmentally intelligent decisions, and that’s what this effort is."

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Photo: Lady Gaga at the 2010 Grammy Awards. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times

L.A. seeks to boost recycling, while U.S. lags

 

 

In Los Angeles 65% of the trash gets diverted from landfills, and the goal is 70% by 2013, according to city officials. That puts L.A. at the top of big-city efforts.

Nationally, Americans generated about 250 million tons of trash in 2008, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Only about 61 million tons of that trash got recycled.

Recycling began in L.A. with a 1983 pilot program, but residents are often still puzzled about whether to put something in the black bin for garbage or the blue one for recycling. One reason for the confusion is a new wave of products that look like plastic but are made of cornstarch or other materials. Some of these products can go into a compost facility, and some don't actually break down, officials at the Sanitation Bureau said.

"There is no such thing as a perfect green product," says Scott McDougall, president of TerrChoice, an environmental marketing company.

For more information on what is happening with garbage in Southern California, read The Times' special Home section on trash. We try to answer specific questions about recycling and what residents should do to cut down on the amount of stuff going to landfills. In the first column, we spell out what to do with the box once the pizza is gone. Writer Susan Carpenter also takes a very close look at her own trash for a month.

RELATED: Time to refuse those unwanted, unrecycled phone books?

                Plastic bags to be banned in unincorporated L.A. County

                Recycler launches e-collective to recycle electronics

-- Mary MacVean

Photos: Here's a look at what actually happens to the stuff Angelenos drop into their blue recycling bins. About 65% of it can be recycled, according to Michael Lee, an environmental engineering associate with the L.A. Bureau of Sanitation. These photos come from a recycling center near L.A.'s Chinatown, where 20 to 30 trucks of blue-bin trash arrive every day. Credit: Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times