Sustainable Living – Page 3

SuzanneJanuary 1, 2022January 6, 2022Agriculture/Food System, Climate Change & Energy, Sustainable Livingcompost, compostable waste, composting facilities, food waste, soil carbon, solid waste

California is about to witness its biggest change to trash since the ’80s. Hint: It’s all about composting

Chase DeFeliciantonio, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Dawn has just broken over Recology’s vast Blossom Valley Organics composting facility, about 70 miles east of San Francisco in Vernalis (San Joaquin County). The cold fall air hits like a slap to the face as orange light creeps over the horizon.

As the sun rises over the site, one of six the company operates statewide, a fine grit rides on the air, which is thick with the smell of earthy decomposition.

Operations Supervisor Clifford Reposa casts a wary eye on a 25-ton trailer of organic waste as it is hoisted on a hydraulic lift almost vertically against the pale and reddening sky.

“Not good. Lots of plastic bags,” Reposa mutters, his arms crossed as he watches a flood of pumpkins, apple cores, bits of wood and piles of leaves trucked in from San Francisco tumble out, adding to the towering piles of refuse that dwarf huge bulldozers moving it around in a deafening, mechanical dance.

This load of refuse is just a fraction of the roughly 1,500 tons of compostable material the 120-acre facility takes in every day from San Francisco and parts of the East Bay and South Bay. It comes here to be reborn as natural fertilizer used on vineyards and farms, and in varietals that are crafted specifically for different types of soil.

After those plastic bags and nonorganic materials are plucked out by men, women and gargantuan machines with names like The Titan, what remains will be placed into heaping piles that eventually break down into dark compost some farmers call “black gold.” Those heaps that stand higher than a person are spritzed with water and heated and cooled for two months to help trillions of microorganisms turn the solid waste into rich food for hungry crops.

SuzanneNovember 24, 2021September 1, 2022Sustainable Living, Transportationbicyclist safety, bike/pedestrian bridge, Highway 101, pedestrian safety

Highway 101 pedestrian, bicycle crossing progressing in 2021

Colin Atagi, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

A Highway 101 pedestrian and bicycle crossing, which has been pursued for decades, is closer to reality now that construction is funded and its design is essentially finalized, Santa Rosa officials and bicycle advocates say.

Over the past several months, city officials announced they acquired enough funding to build the $14 million bridge that will link Elliott and Edwards avenues and provide a safe way for non-motorists to cross the freeway.

It’s design has also gone before the city’s Design Review Board and members of the public, including area bicyclists, whose glowing reviews pave the way for construction.

“It’s great for us to feel that positive benefit of bringing this project to the finishing touches, which would be finalizing its design and getting it out to bid,“ Santa Rosa Assistant City Manager Jason Nutt said.

SuzanneAugust 24, 2021September 5, 2021Sustainable Livinghousing shortage, tourism, tourism impacts, vacation rentals

A startup is turning houses into corporations, and the neighbors are fighting back

Greg Rosalsky, NPR

On a sleepy cul-de-sac amid the bucolic vineyards and grassy hills of California’s Sonoma Valley, a $4 million house has become the epicenter of a summer-long spat between angry neighbors and a new venture capital-backed startup buying up homes around the nation. The company is called Pacaso. It says it’s the fastest company in American history to achieve the “unicorn” status of a billion-dollar valuation — but its quarrels in wine country, one of the first regions where it’s begun operations, foreshadow business troubles ahead.

Brad Day and his wife, Holly Kulak, were first introduced to Pacaso in May after a romantic sunset dinner in their yard. “And we just saw this drone, coming up and over our backyard,” Day says. “And we’re like, what is that?”

Pacaso denies directing or paying a drone operator to film the neighborhood. But its website does have drone photos of the house in question, located at 1405 Old Winery Court. It says it bought the photos after the fact.

Nonetheless, after the drone incident, Day and Kulak got suspicious about what was going on in their neighborhood. About a week later, their neighbors told them they were moving and selling their house to a limited liability corporation, or LLC. But they were super vague about it.

Day and Kulak began speaking with other residents on their cul-de-sac. One of them, Nancy Gardner, had learned from a friend in nearby Napa Valley about a new company called Pacaso that was buying houses in the area. The company was co-founded by a Napa resident, and it converts houses into LLCs. Pacaso then sells shares of these corporate houses to multiple investors. Gardner Googled Pacaso, and, sure enough, the house on their cul-de-sac was on its website. The company had named the house “Chardonnay” and was now selling investors the chance to buy a one-eighth share of it for $606,000.

SuzanneAugust 18, 2021August 21, 2021Sustainable Living, Waterdevelopment, drought, water supply, water use

Is it sustainable for Sonoma County to build new homes during an ongoing water crisis?

Ethan Varian, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Starting in 2023, the state wants Sonoma County to approve over 14,500 new homes for residents of all income levels over the following eight years.

Though no final target has been approved, officials in some of the county’s largest cities have made ramping up home construction a priority with the goal of alleviating the region’s shortage of affordable housing.

At the same time, though, the state is also mandating water cutbacks across the region during what is shaping up to be the worst local drought in more than four decades.

The two seemingly competing mandates have some questioning the wisdom of continuing to push growth in the face of a water crisis.

“How are we still approving new development in the midst of a two year drought with no idea what’s going to happen next year?” said David Keller, a Petaluma resident and Bay Area director of Friends of Eel River, a Eureka-based environmental advocacy group.

SuzanneAugust 14, 2021August 18, 2021Climate Change & Energy, Sustainable Livingall-electric, building decarbonization, California Energy Commission, electric-ready, heat pumps, natural gas ban

California takes a first-of-its-kind step on building decarbonization

Maria Rachal, SMART CITIES DIVE

The California Energy Commission on Wednesday voted unanimously to adopt changes to the state building energy efficiency standards that in part heavily encourage the use of electric heat pumps over gas alternatives. The state updates the code every three years. If later approved by the California Building Standards Commission, the changes will apply to all newly built or renovated residential and nonresidential structures beginning Jan. 1, 2023.

The vote follows building decarbonization action in dozens of California cities — including Berkeley, San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland — some of which have taken even more clear-cut steps to prohibit natural gas infrastructure in certain new buildings and make electric appliances standard.

The updated code also has provisions for adding solar power and battery storage features to many new structures and establishes “electric-ready” requirements for homes. According to estimates the commission shared, over a 30-year span the revamped code would provide a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction equivalent to taking 2.2 million cars off the road for a year.

SuzanneAugust 4, 2021August 5, 2021Sustainable LivingPFAS, plastic waste, plastics ban, polystyrene, single-use plastics

Santa Rosa City Council bans single-use disposable food ware beginning Jan. 1, 2022

Andrew Graham, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Say goodbye to the Polystyrene to-go box.

A variety of single-use food containers will be banned in Santa Rosa beginning Jan. 1, 2022 under a new ordinance passed by the city council Tuesday night.

The city has a Santa Rosa Zero Waste Master Plan that calls for reducing the city’s trash output by more than half — from today’s 2.5 pounds of trash per person per day to one pound per person per day — by 2030.

In pursuit of that goal, the city’s new ordinance will ban the use or sale of food service containers made of Polystyrene foam. The ban will eliminate the ubiquitous white foam “clamshell” food box used by food truck and to-go food vendors.

The city will also outlaw food service ware containing chemicals known as PFAS. Sometimes referred to as “forever chemicals,” the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found these chemicals to last for a long time in both the human body and environment without breaking down. Research has found various adverse impacts on human health.

Also under the ordinance, restaurants will provide plastic food ware only upon request. Restaurants can only offer reusable dishes and cutlery for on-site dining.

With the council’s vote, Santa Rosa joined a wave of Sonoma County cities passing ordinances banning single use food containers. Cloverdale, Healdsburg, Petaluma, Sebastopol, Sonoma and Windsor have all passed some version of the ordinance, though two of those cities are now considering an amendment to include the ban on PFAS.

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors is expected to vote on an ordinance in late August.

The ordinances have been pushed by Zero Waste Sonoma, a joint powers board governing waste management for both the unincorporated county and Sonoma County cities.

SuzanneJuly 29, 2021August 2, 2021Sustainable Livingcontaminated recycling, fossil fuels industry, plastic waste, recycling

The recycling myth: Big Oil’s solution for plastic waste littered with failure

Joe Brock, Valerie Volcovici and John Geddie, REUTERS

In early 2018, residents of Boise, Idaho were told by city officials that a breakthrough technology could transform their hard-to-recycle plastic waste into low-polluting fuel. The program, backed by Dow Inc, one of the world’s biggest plastics producers, was hailed locally as a greener alternative to burying it in the county landfill.

A few months later, residents of Boise and its suburbs began stuffing their yogurt containers, cereal-box liners and other plastic waste into special orange garbage bags, which were then trucked more than 300 miles (483 kilometers) away, across the state line to Salt Lake City, Utah.

The destination was a company called Renewlogy. The startup marketed itself as an “advanced recycling” company capable of handling hard-to-recycle plastics such as plastic bags or takeout containers – stuff most traditional recyclers won’t touch. Renewlogy’s technology, company founder Priyanka Bakaya told local media at the time, would heat plastic in a special oxygen-starved chamber, transforming the trash into diesel fuel.

Within a year, however, that effort ground to a halt. The project’s failure, detailed for the first time by Reuters, shows the enormous obstacles confronting advanced recycling, a set of reprocessing technologies that the plastics industry is touting as an environmental savior – and sees as key to its own continued growth amid mounting global pressure to curb the use of plastic.

SuzanneJune 30, 2021September 1, 2022Land Use, Sustainable Livingcommunity, Priority Development Area

Respect Roseland resistance

Duane DeWitt, SONOMA COUNTY GAZETTE

At least four organized groups of different Roseland residents are resisting Santa Rosa development plans being pushed through by the city Planning and Economic Development department staff at this time. Underlying the discontent which has been brewing in Roseland for many years is the city approach of “TINA.” “There is no alternative!” This tyrannical top-down approach by the city of Santa Rosa, and also the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, has long rankled many Roseland residents.

What is raising the hackles of many folks in Roseland now is the fact the city is STILL following the mandates of the 30-year-old Southwest Area Plan (SWAP). Though many more people now live in the 1.2 square mile Roseland area the city, and the paid consultants leading many of the development plans for the city do not want to recognize there is real displeasure with the city plans. Many people feel the 5-year-old Roseland Specific Plan was just a renewal of the same old SWAP plan without making any real improvements for the residents living in Roseland now.

The city has been running roughshod over Roseland for so many years the staff does not seek out true authentic community engagement in the planning process for developments or public policy decision making. The traffic concerns accompanying the rapid population increase in Roseland is very bothersome to many residents.

SuzanneJune 24, 2021July 4, 2021Climate Change & Energy, Sustainable Livinggreen jobs, renewable energy, wind power

What the clean energy future looks like from a 262-foot wind turbine

Sammy Roth, Boiling Point Newsletter, LOS ANGELES TIMES

Hundreds of feet above the ground, suspended by ropes and battered by powerful winds, Matthew Kelly is living his best life.

Kelly is a wind turbine technician, and my colleague Brian van der Brug recently took pictures of him repairing a fiberglass blade at a wind farm in California’s Montezuma Hills, at the northeastern end of the Bay Area. Brian’s pictures are worth a thousand words and then some. Here’s a shot of Kelly perched on the damaged blade, putting his rock climbing background to good use:

SuzanneJune 7, 2021Agriculture/Food System, Climate Change & Energy, Sustainable Livingcows, dairy, energy efficiency, methane, ranching, water conservation

After 27 years in western Marin County, Straus moves to cutting-edge creamery in Rohnert Park

Austin Murphy, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

In his dungarees and rubber boots, Albert Straus looked every bit the dairy farmer that he is. On this particular morning, however, the 66-year-old founder and CEO of Straus Family Creamery was some 25 miles from his family farm.

Straus stood on the floor of a processing plant, amid gleaming silver tanks and conveyor belts that would soon begin moving hundreds of the company’s iconic glass bottles of milk with cream on top.

While those bottles were familiar, the building was not. After 27 years making its highly regarded organic dairy products at a facility in Marshall, the company recently moved its production plant from Marin to Sonoma County, to this brand new, $20 million, 50,000-square foot facility in Rohnert Park. Where the old creamery was surrounded by ranchland, its new neighbors include the Graton Resort and Casino, and a Costco.

“After 27 years in Marshall,” said Straus, gesturing to the machinery around him, “this will give us a road map for the next 30 years.”

While the old plant could process up to 20,000 gallons of milk a day, the new one will be capable of doubling that output — “and do it much more efficiently,” noted Straus. The upgraded plant also features new technologies that allow it to capture and reuse large amounts of water and heat.

Environmental Center of Sonoma County

Category: Sustainable Living