The Humboldt Waste Management Authority is moving forward with retrofitting the former Eureka Recycling Center into an organic waste processing facility to meet compliance requirements for Senate Bill 1383, an organic waste recycling mandate, however, the authority doesn’t have an expected opening date, which may impact Humboldt County municipalities with ordinances stating that organic waste […]
Waste
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California’s State Auditor: ‘Speak the Truth to Power’
Gov. Gavin Newsom will soon get to make yet another appointment with far-reaching implications: Who should lead the independent agency tasked with evaluating the performance of his own administration? Elaine Howle — who has led the California State Auditor’s office for 21 years — announced last month that she plans to retire at the end […]
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Farmers Forced to Let Crops Rot and Throw Away Milk While Food Bank Demand Soars
Last week, Isabel Solorio turned away five families from the Lanare food bank serving farmworkers in rural Fresno County. There just wasn’t enough food to feed the 215 families who showed up. It was twice the number of families that needed food a week earlier, she said. But that same week, on a farm just […]
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Diverting Holiday Waste
Now that the holiday season has arrived, so has the waste generated by the festivities, from wrapping paper and plastic bows to dirty foil trays and more plastic packaging. During this time of the year, Recology Humboldt’s Material Recovery Facility starts to collect about 25 percent more waste, says General Manager Linda Wise. “Right now […]
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Recycling’s New Reality
You’ve gone to the grocery store, bought everything you needed for dinner — chicken and potato salad — and you’re ready to cook. You peel the potatoes, chop carrots and celery, and set the scraps in the compost. You throw away the plastic mesh the potatoes came in because it’s not recyclable. The mayonnaise is […]
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Selling out to Big Soda
It was with incredulity that Journal staffers gazed on a slender green can of caffeinated pop dressed up in gaudy packaging that arrived last week. There, in front of us, was a piece of bona fide swag. A well constructed box with a green ribbon pull, embossed lettering, and printed with a somewhat ominous countdown: […]
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ACRC v HWMA: Settled
A four-year battle over Arcata’s recycling is over. In 2011, the Arcata Community Recycling Center, a scrappy, built-from-scratch icon of the city’s ‘70s progressivism, closed its doors, not long after building an $8 million processing plant in Samoa. ACRC, in addition to its westside Arcata community dropoff center, had processed most of the Humboldt Waste […]