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Waste & recycling

Test results of city sludge don’t satisfy critics

Alison Hawkes, SF Public Press/Way Out West — Aug 18 2010 - 1:58pm

When activists dumped processed sewage compost on the steps of San Francisco City Hall in March, the stunt was meant to draw national attention toward a supposed hypocrisy afoot in the greenest city in America. The city immediately stopped the giveaway of sewage sludge, a mixture of treated sewage and yard wastes, and ordered a series of expensive tests to prove its safety. The Public Utilities Commission said the compost was no worse than commercial fertilizers. But opponents say the fight is far from over.

Solar waste recycling: can the industry stay green?

Erica Gies, SF Public Press — Aug 9 2010 - 12:11pm

Solar modules contain some of the same potentially dangerous materials as electronics, including silicon tetrachloride, cadmium, selenium and sulfur hexafluoride, a potent greenhouse gas. So as solar moves from the fringe to the mainstream, insiders and watchdog groups are beginning to talk about producer responsibility and recycling in an attempt to sidestep the pitfalls of electronic waste and retain the industry’s green credibility.

News Notes: San Francisco set to go more green

Hank Drew, The Public Press — Jun 8 2009 - 11:17am

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors could require residential and commercial building owners to sign up for composting and recycling services.

If the new mandatory recycling and composting law is approved by the supervisors tomorrow, violators would be charged a $500 fine. The proposal is up for its first reading at the June 9 Board of Supervisors meeting.

San Francisco already recycles 72 percent of its garbage, which is one of the highests recycling rates in the nation. City officials are aiming to recycle 100 percent by 2020.

A tour of toxic hot spots in the Bay Area

www.newsdesk.org — Jun 2 2009 - 5:38pm

The reputation of the Bay Area as a haven for sustainable lifestyle practices, the cradle for the slow food movement and solar energy development reaches far and wide, but it is also the home to pockets of persistent toxic trouble spots, partly as a legacy of past manufacturing activity and partly a result of ongoing business practices. This legacy has real and detrimental effects on the lives of those who live and raise families there.

Two experienced journalists, Kwan Booth and Kim Komenich, are working for Newsdesk.org in partnership with the journalism micro-funding site Spot.us, to identify and tell the narrative of a neglected community in the Bay Area that suffers from this type of pollution and ecological degradation.

The stories come in a multimedia package of photography, audio commentary and text reporting, with the goal of creating a rich audio-visual narrative to give a voice and reveal the lives and challenges of real people who are often reduced to statistics in policy papers.

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