Here are the morning’s top stories on Tuesday, December 17, 2024…
- The holidays are a time where we tend to eat a lot of food, and throw a lot out. Americans throw away about four pounds of waste per day, higher than anywhere in the world. But where does all that food waste go?
- California Resources Corporation and Aera Energy joined forces to become the state’s largest oil company. But a new investigation from KVPR and Inside Climate News finds that the merger could leave taxpayers on the hook for millions.
- A Bay Area lawmaker wants California to rescind its calls for a constitutional convention and has introduced legislation to do so.
Put Food Waste In Plastic Bags? We Found Out Why
When you drive on the 134 Freeway, between Glendale and Pasadena, you may have admired the mountains opposite the view of downtown L.A. Well, that mountain is actually a landfill, Scholl Canyon Landfill. Since 1961, that landfill has grown with L.A. County’s waste — officials say it only has a few years of capacity left. About 500 trucks a day dump everything from trash to food waste there. Americans throw away about four pounds of trash per day — higher than anywhere in the world.
At the top of the landfill, workers pick through green waste spread across the ground, getting rid of plastic and other contaminants. “ There’s not automated magic to some of this handling of waste,” said Michael Chee, a spokesperson for L.A. County Sanitation Districts. “There are actually people in here digging and separating and pulling plastic out.” A worker tosses a whole bag of raw chicken into a dumpster that’s half full of bagged food waste. Nearby, a coyote sneaks some nibbles from food waste not yet collected.
The workers are also grabbing bags of food waste to put in a separate dumpster. This is why cities such as Pasadena ask residents to separate their food waste in bags — ideally bags you already have, like bread bags, carrot bags or potato sacks, said Gabriel Silva, environmental programs manager with the city. Silva said the bagging helps them more easily separate the food waste from the yard waste because they’re going to different places. The yard waste will be composted and the food waste will be turned into fuel.
As A Major California Oil Producer Eyes Carbon Storage, Thousands Of Idle Wells Await Cleanup
At the start of 2020, California Resources Corp., one of the state’s largest oil and gas producers, was in financial trouble. The firm’s stock price had plunged, and its credit rating was in junk bond territory. Then the pandemic struck, roiling international oil markets. A few months later, in July 2020, CRC and nearly two dozen of its subsidiaries filed for bankruptcy, citing the “unprecedented market conditions.” The company was nearly $5 billion in debt.