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It doesn’t take too much research to make sure we are swimming in a sea of waste. There are garbage collection fees for the largest landfill, illegal garbage dumped in the desert, choked rivers, strangled sea turtles and scrockets.
However, there is disagreement about its future relationship with waste as to what it is.
Los Angeles knows how to survive the crisis. Angelenos is taking advantage of its resilience and strives to build a city for everyone.
Many waste and environmental spaces believe that strict anti-plastics and waste laws will soon be enacted, as the current situation is so unacceptable. But others are more cynical and point to many economic, production, marketing, judicial and policy indicators that suggest things are likely to get worse.
“The large strips of California land will be a sacrificial zone where large strips of California land are contaminated with microplastics and toxic chemicals and toxic chemicals, with high levels of plastic, synthetic fiber and other non-organic contamination,” Yandell, president and founder of Laguna Beach-based Non-Foto Last Beach Cleanup. “Some homes and neighbours are declared uninhabitable.”
This location south of East Avenue M on Lake Los Angeles is home to mulch, trash and construction debris. The site was discovered on a dirt road by residents who chased the truck.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
She noticed the rampant dumping already taking place in Antelope Valley, suggesting that even if the state’s groundbreaking plastic laws are implemented in the way that legislators intended – “We will never make Karlekaikuru.” [it] … work. They cannot even effectively ban foam cups. ”
She and others, including Susan Keefe, who is beyond plastic, another nonprofit, said the plastics and packaging industry is investing too much in increasing plastic production to stop the laws and bans. And consumers are very used to the convenience of single-use plastics as they are unlikely to see change without pushing from the government.
“It’s hard to be very positive when you see how much waste we produce,” Keefe said, beyond the Southern California director of plastics. “We think we will build more illegal dumping, more waste incineration plants and run out of landfills.
But others, including several waste experts in the Los Angeles area and community organizers, say changes are ongoing. And by the time it emerges during 2050, we all have new, less contaminated, ways to consume and dispose of products.
There is no data or extensive evidence to support these claims. I just want some small examples of community-organized composting and educational outreach campaigns, with the support of new economy of the LA Compost and the Los Angeles Alliance, or groups like Larne, that seem to have caused local changes.
“By 2050, we will be a whole new paradigm,” said Ryan Jackson, executive director of composting advocacy group LA Compost and former director of the city’s Department of Public Works. “We are becoming a resource recovery model where nothing is wasted and enjoying the circular economy.
Jackson sees this shift as organically driven by the regions and communities where there is an opportunity to see how they can live differently. Members of his organization, who have worked at schools, community gardens and farmers markets from Long Beach to Calabasa, say they witnessed positive changes in behavior and attitudes when the community’s compost hub was established.
But along with others, he says the government needs to play a role too.
Community organizer Erica Schweld shows an illegal multi dump between the Los Angeles Lake home and the Wilsan primary and Challenger Middle School in April.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
“We’re looking at the future [in 2050] “We’ve seen a lot of experience in the Los Angeles Alliance,” said Victor Sanchez, executive director of New Economy or Lahn’s Los Angeles Alliance.
Recyclecla is a 2017 Los Angeles-based recycling program that needs to promote recycling in public partnerships with private waste transport companies and escalate the detour of waste from landfills. Its main purpose is to bring LA closer to “zero waste.” This is a plan adopted by county supervisors in 2022, laying out a framework designed to reduce landfill use, maximize natural resource use, and retrieve material for beneficial use or reuse.
The idea behind it is to create a circular economy where products and packaging are designed and manufactured with materials that can be reused, composted or recycled.
So far, the law has had complicated success. Although diversion from landfills is on the rise, illegal waste is also being dumped in Antelope Valley, suggesting that the law may have unintended consequences. Critics point to a lack of city and county infrastructure recycling and composting as part of the issue.
There were problems at the state level as well.
In 2022, Gavin Newsom Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 54. This requires product and packaging manufacturers to maintain economic responsibility for their products from start to finish.
Specifically, the law requires plastics and packaging companies to reduce one plastic package by 25% from the 2025 level by 2032. It also requires that the remaining portions of the plastic packaging and food products on one foot that are still on sale and sold are compostable or recyclable. Additionally, packaging producers need to find ways to cover the cost of final orders for the product (via recycling, composting, landfills, exports) and remove the costly burdens from consumers and local governments.
The Newsom administration has supported regulations that help them achieve these goals. Instead, critics wrote new draft regulations claiming they were industry-friendly and bodied.
Despite these failures in regulations, the recognition that “capital” and corporate interests influence the implementation of the law and have the knack for finding loopholes in the law.
Yes, there have been some short-term mistakes, but “If you overhaul the whole system, that happens, right?”
He said people from nearby landfills and waste sites saw “beacons of hope” in their work with communities that “breath the air… deal with odors and constant pollution.” He said these communities know the risks, dangers and destructive consequences of our current waste systems. And in many cases they are fighting for change well – by closing contaminated landfills and mobilizing workers in these systems to demand fair compensation and safe working conditions.
“Our challenge is to build more shared ownership and awareness about waste, because at the end of the day, it is investing in ourselves, because it really exists.
Even representatives of the city’s private waste industry are on the wrong side of the lawsuit, despite suggesting that many of them are delivering unauthorized waste to the Antelope Valley.
The lawsuit filed this year by Antelope Valley residents in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles alleges wastewater companies, including Athens Services and California Waste Services, are dumping hazardous materials without approval. Athens noted that the law encourages the distribution “for beneficial use by farmers and other property owners.”
Jessica Aldridge, director of Sustainability and Zero Waste Services at Athens Services, a LA-based waste hauler, was not in a position to answer questions about the lawsuit, but said her company was optimistic about what the environmental community, social justice and the waste community are trying to achieve.
She agreed with Sanchez, but there may be a temporary political and regulatory setback, but California lawmakers “have positive goals in mind and they are setting regulations and infrastructure to pursue a cleaner environment and a more circular economy.”
But Keefe, a plastic advocate, says this hope for circular economy law and small community actions is all wrong. They say that as long as disposable plastic manufacturers produce and sell their products, they will not produce dents in the waste generation.
“Recycling plastics is a myth,” she said, pointing to a terrible amount of plastic that is actually being recycled and a lawsuit filed by the California Attorney General last year against Exxon Mobile. The lawsuit alleges that fossil fuel companies have deliberately deceived the public about recycling plastics for years, leading to the plastic pollution crisis we face today.
“We’re never going to get there until we stop focusing on plastic recycling,” Keefe said.
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