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California Assembly Passes First Cell Phone Recycling Bill

Legislation establishing the nation's first cell phone recycling requirement passed the California State Assembly Wednesday night on a 41-32 vote. The bill now advances to the State Senate. The bill by Assembly Member Fran Pavley, a Democrat from the Los Angeles suburb of Agoura Hills, would require any entity selling cell phones to take back and recycle old phones at no cost to the consumer. "Almost 40,000 cell phones are thrown away every day in California - either into a drawer somewhere or worse, into the trash," said Pavley, who explained that her bill passed despite opposition from the cell phone industry. Free cell phones, given away to stimulate signups for phone services, number into the millions, and because they are free, many consumers just toss the phones away without thinking about the toxics inside. "Their circuit boards contain myriad toxins such as arsenic, beryllium and lead, many of which are persistent bioaccumulative toxins (PBTs), and have the potential to be released into the air and groundwater when burned in incinerators or disposed of in landfills," she said. "That's a serious threat to human health and our environment and we need to provide a real alternative." The bill requires retailers […]

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USDA Rescinds Controversial Organic Food Rule

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Anne Veneman has rescinded new organic food guidelines that critics say threatened to undermine the integrity of the organic food industry. The directives, announced last month by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), relaxed enforcement of the national organic standards and allowed some use of pesticides, animal drugs, growth hormones, antibiotics, and tainted fishmeal on organic farms. They outraged the organic industry and consumer organizations, who threatened legal action to force the agency to reverse its decisions. In response to the new directives, the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), a national consumer watchdog group, immediately launched a campaign to pressure the USDA into reversing its controversial directives. Within two days, more than 5,000 petition signatures had been gathered and a landslide of faxes, emails and phone calls hit the USDA and National Organic Program (NOP) offices. "Two days after we sent our first email action alert out, their were so many consumers responding to it, the USDA contacted us and told us to tell our supporters to stop calling their offices," said Ronnie Cummins, executive director of the OCA. "Secretary Veneman has listened to the concerns the organic community has raised, and I commend her for retracting these […]

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