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San Francisco Recycles, Reuses Majority of Waste

Recycling is part of life in San Francisco, with new statistics showing that the city kept 63 percent of all waste materials from going to the landfill in 2002, up from 52 percent the year before. Recycling improved in many areas in 2002, with aggressive recycling and reuse of materials at construction and demolition sites accounting for the majority of the increase, the city's Environment Department (SF Environment) said Wednesday. Residential and commercial programs were up about three percent, according to the figures for calendar year 2002, which SF Environment just filed with the California Integrated Waste Management Board. San Francisco generated 1,882,490 tons of waste material in 2002. Of this 702,012 tons went to landfill, San Francisco's lowest disposal tonnage since 1995. SF Environment says 1,180,478 tons were diverted through recycling, composting, reuse, source reduction and other efforts. A full six percent of the tonnage collected in 2002 came from the demolition of just one complex – the Letterman Hospital in the Presidio, a project that processed 122,000 tons of concrete for recycling and reuse, making use of half the material for construction on-site. Three of the top four recyclers identified in SF Environment's waste stream analysis were city […]

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Western Governors Sign Up for Significant Renewable Energy

Provider: United Press International Western state governors will dutifully salute the future prospects of renewable energy at their two-day energy summit in New Mexico this week and also tackle the fossil fuel issues that are of greater immediate urgency. Endless supplies of solar and wind energy remain an alluring vision, but the Western Governors' Association's three-day summit in Albuquerque has a full plate of more-pressing concerns, such as soaring gasoline and natural gas prices as well as the need to expand the region's pipeline and power transmission infrastructures. "This will be a results-driven summit," New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, the chairman of the WGA and official host of the summit, promised in a statement. "Key leaders from the United States, Canada and Mexico will offer their perspectives on the challenges we face in developing a reliable energy system that protects our environment and is affordable for citizens and businesses." Richardson, who served as energy secretary in the Clinton administration, has long been an enthusiastic booster of renewable energy, and the notion of building commercial power plants fueled by the West's broiling sun and steady winds will be the topic of various workshops and panel discussions in Albuquerque. The conventional wisdom, […]

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Hybrids Aren't Just for Tim Robbins

Too hard. We can't! Boohoo, it's too complicated for our dumb American brains. For more than a quarter-century, that has been Detroit's basic attitude whenever lawmakers have suggested, however timidly: Can't you guys try to make cars that guzzle less gas? Instead, Detroit devoted all its energy to lobbying Congress not to raise the miles-per-gallon requirements that have been in place since 1975. And chicken-hearted Congress complied. Oh, last year it finally got the guts to ask for a measly 1.5-mpg increase in fuel efficiency for sport-utility vehicles. Then it gave the carmakers three whole years to make it happen. Gullible Congress believed Detroit when it said American innovation just couldn't wrest any big gains from the gas tank. Except that if you hit the Auto Show, continuing at the Javits Convention Center this week, you'll see a gleaming, gorgeous, mid-size SUV of an innovation: The Ford Escape. It gets 38 miles to a gallon. That's right. And before the show opened last week, this gas-electric hybrid was test-driven around New York City for 37 hours straight until it ran out of gas: 576 miles on a 15-gallon tank. That makes it 75% more efficient than the conventional V-6 Ford […]

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