California To Crack Down On Food Waste In The Name Of Climate Doom

Hey, this is what you voted for in the People’s Republik Of California, so, no complaining

Food waste becomes California’s newest climate change target

Banana peels, chicken bones and leftover veggies won’t have a place in California trashcans under the nation’s largest mandatory residential food waste recycling program that’s set to take effect in January.

The effort is designed to keep landfills in the most populous U.S. state clear of food waste that damages the atmosphere as it decays. When food scraps and other organic materials break down they emit methane, a greenhouse gas more potent and damaging in the short-term than carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

To avoid those emissions, California plans to start converting residents’ food waste into compost or energy, becoming the second state in the U.S. to do so after Vermont launched a similar program last year.

Most people in California will be required to toss excess food into green waste bins rather than the trash. Municipalities will then turn the food waste into compost or use it to create biogas, an energy source that is similar to natural gas. (snip)

Davis is among California cities that already have a mandatory food recycling program. Joy Klineberg, a mother of three, puts coffee grounds, fruit rinds and cooking scraps into a metal bin labeled “compost” on her countertop. When preparing dinners, she empties excess food from the cutting board into the bin.

Sounds like fun, eh? Keeping all your dead food in storage containers in the house, as well as lots of containers outside stinking the whole place up, eh?

California eyes tough standards for trucks, lawn equipment

Forget speeding tickets — California truck drivers will soon have to watch out for pollution tickets.

State regulators on Thursday voted to crack down on heavy duty trucks weighing more than 14,000 pounds (6,350 kilograms) — those big semi-trailers that make up just 3% of all vehicles in California but spend so much time on the road they account for more than half of all pollution from cars and trucks each year.

New rules will require these big trucks, including ones from other states passing through Califonria — to be tested at least four times per year to make sure they meet the state’s standards for particulate matter and ozone pollution.

And now truckers will start avoiding California even more, and there will be few truckers willing to work in California. Have fun with that supply chain!

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22 Responses to “California To Crack Down On Food Waste In The Name Of Climate Doom”

  1. alanstorm says:

    When food scraps and other organic materials break down they emit methane…

    And:

    Municipalities will then turn the food waste into compost…

    …which will emit methane, according to the first sentence.

    Big win there, CA.

  2. Elwood P. Dowd says:

    So Teach doesn’t already compost his vegetable wastes? Strange.

    Tom Jobson and Neda Khosravi of WSU’s Laboratory for Atmospheric Research found that composting as an alternate waste management strategy will likely decrease greenhouse gas emissions from organic waste compared to landfilling, with most of the reduction attributed to two factors: removing food waste emissions of methane from landfills and the soil carbon storage benefit of applying compost to soils.

    • alanstorm says:

      I already compost most of my kitchen wastes. However, there is a big difference between doing it voluntarily and being forced to by government threats.

      I know liberals have a hard time discerning this.

      “…composting…will likely decrease greenhouse gas emissions from organic waste compared to landfilling…”

      Nope. If decay emits methane, it will happen in a compost bin or in a landfill. As for the imagined “soil carbon storage benefits”? Put a number on it.

      • david7134 says:

        Alan,
        I have been working hard on the carbon issue. Each week I burn a large pile of leaves and limbs. After all, this carbon issue is the biggest hoax ever.

        • Elwood P. Dowd says:

          david or porter,

          We know you hope you’re contributing to global warming by burning leaves but alas, you fail. The smoke may annoy your neighbors.

          There is a rapid turnover carbon cycle… the decay of plants (or burning leaves) releases CO2, but CO2 that was recently incorporated into the plants! Therefore, it’s a wash. On the other hand, coal, oil and gas have been locked away for hundreds of millions of years.

      • Elwood P. Dowd says:

        Organic material like food and yard waste makes up half of everything in California landfills and a fifth of the state’s methane emissions. Starting in January, all cities and counties that provide trash services are supposed to have food recycling programs in place and grocery stores must donate edible food that otherwise would be thrown away to food banks or similar organizations. Most people in California will be required to toss excess food into green waste bins rather than the trash. Municipalities will then turn the food waste into compost or use it to create biogas, an energy source that is similar to natural gas.

        They will give residents green bins for compost waste. First, they came for our food waste… LOL.

        Teach whines that those he slurs as “warmists” don’t take any action to combat global warming, but when they do he whines about that! He whines we should be taking actions to combat the effects (if any) of global warming, then whines about money for sea walls and protecting FL, LA, MS and TX from flooding!

        We obey traffic laws, sanitation laws, littering laws, fire codes, tax law, etc … but putting your extra lettuce in a green bin is fascist-nazism!

        alanstorm: If decay emits methane, it will happen in a compost bin or in a landfill.

        BTW, methane producing microbes are inactive in oxygenated compost, so well managed compost emits less methane than landfill.

        • alanstorm says:

          Teach whines that those he slurs as “warmists” don’t take any action to combat global warming, but when they do he whines about that!

          Wrong again. (at least you’re consistent.) What he points out is that warmists consistently take one of two tsacks: either they go “Do as we SAY, not as we do” like flying is fossil-fuel jets to attend “carbon conferences”, or they declare from on high that “You must do THIS / don’t do THAT so that we don’t offend Gaia!”

          You may see this as no big deal, but it’s simply one of many small ways that government chips away at our time and money. Calculus shows us how enough infinitesimals can add up to a significant amount.

          • Elwood P. Dowd says:

            California is a state, not the federal gov’t. California and Californians have chosen to compost organic wastes and Mr Teach is complaining that it is an affront to FREEDOM!

            What it is is an affront to Mr Teach and his ilk who resent others. Right-wingers are habitually offended by actions of others for the common good.

  3. Johnny Rotten says:

    Soylent Green will be tax exempt from this.

  4. Elwood P. Dowd says:

    Tornadoes rip through MO, IL, AR and on the way to KY, TN, IN…

    An Amazon fulfillment center in Edwardsville, IL with hundreds of workers took a hit and dozens of employees are reportedly trapped, and emergency crews called it a mass casualty event.

    • Est1950 says:

      I just randomly typed in the year 1966 and 1955 and guess what popped up?

      The Tornado outbreak sequence of June 1966 was a series of tornado outbreaks that occurred between June 2 and June 12. The nearly two-week event of severe weather was mainly concentrated in the Midwestern (Great Plains) region of the United States, but was widely spread out to areas as far south as Texas and Florida, and as far east as New York.

      The most destructive tornado of this event occurred on the early evening of Wednesday, June 8, 1966, when Topeka, Kansas was struck by an F5-rated tornado. 57 tornadoes were confirmed during the 11-day span, which left 18 people dead and 543 injured (with most of the death and injuries blamed on the Topeka tornado).

      The 1955 Great Plains tornado outbreak was a deadly tornado outbreak that struck the southern and central U.S Great Plains States on May 25–26, 1955. It produced at least 46 tornadoes across seven states including two F5 tornadoes in Blackwell, Oklahoma, and Udall, Kansas that caused most of the casualties. The outbreak killed 102 from three tornadoes while injuring hundreds more. Unusual electromagnetic activity was observed, including St. Elmo’s fire.

      Is the weather changing? Always.

      • Est1950 says:

        However if you are making the case for WINTER TORNADOS.

        Since 1950 there have been hundreds across the USA.

        1971 there were 40 in Winter months in the USA.

        1975 there were 41

        1955 there were 39

        1950 there was 27

        Again when someone just throws a scare-mongering stat at someone when it relates to AGW in isolation it is horrifying. The little kiddies become terrified when a grown adult such as you throw out a single event in an effort to scaremonger and prove your belief that AGW is a horrifying life-ending event of enormous proportions.

        So enormous that Germany shut down their coal and Nuclear power plants, built windmills, and then begged Russia to build them a pipeline so they could heat their freezing people.

        NOTHING and I will repeat that. NOTHING ever works out well when actions are taken out of fear. I have spent many years on the ground in wars around the world before I got too old to do that sort of thing and what struck me the most was the fearlessness of the soldiers in dire consequences making wise choices under life-threatening enemy fire.

        Fear is a powerful tool that never ends well for most people. One only has to look at the prison system around the world and see how many people are in jail because they reacted to events out of fear rather than a somewhat calm and rational approach to their particular situation.

        1982, 1988

        • Elwood P. Dowd says:

          On Dec 10, 2021 there were 30 reported tornadoes in MO, IL, AR, KY, TN. These states average 0-2 tornadoes each in December. Over 50 are feared dead in KY alone.

          Ignoring facts is not fearlessness.

          • L.G.Brandon says:

            Thank you for the weather report. And that’s a fact. Now if something similar happens 5 years in a row we may have a climate trend. Or we may not.

          • Elwood P. Dowd says:

            You’re welcome!

          • alanstorm says:

            These states average 0-2 tornadoes each in December.

            …and? Sorry, child, look up the word “average”. Hint: weather can be unpredictable. There will be outlying events no matter what chains people wrap themselves in to feel superior.

            You are wrong once again. Just because you don’t understand doesn’t mean it’s false.

            I wonder who said that?

          • Elwood P. Dowd says:

            Why is Stormy so upset by the reporting of facts?

            An outbreak of deadly December tornadoes is unusual.

            Is it related to global warming?

  5. Professor hale says:

    I already don’t compost my home waste. Nor do I wash my trash before throwing it away. This is why we have landfills in the first place. In my neighborhood, when the transaction cost of using landfills goes up because of silly regulations, then people just burn their trash and large items end up on the road side. Socially, it is much better to have collective trash disposal that is cheap and easy to use.

    BTW, how is all that mandatory “sort your plastics for recycling” in California going? Records show most of that goes into the landfill no matter how many times you wash it. The supply of used plastics exceeds the demand by a large margin. This is why in China, India and Pakistan, they just throw it into the ocean.

  6. Professor Hale says:

    Germany has been doing this for decades. Last I checked, they still were not meeting their climate targets.

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