Advocacy – Page 17 – Northern California Recycling Association

Zero Waste Week – Full Schedule and Details!

Zero Waste Youth Convergence 5th Annual Conference, Sunday, 3/19/17
This event brings together high school and college students as well as young professionals in a full day dedicated to learning, visioning, organizing for Zero Waste and bringing this back to our schools and communities. Please check their WEBSITE for more details about last year’s event and this year’s details soon to come.

Screening of “A Plastic Ocean” Monday, 3/20/17,6pm, Marin Sanitary Service
Plastic Oceans has assembled a team of the world’s top scientists and leading film-makers to produce a powerful, high-end documentary in high definition ‘A Plastic Ocean’. Accompanied by scientists, conservationists, and engineers, the film follows the journey of two explorers as they travel to some of the most remote parts of the world, documenting the environmental issues associated with plastic pollution and its impact on the environment, ecosystems and human health. Panel discussion to follow (panelists not yet confirmed). Drinks and light food offered. Free for NCRA members, nominal donation for non-members. RSVP here.

22nd Annual Recycling Update – Tuesday, 3/21/17 – 8:30am – 4:30pm, Berkeley
Recycling Update is THE event of the season for Bay Area waste reduction professionals to learn about what’s new and different in discards management. The day features nearly 30 industry experts speaking on the spectrum of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rot as well as networking opportunities, a delicious zero waste lunch, and plenty of ideas to bring home to your local municipalities.

Conference Format:

Ten-minute presentations
Zero Waste continental breakfast, gourmet lunch, and refreshments
Meet, discuss and network with folks in the field!
Easy BART access

It’s All About the Process(ing) Tour – Wednesday, 3/22/17 – 9am – 3pm
Most of the NCRA community is well-schooled on collection programs and outreach, but what happens next? Come see the next step in closing the loop. We are lucky to have local Bay Area facilities with updated technologies to process collected materials into usable feedstocks. See here for all the tour info!

Want to know what happens to your glass bottles? If you recycle a bottle in California, it goes to Strategic Materials – the largest glass recycler in the country. If anyone toured their old facility in San Leandro, you’ll know that this is a fascinating and instructive tour! Strategic has a new facility in Fairfield, and on this tour, you’ll see how glass is received, cleaned, and processed into cullet for production into new glass bottles and other products.

And what about food scraps, yard trimmings…and even the digestate we saw at our South San Francisco anaerobic digester tour a few months ago? The Napa Recycling & Composting Facility has a new organics pre-processing line, receiving building, and all electric equipment to sort and process 80,000+tons/year of organics into feedstock for the onsite composting facility. Many of us have seen MRF sort lines for recyclables, but you also need to see an organics sort line and processing operation to get insight into how California is going to get to that lofty goal of 75% of organics out of the landfill by 2025!

Tour participants will meet at a location to be determined in Berkeley at 9am, and the group will depart in two vans for a tour start time at 10am at Strategic Materials in Fairfield. No host lunch for the group will happen in the region from 11:45 until 12:45. Tour of the Napa Recycling & Composting Facility will start at 1 and end at 2:30, and the group will arrive back in Oakland/Berkeley by 3pm. Closed-toe shoes are required for the tour.

CRRA GRC Webinar: Next Steps to Zero Wasting in California, Thursday, 3/23/17, 12pm
Help us to plan the strategies and tactics we will need to maximize landfill reduction statewide. Free workshop sponsored by the Global Recycling Council, a technical council of the California Resource Recovery Association. Sponsored by the National Recycling Coalition. See here for all the info and register here!

Dogtown Redemption, Thursday, 3/23/17, 6pm
Dogtown Redemption is the intimate story of recyclers in West Oakland—a journey through a landscape of love and loss, devotion and addiction, prejudice and poverty. Join us for a free screening, refreshments, and a Q&A session with the directors. Register here!

Pier 96 New Processing Line Tour, Friday, 3/24/17, 10am – 12 noon
The multi-million upgrade at Pier 96 is impressive and provides an educational and exciting tour! It is especially noteworthy that the upgrade was fit into, and around, the old system while it was operating. It has resulted in reduced residual, including capturing small pieces of material, such as shredded paper and more glass, and also has the ability to recover more material types like cartons, film plastic and textiles. The upgrade was designed based on the successful secondary MRF R&D efforts in LA that were recovering more than half of the SF residual that was sent to their facility. Register here, free admission, 25 attendees maximum.

HELP STEER CALIFORNIA TOWARD ZERO WASTE! SERVE ON THE NCRA BOARD!

HELP STEER CALIFORNIA TOWARD ZERO WASTE! SERVE ON THE NCRA BOARD!

Want to be at the heart of a thought-leading recycling organization? NCRAs been a leader for decades, and is still out front. You can help develop the cutting edge by serving on the Board of Directors.

NCRA will have 6 board positions open in January. It’s a two-year working post. Attendance at nearly all ten meetings a year is important, as is between-meeting work on at least one committee. Meetings move around the greater Bay Area. Phone participation is possible at some locations. Directors discuss issues, hold debates and influence regional and national recycling thinking. They track and comment on legislation; listen to leaders in the regional industry; work on behalf of colleagues who need a boost; tackle issues that can’t be ignored; tour facilities; and talk business with operators. Benefits include free entrance to the annual Recycling Update and other NCRA events.

To run, submit a campaign statement of 200 words or less by December 1. Say who you are and why you’d like to serve. Include your LinkedIn page link. Here are last year’s statements. Read more… NCRA:

BRILLIANT Ban the Bag Music Video produced by NCRA

Hot from the studio, and directly to you, NCRAs Ban the Bag Music Video, featuring the BAG MONSTER!

Ban the Bag Video!

Plastic bags pose a deadly threat to marine wildlife, clutter our landscapes, pollute our oceans, and damage recycling equipment. That’s why California passed a statewide law in 2014 to phase out single-use grocery bags, with broad public support. A YES vote on Proposition 67 will keep this law in place and ensure that it is implemented statewide. A YES vote will continue to move California beyond the waste, costs, and threats to wildlife and the environment caused by single-use plastic grocery bags.

Huge thanks to these amazing folks:

Executive Producer: Randy Russell, Northern California Recycling Association https://ncrarecycles.org/
Editor: Mike Noyes, Drunk Justice Productions http://drunkjusticeproductions.com/
Music Producer: DJ Moonbeam
Vocals: James D’Albora, Gino Pastoring, Jewel Love
Musicians: Michael Golden (guitar), Eric Hart (bass)
Sound Engineer: Galen Silvestri (United Roots Studios, Oakland, CA) http://unitedrootsoakland.org/

Thank you to Race to Zero Waste also! And last but not least, thank you to Laura McKaughan the BAG MONSTER!

On the ROAD to ZERO WASTING in CALIFORNIA!

Help develop the strategies we will need

ON THE ROAD TO ZERO WASTING IN CALIFORNIA

DECEMBER 9, 2016 IN SAN DIEGO

DECEMBER 14, 2016 IN CASTRO VALLEY

The Global Recycling Council of the California Resource Recovery Association invites you to a Zero Waste Brain Trust Workshop

Come join us on the road to Zero Wasting in California!

We will be applying the Zero Waste USA Toolkit to California and then brainstorming how to best initiate a statewide Zero Wasting Plan. Instead of starting with predetermined outcomes, we will use the tools and discussion to identify opportunities, barriers and next steps.

This is a free workshop for CRRA members. All are welcome! Please register today!

San Diego – December 9, 2016 http://grcsandiego.brownpapertickets.com

Castro Valley – December 14, 2016 http://grccvsan.brownpapertickets.com

Yes on Proposition 67 – Talking Points

Yes on 67 is good for the environment and for taxpayers

Single-use plastic bags are damaging to the environment and wildlife, expensive to clean up, and an easily preventable source of litter.
The Ocean Conservancy recently deemed plastic bags as the #2 deadliest threat to sea turtles, birds, and marine mammals.
Plastic bags eat up taxpayer dollars in cleanup costs. Local governments across the state spend $428 million each year to prevent litter in streets and storm drains.
Less than 3% of plastic bags are recycled, and rather they jam most recycling equipment.
Prop 67 is the last statewide on the ballot, but the most important for our oceans, rivers, and parks.

Yes on 67 reaffirms legislation signed by Governor Brown

In an attempt to mitigate an easily preventable form of plastic pollution, Senate Bill 270 (Padilla, De León, Lara) was adopted by the Legislature and signed by Governor Jerry Brown establishing a statewide ban on the distribution of single-use plastic grocery bags at most stores in 2014.
It was the culmination of a five-year effort that included the adoption of numerous local bag bans and the support of local governments, environmental groups, grocers, retailers and labor organizations.
Prop 67 asks voters to affirm statewide legislation that phases out single-use plastic grocery bags and requires stores to pass along the 10 cent cost of paper bags.

Yes on 67 bans plastic bags in California once and for all

Immediately after SB 270 was signed, out-of-state plastic bag manufacturers spent more than $3 million on a paid signature gathering effort to qualify Proposition 67 for the November 2016 ballot for voters to decide its fate.
This postponement of the law has resulted in the continued distribution of more than 192 million single-use plastic bags every week. Today, these manufacturers have spent over $6 million, and are expected to spend $25 to 40 million more in order to protect their profits.
The plastic companies behind this attempt to hijack our state’s referendum and initiative system have a disastrous environmental record, including pollution by one Chinese-based firm, Formosa International, which caused one of the largest fish kills ever recorded.
As part of their last ditch effort to overturn the bag ban, the out-of-state bag manufacturers have put a competing measure on the ballot (Prop 65) the Mercury News described as “one of the most disingenuous ballot measures in state history–and that’s saying something.”

Yes on 67 has already shown to be effective

Plastic bag bans work. Today 151 California communities have them. In all of these cities and counties, bag use declines as customers bring their own bags, as well as plastic bag litter that blow out of trash cans, solid waste vehicles and landfills into streets, parks and waterways.
California’s environmental leadership has been challenged and we cannot allow a monied special interest to succeed in an ‘end run’ around our hard fought environmental victories.