Before coming to LAist in late 2021, I covered topics such as mental health, domestic violence and environmental issues for newspapers in Texas, Arizona and northern California. I turned my focus to climate coverage after reporting on the devastating impacts of rising sea levels on communities in the remote Sundarbans islands in India.
If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.One question we got a lot: Why do some cities, such as Pasadena, require us to bag our food waste before putting it in the green bin? I went on a food waste journey to understand why.
“ There's not automated magic to some of this handling of waste,” said Michael Chee, a spokesperson for L.A. County Sanitation Districts. “There are actually people in here digging and separating and pulling plastic out.” At the Warren facility in Carson, the food waste slurry goes into huge tan circular structures called anaerobic digesters.
These fuels are less carbon-intensive than traditional oil and gas, meaning they emit less carbon into the atmosphere to heat up the planet, but there are other environmental consequences, such as cutting down trees or depleting soil to grow massive amounts of soy and corn for fuel. ”We may have to pivot where instead of this biogas going into the pipeline or transportation fuel, we're going to go for more electrical generation,” Chen said.Infrastructure remains a challenge for increasing these efforts. L.A. County Sanitation Districts are in a good position to implement more biogas production because they already have the necessary infrastructure, Chen said.
Flaring methane at Scholl Canyon Landfill. Glendale is building a power plant that will capture this gas to generate electricity instead of flaring.“ I think is definitely in the right direction,” Chen said. “Now, instead of it going to the landfill where it's basically left to rot in the ground, you're able to fuel trucks, you're able to produce power, you're able to heat people's homes with the trash that they would have otherwise just kind of forgotten about.
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