San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/category/environment/)
On a recent morning on San Francisco’s Pier 9, New Zealand’s prime minister and other officials finalized plans to electrify Angel Island-Tiburon Ferry’s fleet.
The project, part of a statewide push to satisfy green-energy mandates, will create jobs for Latino San Rafael residents who might otherwise struggle to break into the green-energy field.
John Muir has been honored extensively, with his name on many sites and institutions, including 28 schools, a college, a number of mountains, several trails, a glacier, a forest, a beach, a medical center, a highway and Muir Woods National Monument, one of the most visited destinations in the Bay Area. But in the time since the Sierra Club issued a nuanced statement in 2020 acknowledging some racist language in his early writings, some have come to believe that Muir’s legacy should be diminished, despite his contributions to the preservation of wilderness and later writings praising native tribes.
Walk into Animal Care and Control’s bright and clean new facility on Bryant Street and you might be greeted by a human volunteer or an adoptable dog. But behind the scenes, officers are investigating alerts about possible abuse, errant wildlife and distressed animals.
With a holiday coming up that usually involves a lot of boxes, we revisit two stories about recycling. Follow recycling driver Gareth Willey on his morning route and hear how recycling is sorted by Recology.
The Bay Area can house millions more people without increasing its water use, according to a new report from the urbanist and water-use think tanks SPUR and the Pacific Institute. This could be done by continuing to improve water conservation efforts while concentrating on developing infill housing to prevent urban sprawl.
Thousands of delegates from around the world will meet next week in Glasgow, Scotland to discuss their nations’ commitments to addressing the climate crisis at the United Nations Climate Change Conference. Among those attending will be local organizers from the NDN Collective, an indigenous-led and -staffed organization.
San Francisco neighborhoods the federal government targeted with racist lending practices face the greatest health threats from pollution, a recent state study found. The California Environmental Protection Agency analyzed the latest pollution data in historically redlined neighborhoods, where people of color were denied mortgage loans under federal policies, in the report finalized in August.
A report on the waste picked up by cleanup crews working along the nation’s beaches and shorelines from the Surfrider Foundation showed almost 90% of the more than 80,000 pounds of trash collected in 2020 was plastic.
Environmental activists are about to launch an air-monitoring project to track pollution linked to high rates of asthma and other health conditions in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood. The results could play an important role in demonstrating the environmental harm residents suffer.
In recent years, the mills and foundries that receive recyclables from Recology have stopped accepting bales of material with more than 1% impurities, so the sorting facility at Pier 96 must work to a very high standard. Through a recent tour of the sorting center, “Civic” reported on what happens when things that cannot be recycled end up there, and what should be done about material that is difficult to recycle, like plastic bags.
Laura Feinstein, sustainability and resilience policy director at the urban think tank SPUR, explained the difficult choice between attempting to create separate drinking and nonpotable water systems, or developing robust wastewater recycling systems.
