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California's beverage container recycling rate dipped below 80 percent for the first time since 2008, shortly after hundreds of recycling centers were shuttered in the state.

A 79.8 recycling rate sounds great for most states – it means 18.4 billion containers were recycled in 2015. But it's not good enough for California, which prides itself on being at the forefront of sustainability. When the sustainability community aims for a circular economy, any drop stirs concern.

And California's stats are far less impressive considering its plastic recycling rate hovered around 85 percent in 2013. Had the state maintained that rate last year, it could have recaptured one million extra bottles. Instead, all that plastic ended up where we least need it – in the state's crowded landfills.

So, why did this happen after years of increasing recycling rates across the state?

The Sacramento-based nonprofit Californians Against Waste puts the brunt of the blame on the 560 recycling stations that have been shuttered in the last 15 months.

These closures make it harder for people to collect rebates for recycling beverage containers. The nonprofit says the cash rebates are a key to recycling success. The move hits rural and farming areas the hardest, says CAW, which estimates that would-be recyclers are losing out on redemption pay-backs totaling more than $3 million a month. Most of this would have gone to poorer residents, who are the most likely to take advantage of cash recycling rebates.

“Despite a $250 million fund surplus, California’s recycling operations are being short changed, resulting in closed centers and declining recycling rates,” Mark Murray, executive director of the environmental group Californians Against Waste, said in a press statement. “Consumers and recycling program operators need the Governor and Legislature to come together in this budget and fix what’s been broken.”

CalRecycle, the state authority responsible for managing the vast program, cautions against pointing the finger at recycling plant closures.

"The [recycling rate] decrease is likely attributed to several factors including CalRecycle’s stepped-up anti-fraud efforts that began in 2014," Mark Oldfield, a spokesperson for CalRecycle, told TriplePundit. "In addition, the improving economy has the dual effect of increasing beverage sales while softening demand for consumers to seek California Redemption Value refunds."

But the authority didn't exactly brush off the plant closures either.

"The recent closure of recycling centers continues to be of concern to CalRecycle," Oldfield insisted. "Consumer opportunities to return containers and collect California Redemption Value is critical to achieving the program’s objectives."

This is where, ideally, we'll see government authorities and concerned activists work together. But there is another actor that must also play a role – the state legislature, which has an impressive green agenda on its plate this summer. While recycling rates may not seem as important as extending cap and trade, it still deserves attention.

The right policies, driven by data, can help California get its recycling rate back up to 2013 levels or higher -- and, ideally, closer to the ultimate goal of zero waste. It's time for California to act.

Image credit: Flickr/Ricardo Bernardo

This article has been updated since it was first published.

Earlier this year, an investigative piece in the Washington Post revealed that some organic milks may not deliver the health, animal welfare and environmental benefits shoppers expect. If that already has you rattled, another bit of discouraging news may further alter your shopping habits.

It turns out that some “organic” corn and soy imported into the U.S. does not meet USDA organic standards, the Washington Post reported in an other investigation.

As much as half of the organic commodities American food companies use is imported, including soy and corn. And where those products are used, which is usually within a company's supply chain as ingredients or feed, imposes countless problems for the food industry.

On one hand, the organic edamame purchased at a store such as Trader Joe’s or Costco is probably safe. The same goes for any other frozen or canned vegetable product you have stored in your kitchen.

The trouble, reports Peter Whoriskey of the Post, is that shipments of soy and corn on their way to become animal feed for organic food companies often don't meet organic standards. The USDA requires producers of organic foods such as eggs, meat and dairy to use organic feed – which is why there is often a sizable price difference between conventional and certified organic food products.

But the problem is the paper trail. Companies that import certified organic products must keep receipts and invoices. But the USDA does not require companies to trace these products back to the farms at which these crops were grown. Meanwhile, records that Whoriskey and his team at the Post were able to obtain revealed high levels of residue on products grown in Ukraine and China. Yet dubious paperwork some importers had submitted allowed them to fetch a far higher price for the product due to the “organic” label on its products.

The USDA claims to take a harsh stand against companies that flout its organic certification rules. The agency says that the use of fraudulent documents to market or sell crops as organic can result in fines of up to $11,000 per violation. And the agency publicly posts a list of companies found to violate its rules; it was last updated on Monday.

The problem, however, is that such enforcement measures are weakened by spotty inspections. Farmers can hire the inspection companies of their choice, and they are often scheduled days or weeks ahead, which eliminates the chance of any spontaneous visits. Furthermore, testing for pesticides is not a standard practice, and is only conducted sporadically. The result, said Andrew Porterfield of the Genetic Literacy Project, is that as many as 43 percent of the organic foods sold in the U.S. could have substances prohibited by USDA organic guidelines.

Everyone is hurt by the USDA’s lack of rigor when it comes to ensuring that organics are actually organic by definition. Farmers and ranchers in the U.S., already squeezed by thin margins, find it tough to compete against imports that are often cheaper and may not even be a genuinely organic food product in the first place. Food companies and retailers have their brand reputation put at risk because of doubts sowed within their supply chains. And consumers are left wondering if the extra money spent on supposedly certified organic products was a waste – not to mention the fact that they and their families could have been exposed to chemicals they thought would never occur due to the premiums they had paid for supposedly safer foods.

Image credit: Kevin Dooley/Flickr

To help spur what it calls the “New Plastic Economy," the Ellen MacArthur Foundation plans to launch a $2 million innovation prize in partnership with the Prince of Wales's International Sustainability Unit.

They say you can’t fix a problem until you know you have one. And 3p has previously reported on the Foundation’s New Plastics Economy Initiative to address the growing menace of plastic waste. Its research clearly shows the problem we have. The latest report, released last January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, proposes to reverse that trend with a “global action plan” for sustainable plastics.

It’s not just an environmental problem, either. With still only 14 percent of plastic packaging collected for recycling, the rest -- worth more than $120 billion -- is lost as waste. Typically after a single use, the plastic we use flows to the sea or to a landfill, infiltrating ecosystems along the way.

It’s a human problem. Plastics are a part of our civilization. The New Plastics Economy Innovation Prize seeks human innovation for new ways of packaging our goods and for cleaning up the oceans of plastic.

Prince Charles of Wales, the oldest child of Queen Elizabeth II and a longtime champion of environmental issues, will deliver the keynote speech at the launch event. Wendy Schmidt is funding the prize as lead philanthropic partner of the New Plastics Economy initiative. The Challenge Partners are OpenIDEO (Circular Design Challenge) and NineSigma.

Following are general guidelines for innovators. Go innovate!

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To achieve the goal of eliminating plastic packaging waste, the Prize is composed of two parallel challenges:

1. The $1 million Circular Design Challenge invites applicants to rethink how we can get products to people without generating plastic waste.
   The Challenge will focus on small format packaging items (10% of all plastic packaging) such as shampoo sachets, wrappers, straws and coffee cup lids, which are currently almost never recycled and often end up in the environment.Anyone with a good idea for how to get products to people without using disposable packaging, or for how to design plastic packaging that is easier to recycle, can enter this Challenge. Challenge partner is OpenIDEO.


2. The $1 million Circular Materials Challenge seeks ways to make all plastic packaging recyclable. About 13 percent of today’s packaging, such as crisp packets and food wrappers, is made of layers of different materials fused together. This multi-layer construction provides important functions like keeping food fresh, but also makes the packaging hard to recycle.

The Challenge, therefore invites innovators to find alternative materials that could be recycled or composted.Innovators who apply to the Prize are competing for up to $2,000,000 in grants and visibility of their solutions to major businesses, the innovator community, and the public.Winners will enter a 12-month accelerator program offering exclusive access to industry experts, commercial guidance, feedback on user and scalability requirements, advice on performance expectations, and access to innovation labs for testing and development. The first winners will be announced later this year.

The judging panel for the challenge consists of senior executives from major businesses, widely recognized scientists, designers, and academics.

Solutions will be assessed against a broad range of criteria carefully crafted in collaboration with the challenge partners and participants of the New Plastics Economy initiative.

“Working towards circularity in the way we make, use, and distribute plastic packaging will revolutionize the scale of the human footprint on our planet,” said Schmidt, who has already funded two major XPrize competitions focused on oceans.

“The value of keeping materials in the economy is massive compared to the losses we suffer when plastic leaks into the very living systems we depend upon for our survival. The New Plastics Economy Prize is a call for creative design and technical innovation at a critical time.”

The challenge was developed in close coordination with the initiative’s more than 40 participants, including Core Partners Amcor, Coca-Cola, Danone, Mars, Novamont, PepsiCo, Unilever and Veolia.

The National CSR Awards 2017, sponsored by Revive and now in their third year, were held at the impressive Lord’s Cricket Ground last night (18 May) and saw businesses of all sizes recognised for leading the way in sustainable business practice.

From a hotel in Northumberland to a youth charity’s partnership with an American multinational technology company, winners came from across the country and a wide range of industries.

“The standard of entries this year has been incredible and some categories were particularly hard fought,” comments Karen Sutton, CEO and Founder of the awards. “Every year just gets better and better. It’s a privilege and a pleasure to reward such fantastic achievements.”

The Overall Excellence in Corporate Responsibility went to technology company VMware for its Global Impact Report which shares the company’s VMware 2020 vision to serve as “a force for good,” outlining its sustainability roadmap and detailing the aspirations and goals it has established across its products, operations and people.

The Clean & Green award went to Battlesteads, an hotel in Northumberland that is widely recognised as one of the UK’s top sustainable tourism destinations. Owned by Richard and Dee Slade since 2005, the hotel features 22 bedrooms including five recently built eco lodges, a restaurant with local produce menus, a bar serving biodynamic wines and ales from local micro-breweries and its own on-site observatory. In this category, Land Securities earned a Highly Commended from judges for its resource efficiency programme, supported by ambitious carbon, energy and waste reduction targets.

Building Sustainably was won by Wilmott Dixon Construction for its University of Leicester Centre for Medicine, the UK’s largest non-residential project built and certified to the ultra low energy consumption Passivhaus standard. Verto Homes was Highly Commended for its Towan Heights project.

WWF and M&S won Green Supply Chain for their work in sustainable cotton in India with glass manufacturer Encirc named as runner up for its comprehensive sustainability strategy, “Our Sustainable Futures”, which has resulted in reducing the carbon footprint of its supply chain by hundreds of thousands of tonnes every year.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle went to Caledonian Produce for its Sustainability in Action campaign which enabled an increase of over 34% of previously considered waste product going on for further positive re-use; with surplus food and ingredients going on to benefit the local community via a network of social enterprises and charities.

Go Ahead London topped the Sustainable Transport category beating off stiff competition from Manchester Airport Group and UPS. Having successfully retained Routes 507 and 521 through the competitive tendering process, Go Ahead set about transforming a central London garage from a conventional diesel facility to an electric one. The project has delivered real health benefits for all and set the benchmark for future schemes.

The Sustainable Small Business was won by Belu. The company has recently committed to working with WaterAid until 2030 to help them achieve their vision of everyone, everywhere having access to water and sanitation by 2030, aligning with WaterAid to support the achievement of UN Sustainable Development Goal 6.

Best Individual Community Partnership went to UK Youth and Microsoft for its digital skills programme which in 2016 expanded with the creation of Generation Code, a practical and targeted curriculum aiming to inspire the next generation of coders. Aviva was named as runner-up for its Aviva Community Fund project.

The joint Best Partnership in the Community award went to Selfridges and the Zoological Society of London for its Project Ocean, an ongoing partnership to stop overfishing and pollution; increase ocean protection; and engage new audiences in marine conservation. The runner up was UBS and Into University, a partnership that has worked towards a shared goal of tackling educational disadvantage since 2007.

Best Community Partnership (Legacy) was awarded to Investec and the Bromley by Bow Centre for its Beyond Business initiative, a unique social enterprise incubator, that launches and supports sustainable businesses in Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Newham, all in the top 5% of deprived boroughs in London. The category runner up was Kellogg and its Breakfast Club programme which first came into being in 1998.

The International Sustainable Community award was won by R Twining & Co in tandem with UNICEF in recognition of its work in supporting young girls living on tea estates in Assam. Yorkshire Water and Water Aid with its Big Wish for Ethiopia campaign was named runner up.

Global Best Education Project was awarded to Unilever and Project Dirt for its Outdoor Classroom Day, while the National Best Education Project went to Enjoy Work, Chiswick Park, a youth employability programme. Runner up was Mace Ltd for its Building Futures work and HMRC was named Highly Commended for its Tax Facts programme.

Outstanding Corporate Leadership was won by Caroline Hill, head of sustainability at Land Securities. Since joining Land Securities, Caroline has demonstrated innovation and a long-term commitment to position Land Securities as a sustainability leader in its industry. This has been clear from the sheer quantity of initiatives that it has been able to achieve in just 18 months and through the significant improvement in performance in this area as a business.

A special judges award – Grass Roots Communities went to Cordwainers Grow CIC for its Hackney Herbal project. The project specialises in creative workshops and events that connect and inspire people around the extensive uses of herbs. It grows herbs in a patchwork of sites around Hackney supporting volunteers to get hands on horticultural experience. From these herbs it creates seasonal herbal tea blends which are sold through local cafes.

ONES TO WATCH

The awards judging panel devised an additional category this year called Ones to Watch. This was to acknowledge entries that were not able to fullfil all the necessary criteria in a particular category, but deemed worthy of recognition because they excelled in many areas.

Monodraught was highlighted as ‘One to Watch’ in Clean & Green for its cool-phase low energy system that provides intelligent control of ventilation & cooling.

Olio, the food sharing app, was named as One to Watch in Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. It’s a free app that connects neighbours with each other and with local shops and cafes so that surplus food can be shared, not thrown away.

While Social Value Portal named as ‘One to Watch’ as a Sustainable Small Business. Harrow Council engaged the Social Value Portal to pilot their social value procurement platform on a tender for the renovation of a council property in Harrow. The council wanted to award the project to the supplier who offered not only the best offer in terms of price and quality but also with the strongest CSR programme.

In 2015, a nonprofit group of leaders called the B Team, led by Richard Branson, created an agreement they called “Net-Zero by 2050.” It called for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a decidedly ambitious goal. They sent a letter to Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), “calling on governments and businesses to commit to bold action” at the COP21 climate negotiations in Paris that same year.

San Francisco-based Salesforce, a cloud computing company, was one of a handful that signed on for the B Team's net-zero GHG target. But it wasn’t content to wait until 2050. A few weeks ago, the company announced it achieved its net-zero goal 33 years sooner than promised.

Salesforce’s path to achieving net-zero emissions hinges on three approaches: avoid, reduce and mitigate. Its core platform is 50 times more environmentally friendly on average than on-premise solutions, the company claimed in its 2015/2016 Stakeholder Impact report. And its customers avoid emitting over 2 million metric tons of carbon a year by moving to the cloud.

Salesforce reduces emissions through investing in green office spaces and improving data center efficiency, and it mitigates emissions by procuring renewable energy. Back in 2013, the company committed to power all data center operations with renewable energy, and in 2015 expanded that commitment to its entire global operations. Last year, Salesforce procured 37 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, mainly through purchasing renewable energy credits (RECs). It bolstered its portfolio with wind energy power purchase agreements in West Virginia and Texas late last year, which are expected to generate 227,000 MWh of clean power annually.

Purchasing carbon credits equal to operational emissions the company can't avoid or reduce helped Salesforce achieved net-zero GHG emissions. Those carbon credits support sustainable development projects such as Proyecto Mirador, a Cool Effect project in Honduras. Through the project, families are supplied with bricks and mortar to build stoves that can cut wood use in half. Through the use of cleaner stoves, each family prevents about 3 tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere every year -- totaling 1 million tons of carbon since the project began.

Salesforce also supports solar water heating in India, where electric water heaters in homes, universities and commercial buildings are replaced with solar water heaters. In India, 20 to 30 percent of electricity is used to heat water.

Salesforce proves business can lead the way

While Salesforce continues to take bold action on climate change, the Donald Trump administration appears committed to climate change denial.

Critics note that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency website has been scrubbed of any mention of climate change. The EPA stated in a press release that it is “undergoing changes that reflect the agency’s new direction under President Donald Trump and Administrator Scott Pruitt.” The process of modifying the EPA website includes “updating language to reflect the approach of new leadership.” 

In stark contrast, Salesforce proves that when government fails to address a major issue, business can successfully step in.

Image credit: Skyseeker

The discussion over the opening of federally-owned public lands to more commercial purposes, or even selling some of them off entirely, is a hot topic this year. But what about areas of the oceans and seas that are also managed by the U.S. government? Recent federal agency decisions on future ocean development oceans could help boost food security here in U.S. – or they could reignite the heated farmed-versus-wild seafood debate.

Aquaculture, was once seen as an environmental disaster. Many environmentalists still perceive it that way. But the practice continues to make gains across the world, with the U.S. being a notable exception. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), over 90 percent of the shrimp, salmon, tilapia and other seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported. As a result, the American seafood deficit surged to over $11 billion annually.

We may be averse to having aquaculture along our shores, but instead it is outsourced abroad. And NOAA and some seafood trade organizations argue that aquaculture is increasingly becoming safer, and can make way for habitat restoration, sustainable economic development and stronger fisheries.

For the most part, however, aquaculture projects have been one-off ventures such as mollusk and seaweed farms off the coasts of places like New England and Long Island. And to date, there are no commercial fish farming operations in any federal waters.

Those numbers led NOAA to approve aquaculture for the first time in federally-managed waters in the Gulf of Mexico last year. Some local fishing companies were quick the welcome the news. But many environmental groups argued that the practice is still not ecologically sound.

And considering the cost of investing in deep-water fish farming, businesses aren't pounding on NOAA’s doors in order to secure aquaculture permits. The result, Deena Shanker of Bloomberg reported last year, was a “$100 million mistake,” as the funds NOAA poured into this idea have not yet panned out. Discussions about establishing fish farms in Hawaii’s waters have been just that, talk. NOAA appears spooked by the backlash and lawsuits by organizations such as the nonprofit Center for Food Safety.

But the reality is that aquaculture is not going away. In fact, it will continue to surge, as it is a cost-effective way to supply protein to an increasingly growing – and hungry – world. The World Bank, for example, estimated that two-thirds of all seafood consumed globally will be provided by aquaculture. As the argument goes, instead of importing that fish from abroad, expand fish farming here in the U.S. – where regulations are far stricter than they are in global aquaculture leaders such as Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines.

And aquaculture is generally becoming safer, science journalist Virginia Gewin of the Food and Environment Reporting Network outlined last month. The overuse of antibiotics in the industry, which was once the foundation of the health argument against the expansion of aquaculture, has largely declined – vaccines are now the norm across the industry. Fish excrement, another challenge that bedeviled the industry, can be a relatively small problem compared to the nitrates washing into seas such as the Gulf of Mexico – where oil spills are a far more ominous environmental threat. Compared to livestock operations for pork and cattle, Gewin argued, fish farming is relatively benign – if done correctly.

Meanwhile, NOAA is still pursuing aquaculture research. The agency is focused on the commercial farming of several species of fish, including sablefish, otherwise known as black cod or butterfish. This fish coveted by chefs for its versatility and texture, but its stocks have declined rapidly in recent years.

Overall, however, aquaculture still has a long road to acceptance. And its future is not helped by the fact that the current presidential administration, which has had NOAA in its crosshairs due to its climate research, suggested a 17 percent cut to its budget before the temporary spending agreement reached with Congress a few weeks ago. If the president eventually succeeds in gutting NOAA’s budget, he would hurt both local fisherman and entrepreneurs while allowing more fish from dubious sources to be imported into the U.S.

Shrimp from the Sahara, anyone? That could become the future of seafood consumption in the U.S. if we do not find a way to grow it sustainably off our shores.

Image credit: NOAA/Flickr

In today’s political climate, how does a company stay true to its values, prove it has a spine and demonstrate support for the most vulnerable communities? For Levi Strauss & Co. and its foundation, the answer is $1 million in grants that will bolster their support of communities in the U.S. and abroad, including immigrants, refugees, religious minorities and transgender citizens.

Referring to current events as “one of the great disruptive moments of our day,” Daniel Lee, executive director of the Levi Strauss Foundation, described today’s announcement as a call to action.

As Lee explained about this disbursement of grants, “It calls upon institutions to look at its plans and its playbook, and ask, ‘do we just do more of what we’re doing, or do we shift course?’”

That certainly is the question asked by many corporate foundations as they decide which communities are in need of a hand up. Earlier this month, for example, Bloomberg Philanthropies framed its side of the debated with a $3 million pledge to help people who have been hurt by the transition away from coal.

Those people, of course, also happened to flock in droves to Donald Trump in last November’s presidential election. Hence the question: In a country divided, does an organization try to win the hearts and minds of those who feel they have been shut out; or should it try to assist those who its staff perceive as most at risk – or perhaps even both?

Levi’s held a company town hall two days after the election to collect its employees’ thoughts, Lee told TriplePundit by phone on Tuesday. A few days later, the board of the Levi Strauss Foundation met to discuss the organization’s direction in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s surprise win over Hillary Clinton.

CEO Chip Bergh, along with other leaders at Levi’s, decided to take measures seen as necessary to strengthen the company’s values -- defined as empathy, originality, integrity and courage. “We have a long legacy of standing for inclusion and diversity,” Lee told us. “After all, Levi Strauss was an immigrant himself, and started his business in a city built by immigrants.”

In order to decide what kind of community work would earn priority, a team of employees took an approach that can best be described as data-driven. The team looked at the Trump administration’s priorities during its first 100 days, and tried to discern mere conjecture from what could become bona-fide policy.

Using this data, the Levi's tea prioritized nonprofits that largely focused on education, advocacy, and legal rights for immigrants, refugees and transgender citizens. As of Wednesday, the foundation called out 13 organizations that will soon receive funds to scale and accelerate their work. These groups' missions vary from providing legal clinics in the San Francisco Bay Area to supporting women’s health clinics in apparel-sourcing communities abroad.

Lee cited a "bunker mentality" among certain communities. “So we asked them, ‘What are you seeing?’” Those answers determined how these funds will be distributed.

These organizations include United We Dream, which says its network is comprised of over 100,000 immigrant youth spread across 55 organizations in 26 states. The group links young people to attorneys who can help them on a wide array of problems, from deportation proceedings to helping undocumented students win the right to pay in-state tuition at universities. In the Bay Area, Pangea Legal Services offers attorneys’ advice on a sliding-scale fee structure for immigrants in need, especially for those who are at risk for deportation. Other organizations provide legal defense and education for Muslims, South Asians and other communities who Lee said have been been in constant state of worry about their future since last November.

“To me, it goes back to what our company and our brand has stood for over the years,” Lee added as he wrapped up his talk with 3p. “A pair of Levi’s is like the embodiment of the events of our time.”

Of course, the discussion over who is hurt or helped by the Trump administration’s policies -- and who was hurt and helped during the former Barack Obama administration -- is the subject of arguments, and even shouting matches, at dinner tables and coffee houses across the U.S. When asked whether Levi’s message could really resonate with everyone, Lee was unequivocal: “As a company and a brand, we cannot be all things to all people,” he said firmly and confidently. “This is a moment for us to make a statement about an America that’s good.”

From Lee’s point of view, the company has long symbolized cultural change, and been a “uniform of many social movements” over the years. From the civil rights era of the 1960s, to the gay rights movement of the 1970s and the AIDS awareness campaigns of the 1980s, Levi’s stood up for what its leadership believes is right. “A pair of Levi’s is an American icon,” Lee concluded. “So what we say about what America stands for matters.”

Image credit: Levi Strauss & Co.

It's been a busy few months for the Donald Trump administration. Equally so for the Center for Biological Diversity, which will square off with the administration in a major challenge over environmental laws.

At the heart of the suit is the Congressional Review Act, a 1996 law that allows Congress to “disapprove” any recently passed regulation with a simple majority and the sitting president’s okay. With the help of Congress, the Trump administration employed the CRA to roll back 14 rules passed during the tail end of Barack Obama's presidency. Before this year, the law was used only once.

The setting for the challenge is Alaska's federally protected wildlife preserves. For a brief amount of time, predatory animals like bears and wolves were protected by a Department of Interior rule that prohibited specific hunting procedures on the preserves. In April, President Trump signed HJ 69 (a joint resolution) into law, repealing these protections and opening preserves to hunters who utilize what the plaintiffs call "cruel and ecologically harmful predator control practices."

Those practices stirred a tug-of-war between hunting groups backed by the state of Alaska and the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the preserves. The FWS argues that baiting bears, killing bears and wolves and their offspring in their dens, shooting animals by air, and other practices that have been used in Alaska to control certain species are cruel and illegal in federal preserves.

The state of Alaska doesn't see it that way. Like several states that earn lucrative revenue from  big-game hunting, Alaska's government wants to ensure plenty of travel opportunities for hunters. And that's no surprise. Tourism is a $2.4 billion industry in Alaska, not including the fees the state gets from hunters.

And the state house feels a federal law that strictly controls how and where hunters can hunt on federal lands that the state cooperatively helps manage gets in the way of hunters. But to be truthful, it also got in the way of the state's increasing efforts to try to take control of the management processes of federal preserves in the state.

Critics of the former rule also argued that it would force caribou and other prey to grow out of control, a point disputed by scientists in their testimony to the federal government prior to the rule's implementation last August.

But the repeal of those protections isn't the only thing that has critics of HJ 69 upset. It is how it was done. The CRA does more than repeal a rule. It makes it exceedingly difficult for agencies to make their own rules on related issues in the future. In short, argues the Center for Biological Diversity, it weakens the ability of agencies to manage their own territories, an issue that has been brought up in other CRA-related battles by outspoken senators.

The Center and its supporters hope the courts will deem the CRA unconstitutional and, in so doing, reverse the repeal of Alaskan wildlife protections.

Whether the courts agree that an instrument that has been in place for more than two decades and has been used by one previous administration (in a much more restrained manner) is unconstitutional is yet to be seen. Like it or not, the president and Congress are using tools at their disposal -- put in place by legal precedent.

But resolving this dispute is unlikely to stop another battle, one that is just as politically charged and environmentally concerning: the ideological conflict between states and those who see federal lands as public endowments meant to protect the country's biological safe-keeping.

As the National Wildlife Refuge Association predicted recently, passing HJ 69 and rolling back wildlife protections doesn't give Alaska more control over its refuges. But it does mean the FWS "will have to spend more and more time and money to fight the state’s efforts to impose Intensive Predator Management on refuges throughout Alaska," combined with "frivolous lawsuits" by the state in an effort to impose management techniques that were never part of the ethical strategies behind protected wildlife preserves.

Nor is Alaska the only state in which the Center is fighting when it comes to what it terms "expanded killing of native wildlife." It also lodged a lawsuit concerning similar techniques being used in Idaho and maintains that the need for ecological diversity includes the need for predators in the wild.

"Wildlife Services is stuck in the barbarism of the 19th century, before the full value of predators in ecosystems was understood," said Erik Molvar, executive director of Western Watersheds Project, which is also backing the lawsuit.

In regard to HJ 69, though, there is at least one bright spot for environmentalists: Clearly not everyone who voted on the repeal agreed with its passage.

The House passed the repeal in a 52-47 vote, hardly a slam-dunk for proponents. Those who voted to uphold the protections likely feared an eventual fallout from repeatedly using the CRA to repeal rules for which voters previously expressed support and for issues they would likely want Congress to address in future years.

The Center for Biological Diversity's focus on the CRA and its efforts to force the issue into the courts may mean that Congress will be called to reconsider using this tool that some argue not only ties the hands of agencies, but also dilutes the voice of voters.

Flickr images: USFS Headquarters; shirley binn

Electric vehicle proponents like to make the argument that a shift a way from the internal combustion engine will result in a bevy of environmental benefits. But the materials such as lithium needed for these cars’ batteries imposes its own ecological impact. Furthermore, municipalities across the U.S. struggle with the reprocessing of electronic waste (e-waste), while they literally throw away money as many of these same materials often end up in landfill.

But one environmentalist and self-described e-waste pioneer is showing that there is business potential in what many assume is a huge challenge with limited solutions. Eric Lundgren has long touted a process that he calls “hybrid recycling,” and has advised some of the best-known electronics brands in finding more creative ways to improve their waste diversion processes. And as a result of all the mounting e-waste that is easy to find in landfills and junkyards across the U.S., Lundgren has cobbled together a vehicle that he says can take on a Tesla Model S.

Lundgren’s genius is what he calls the “Phoenix,” a salvaged BMW that has been retrofitted with 88 percent recycled materials. The cost of the Phoenix has set Lundgren back about $12,900. Compare that to a Tesla Model S, which starts at approximately $68,000. Furthermore, this Phoenix has left some of the leading electric vehicle car models in the dust with its range, which last month Lundgren claimed was 340 miles on a single charge.

And at 6:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning, the Phoenix left the Chatsworth neighborhood in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley to drive to San Diego and back – alongside a $150,000 Tesla Model S -- in order to see which car boasts a longer range. [ Ed note: We're still waiting on the results and will update the article when we hear back!]

Lundgren's jerry-rigged recycled car has already taken on the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Bolt. For him, it's less about ego and more about his point that far more can be done in the U.S. and overseas about innovation in electronic waste recycling. Depending on the source cited, anywhere from 20 million to 50 million metric tons of e-waste is disposed annually. For years, consumers have been tossing out valuable materials such as gold, and silver, along with less-understood elements such as neodymium and scandium.

The volume of these materials in themselves maybe relatively small, but discarded computers, cell phones and other electronic gadgets comprise the vast majority of toxins in landfills across the globe. And gadgets that are actually salvaged are often shipped abroad to developing countries, which accomplishes little more than exporting wealthier nations’ environmental problems – and creating health hazards for those workers tasked with dismantling and smelting these unwanted items.

All of these expensive materials tucked away into electronic gadgets provide economic opportunity – but no one has figured out a cost-effective process that could scale quite yet. Lundgren, who is head of his own e-waste recycling advisory firm, believes he has the answers – one that will be testing the limits of the much-celebrated Tesla along I-5 and other Southern California highways today.

Image credit: ITAP