Gov. Newsom’s 2023-2024 budget summary cut funds allocated to the California Department of Resources, Recycling, and Recovery (CalRecycle). Here’s why that is a mistake. Top: Windrow turning at Debs Regional Park compost hub in Los Angeles. Photo by Kourtnii Brown Kourtnii Brown The California Alliance for Community Composting (CACC) provides technical and financial assistance to 105 community-based organizations in six priority regions statewide that are participating in CalRecycle’s $1.54 million pilot grant program, “Community Composting for Greens Spaces” (CCGS). The current round of the program ends in March 2023, and CACC groups have collectively submitted $4.8 million in requests to CalRecycle for funds to coordinate the second round of the program (CCGS-2) that is scheduled to run April 2023-Apri...

Who would have thought companies would be punished by state legislatures for their triple bottom line management strategies? Top: The smokestacks of an oil refinery. © Leonard G / Wikimedia Commons (manipulated by BioCycle) Nora Goldstein I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read a headline in the The New York Times on May 27, 2022: “G.O.P. Weaponizes Statehouses Against Green Corporate Goals.” The article focuses in large part on state retirement and investment funds that include asset managers that flag “climate change as an environmental risk.” In Texas, for example, “a new law bars the state’s retirement and investment funds from doing business with companies that the state comptroller says are boycotting fossil fuels.” Similar laws and legislation are being pursued in more than 15 other states...