When you eat an apple, you can do one of two things with the core. You can put it in your garbage can and it will likely end up in Johnston, at Rhode Island’s Central Landfill. There, it will be buried among tons of other organic and non-organic waste. It will break down in the absence of oxygen to release methane, a greenhouse gas that is 28 times as damaging to the climate as carbon dioxide.

Or, you can compost that apple core. Instead of filling up the landfill, it will be converted into a nutrient-rich and valuable product. Instead of contributing to climate change, it can be used to enrich your local soils.

Every day we are mostly choosing that first option here in Rhode Island. And it’s not just an apple core — we are paying millions to haul and dump thousands of pounds of food scraps in our quickly filling landfill.

Compostable material including food scraps accounts for 33 percent of the waste we dump in the landfill. If we keep doing what we’re doing, our landfill will reach capacity and be forced to close by 2046. When that happens, the price we all pay to throw out our trash will increase exponentially as we are forced to ship our waste out of state.

Our neighbors in Massachusetts have already had to go this route, at significant taxpayer cost. Rhode Islanders enjoy the lowest costs in New England to throw out our trash and we want to keep it that way. Extending the life of the landfill is the best way to keep our costs down – and investing in composting is an essential part of that.

That’s why we recently proposed new legislation that aims to fund composting and organic waste diversion programs with just a $2 per ton surcharge on the trash we send to the landfill, a strategy that is already working in 12 other states. The money generated from that small fee will go right back into our cities and towns through a grant program, funding things like compost facility builds, curbside service for residents, and organic waste diversion education.

Reducing food waste dumped in the landfill will bring down waste hauling costs on our cities and towns, and that small surcharge will quickly result in savings. Composting is an affordable, scalable solution to our waste crisis that we should be implementing in every community, and this program will put us on the right track.

In 2023, municipalities in Rhode Island spent over $23 million to landfill over 350,000 tons of waste. Imagine if we removed a third of those totals from the equation!

Cutting down on waste not only extends the life of our only landfill, it’s also good climate and economic policy. Let’s change the way we look at our food scraps. Instead of turning them into polluting garbage, let’s give them a second life enriching our soils. Let’s provide our communities with common-sense, long-term solutions that are cost effective and sustainable in every sense of the word. The action we take now will pay dividends for decades to come.

Senator Bridget Valverde, a Democrat representing parts of East Greenwich, North Kingstown and South Kingstown, and Representative Terri Cortvriend, a Democrat representing parts of Portsmouth and Middletown, are the sponsors of the Composting and Organic Waste Diversion Act (S 2753 / H 7856).

The state says that the classic Japanese automobiles are unsafe for public roads but that golf carts are A-OK

Rhode Island is reportedly asking kei-vehicle owners, which include cars, trucks and minivans, to relinquish their registrations. This move is a direct challenge to federal laws that grant 25-year-old vehicles the freedom to remain in the country. It’s also puzzling, as the state claims its reasoning is safety-based, but at the same time, it wants to enable golf carts to wander the streets.

The DMV, which defines Kei Vehicles as “Primarily mini-trucks manufactured for the Japanese market designated as ‘kejidosha’ lightweight vehicles,” evidently canceled kei truck and car registrations over a year ago, according to a report from The Drive.

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Now, a new report suggests that the state is taking further steps. It’s asking owners to return their registrations, which were once legally issued. In fact, it might be denying registrations for normal vehicles to those who own kei cars and trucks. Almost any vehicle over 25 years old is legal to import to the USA under federal law, and this includes kei cars, like the ones that Rhode Island is targeting.

According to WPRI, “the DMV has made efforts over the last several years to prevent any additional registration of these vehicles… there are, however, a handful that still remain registered, and the proposed bill would restrain the DMV’s ability to further eliminate unsafe vehicles from the public roadways of the state.”

What it’s referring to is a bill proposed by State Senator Lou DiPalma who is fighting to keep the kei-vehicles legal. “What the bill seeks to do is grandfather everybody who has [a Kei vehicle (car or truck)] and has it registered. It would allow you to re-register if you had it prior to 2021,” DiPalma explained. The Providence Journal reports that the bill would “Apply only to kei cars, trucks, and microvans that were registered in Rhode Island as of August 1, 2021.” (At the time, there were at least 30 in the state, DiPalma said).”

It’s also worth noting that the state seems to be completely hypocritical when it comes to laws regarding vehicles on public roads. In July, it’ll become legal to drive “Low-Speed Vehicles” like golf carts on streets. Specifically, these vehicles must have a top speed above 20 mph (32 km/h) but no higher than 25 mph (40 km/h) and can only go on streets with speed limits up to 35 mph (56 km/h).

Notably, the street-legal golf carts in question aren’t just any old course-covering vehicle. They have to be all-electric, must have wipers, a license plate, be insured, and meet some other qualifications.

The point remains, though. To claim that they’re safe while Kei cars and trucks aren’t appears to be a case of one hand not knowing what the other is doing. Oh, and all of this appears to be over approximately 30 kei vehicles in total.

PROVIDENCE − With backing from Senate President Dominick Ruggerio, a fast-moving bill to double the gambling-on-credit limit at Rhode Island’s two Bally’s-run state casinos to $100,000 is sparking questions.

Among them: Why is this a good idea? How deeply is Bally’s able to probe the off-limits gambling habits of online gamblers or the patrons of the tribal casinos across the border? What else does this newly filed legislation actually do?

“Obviously we’re not interested in extending lines of credit to those individuals who would not be able to pay it back,” Bally’s representative Elizabeth Suever assured the Senate Committee on Special Legislation last week on the wide-ranging bill introduced on May 2.

Why it matters:

Taxpayers have a stake because state-sponsored gambling – including gambling in Bally’s-run two state casinos in Lincoln and Tiverton – is the state’s third largest source of revenue, with an anticipated $428.8 million in gambling revenue headed to the state treasury this year.

What is the rush on the bill?

No one from the Rhode Island Lottery – which is the state’s gambling control agency – or the Council on Problem Gambling appeared at last week’s hearing to say anything on the bill that Senate President Dominick Ruggerio allowed to be introduced more than two months after the Senate’s bill-introduction deadline.

Why did Ruggerio sponsor a bill this late in the session? “The bill was introduced at the request of Bally’s, to keep them on par with competition from casinos in Massachusetts,” a spokesperson for Ruggerio said.

A hearing has been scheduled for this Thursday on the matching House version of the bill. That version also seeks to give the state’s Department of Business Regulation the power to change the terms in the latest version of the state’s current operating agreement with Bally’s without having to ask legislative approval.

In the State House: More than one senator seemed shocked that the new language was not delineated in “blue” – as is usually the case – and unsatisfied by Suever’s answer that this is not, technically, the kind of law that requires legislative approval.

What are the arguments for a $100,000 credit limit?

How Suever explained the need: “We want to make sure that, as the operator of the two casinos for the state of Rhode Island, we’re doing everything that we can to be regionally competitive. By that I mean competitive with those casinos that are in Connecticut, which are some of the largest casinos in the United States, and Massachusetts.”

She said Bally’s already has high limit rooms, but players in the rooms have said they can’t get the same level of credit in Rhode Island as they can in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts does not have a credit limit. (Connecticut casinos are tribal, meaning they can decide how much credit to issue, she said.)

While Bally’s is not suggesting Rhode Island go as far as Massachusetts, she said, extending the limit from $50,000 currently to $100,000 would be “an amenity for our players that play very high limits because they don’t want to be carrying that amount of cash on their person as they’re coming and going from the casino.”

Suever said the limit would be for a “very, very limited amount of players.”

The limit would only be available to people gambling at the casino in person, she said, and would not be available to those using iGaming.

She did not mention how the casino’s are faring financially. While state revenues from the Lottery’s instant tickets, Powerball and Daily Numbers games are up year-over-year, the state’s share of the take from the video-slots and table games at the two casinos was down. At the Tiverton casino, the table game action was down 8.2%, at LIncoln, 3.2%.

What does it take to get the $100,000 limit?

Before extending or upping anyone’s credit, Suever said they:

• Have the player file a credit application
• Have Bally’s do bank account checks and credit history checks
• Require two forms of identification
• Require a player number to track their play and their gaming history at all local casinos

How many players current carry a $50,000 credit limit? Suever wasn’t able to say, and the Rhode Island Lottery did not respond to an inquiry about the gambling debt loads of Bally’s customers in Rhode Island by deadline.

What else would the bills do?

Other features of the bill would change the 20-year deal for Rhode Island’s lottery and casino operations, according to Bally’s spokeswoman Patti Doyle, by:

• Allowing negotiations between RI Lottery and Bally’s on the calculation of Bally’s debt ratio, allowing, for example, “addbacks for development projects and not just acquisitions.”
• Changing the way promotional points are calculated. This is money that comes straight off the top of the state’s share that the casino can give customers as an incentive to visit and play more.