California
'Sip, return, repeat': How this California city is trying to normalize reusable cups
!['Sip, return, repeat': How this California city is trying to normalize reusable cups 'Sip, return, repeat': How this California city is trying to normalize reusable cups](https://grist.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/NextGen-purple-cups.jpg?quality=75&strip=all)
Next month, more than 30 chain restaurants and locally owned coffee shops and eateries in Petaluma, California, will begin providing beverages in reusable cups by default as part of a first-of-its-kind pilot program meant to reduce pollution from single-use plastic.
Through the Petaluma Reusable Cup Project — a three-month pilot program sponsored by a food and beverage industry group called the NextGen Consortium — customers will be served hot and cold beverages in bright purple reusable plastic cups, unless they ask for disposables or bring their own mugs. After drinking their coffees, teas, or sodas, they’ll be able to return the cups at any of the participating establishments, or at one of 60 return receptacles placed strategically throughout the city.
A reuse logistics provider, Muuse, will be in charge of collecting, washing, and redistributing the clean cups back to the coffee shops and restaurants.
Kate Daly, managing director of the impact investment firm Closed Loop Partners — which oversees the NextGen Consortium — said the program will be a major milestone. Existing reusable cup programs tend to operate in sports stadiums, concert halls, and other confined spaces where it’s easier to keep track of inventory. No other citywide program in the U.S. has made reusable cups the default option across so many different foodservice brands.
The project aims to achieve an “unprecedented saturation of reusable packaging” within Petaluma, Daly told Grist. Thanks to funding from the NextGen Consortium — founded by Starbucks and McDonald’s and supported by companies including PepsiCo and Coca-Cola — she said hundreds of thousands of reusable cups will be deployed throughout the city in preparation for the program’s August 5 start date.
Participating locations will include Starbucks, Peet’s Coffee, Dunkin’, KFC, and The Habit Burger Grill, as well as local cafes and restaurants like the Petaluma Pie Company and Tea Room Cafe. Closed Loop Partners said they selected Petaluma — a city of about 60,000 people just north of San Francisco — because of its dense, walkable downtown, and because of residents’ receptivity to reuse programs. Many people may have grown familiar with reuse last year, when Starbucks tested a smaller-scale reusable cup program at 12 locations between Petaluma and another city nearby.
Although the new program is confined to Petaluma and will only last three months, it could help inform initiatives in other cities that are seeking to do away with single-use plastic packaging, the overwhelming majority of which is made from fossil fuels. The U.S. produces close to 40 million metric tons of plastic waste every year and recycles only 5 percent of it; the rest gets sent to landfills or incinerators, or ends up as litter.
Some types of plastic, including disposable cups, are even more unlikely to be recycled. According to the most recent data from the Environmental Protection Agency, from 2018, the U.S. produces more than 1 million tons of plastic plates and cups annually and recycles virtually none of it.
Reuse programs are supposed to help by driving down demand for new plastic packaging. Some initiatives allow customers to bring their own containers to grocery stores and restaurants; others involve store-owned containers that customers borrow and then return. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the most effective returnable container programs could reduce materials use by up to 75 percent and greenhouse gas emissions by up to 70 percent, compared to the status quo. The nonprofit also estimates that U.S. businesses could save some $10 billion in material costs if they replace just 20 percent of their single-use plastic packaging with reusable alternatives.
In designing the Petaluma Reusable Cup Project, Daly and her colleagues sought to ensure a smoother experience than what has been offered in previous trials, including some in the San Francisco Bay Area that were launched by the NextGen Consortium. One key focus was on what she called “precompetitive collaboration,” or getting businesses to buy into a common reuse system in which all of the elements — cups, logistics, messaging — are shared. This might go against companies’ competitive instincts, but it reduces costs so that businesses can participate in a larger reuse system instead of managing one on their own.
To make the program easy to participate in, the Petaluma Reusable Cup Project will be free and won’t involve any customer tracking. Most other reusable cup programs rely on financial motivations to make sure inventory doesn’t get lost — either they charge customers a small, returnable deposit when they borrow a reusable container, or they take down the customer’s credit card information so they can be charged if they fail to return the container after a set amount of time. These options often require downloading a program-specific app.
In Petaluma, however, customers won’t have to do anything to participate — they’ll just order their drinks as normal, with no additional payment or exchange of personal information. A QR code on each cup will direct customers to a website with instructions on how and where to return them — at one of the participating eateries, in return receptacles on city streets or in convenience stores and supermarkets, or by scheduling a home pickup by Muuse.
Rob Daly (no relation to Kate) is owner and president of Avid Coffee, an independent coffee shop with a location in downtown Petaluma. He said the extensive network of return locations made it a “no-brainer” to participate in the Petaluma Reusable Cup Project. Having reliable access to a return point “takes the guesswork out of the consumer’s hands and makes it easier on them,” he told Grist. “When they walk out of my store and they see a drop point, whether it’s my drop point or at multiple locations that are around me or around town — that solves everything.”
Not charging for cups or tracking customers may encourage more people to participate, but it’s also something of a gamble. If lots of customers decided to keep or forgot to return their containers, the Petaluma Reusable Cup Project Project would have no way to hold anyone accountable — it would have to eat the cost of replacing those cups. But Kate Daly said her team has taken some steps to mitigate this problem, like labeling the cups with the message “sip, return, repeat” to remind customers not to throw them away. The cups’ bright purple color is meant to make them “the right kind of ugly,” as Kate Daly put it, to discourage people from keeping them at home.
More importantly, the cups are not individually very valuable — they’re made of an inexpensive rigid plastic called polypropylene — so it won’t represent a huge loss when some inevitably go missing.
Many other reuse programs have opted for polypropylene containers too, despite concerns that they can still leach toxic chemicals and the inherent challenges with recycling them. Some environmental groups argue that single-use plastics should be replaced with reusable containers made of metal and glass, which are more inert and easier to recycle. Most plastic can only be recycled once or twice before it has to be “downcycled” into lower-quality products like carpeting.
Kate Daly said the Petaluma project chose polypropylene because it weighs less than alternative materials and thus causes fewer greenhouse gas emissions during transport. She also said stainless steel cups sometimes get watermarks on them after many washing cycles, causing customers to think they’re unclean.
NextGen’s funding for the Petaluma Reusable Cup Project will last until the end of October. After that, it will be up to city officials to decide whether they want to continue — and find a way to pay for — the program, with or without any structural changes.
Georgia Sherwin, Closed Loop Partners’ senior director of strategy and partnerships, told Grist that some return bins will stay up after the program’s end date so customers can continue bringing their cups back. “The results from the first three months of the initiative will ultimately inform the next rounds of iteration and what a continuation or future reuse program like this would look like in Petaluma and beyond,” she wrote in an email.
Once the cups are collected, Sherwin said her organization aims to “maximize their uses before being recycled,” potentially by donating them to local schools, cafeterias, and businesses.
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California
Editorial: California Medi-Cal measure locks in special-interest funding
![Editorial: California Medi-Cal measure locks in special-interest funding Editorial: California Medi-Cal measure locks in special-interest funding](https://www.mercurynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/STC-L-JYCRIME-0930-05_100838132.jpg?w=1024&h=604)
Proposition 35, the Medi-Cal funding measure on the Nov. 5 ballot, presents another example of special-interest ballot-box budgeting that limits the discretion of lawmakers and reduces flexibility to respond to fiscal crises. Voters should reject it.
If we’ve learned anything in the past few years, it’s that multibillion budget surpluses one year can morph into gigantic deficits the next. The governor and state lawmakers need flexibility to responsibly address the shortfalls.
California voters should not lock in funding allocations that favor doctors and hospitals over children and community health workers. Nor should they keep tying the hands of lawmakers, who must already contend with, for example, voter mandates for school funding, which must receive about 40% of the state budget; for prudent budget reserves; and for arts education.
At issue with Proposition 35 is a tax on health plans that provides $7.5 billion of the $161 billion needed to annually fund Medi-Cal — the federal-state health program for low-income people.
The tax is based on the number of people to whom the health plans provide coverage. The state leverages the tax money for matching funds from the federal government.
Medi-Cal, in turn, reimburses the health plans for almost all the tax, with the federal government covering the majority of the cost. In other words, it’s a tax that’s not really a tax but rather a way to pull in more federal money.
Proposition 35 is being sold as a measure that would secure that $7.5 billion in funding by permanently extending the tax on health plans. But this lock-in isn’t needed. State lawmakers, understanding how the tax leverages federal dollars, have generally levied and renewed it for nearly two decades and are incentivized to do so in the future.
Meanwhile, Proposition 35 would not only make the tax permanent, it would also dictate allocation of the spoils. It would pick winners and losers.
Not surprisingly, the winners include doctors, hospitals and emergency ambulance providers, which explains why they are major financial backers of the measure. Their funding would be protected and, in some cases, increased under Proposition 35.
Among the possible losers are community health workers, private nurses and children under age 5, who are currently protected from losing their Medi-Cal coverage.
To provide the additional funding for the winners under Proposition 35 and still preserve other Medi-Cal programs, the state would need to tap the general fund for another $1 billion to $2 billion annually in 2025 and 2026, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
The current tax will expire at the end of 2026 unless the Legislature and the federal government extend it. But there’s every reason to believe state lawmakers will do their part, just as they have in the past.
Yet, Proposition 35 backers tout that their measure would make the tax permanent starting in 2027 — and use the notion of going after politically unpopular insurance companies for money as a selling point even though those companies will get their money back.
Backers of the ballot measure also say that the tax revenue has been diverted to bolster the state’s general fund. But the state this fiscal year will provide $62.4 billion to help fund Medi-Cal, including $35 billion from the general fund.
It’s fiscally reckless to keep using ballot measures to earmark unpredictable state revenues. Proposition 35, which is 43 pages long, “hamstrings our ability to have the kind of flexibility that’s required at the moment we’re living in,” says Gov. Gavin Newsom.
He’s right.
More funding for health care for the poor is a laudable goal. So are attempts to raise rates for doctors and other health care providers who serve Medi-Cal patients. Indeed, there are legitimate concerns about Medi-Cal patients not being able to find providers because doctors don’t want to take them on at low payment rates.
But the allocation of limited general fund money should be made when all the competing demands are weighed by state lawmakers. We shouldn’t be locking it in with a ballot measure few voters will ever understand.
California
Teaching assistant arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting students at California School for the Deaf
![Teaching assistant arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting students at California School for the Deaf Teaching assistant arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting students at California School for the Deaf](https://www.mercurynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/thinkstockphotos-484438808.jpg?w=810&h=540)
FREMONT — A teaching assistant at the California School for the Deaf was arrested Thursday on suspicion of sexually assaulting multiple students, according to authorities.
Detectives opened an investigation after the students came forward to report the assaults, the Fremont Police Department said in a news release.
The suspect — identified as Brandon Duran, 25, of Fremont — was linked to “at least three separate incidents,” according to police.
The assaults happened on July 4 and July 19 in Fremont and Livermore, police said.
Duran was booked into Santa Rita Jail on charges of annoying or molesting a child, oral copulation with a minor, oral copulation with a victim too intoxicated to resist, contacting a minor with the intent to commit a sexual offense and unlawful sexual penetration, according to police.
Detectives are looking for other victims, police said.
Anyone with information related to the case can contact Detective Ana Santana at 510-513-1091.
Check back for updates.
California
Bay Area Crime: Explore 20 years of data from California cities
![Bay Area Crime: Explore 20 years of data from California cities Bay Area Crime: Explore 20 years of data from California cities](https://www.mercurynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Bay-Area-Counties-Crime.png?w=1024&h=534)
The California Department of Justice (DOJ) releases its latest crime data every year at the beginning of July. The Criminal Justice Statistics Center collects, analyzes, and reports statistical data that provide valid measures of crime and the criminal justice process. It examines these data continuously to describe crime and the criminal justice system better and promote the responsible presentation and use of crime statistics.
According to the latest 2023 California Department of Justice data, most counties in the Bay Area had a decrease in crimes in 2023, including violent and property crimes. However, Alameda County still had an increase, especially a sharp rise in violent crimes.
Several cities in the Bay Area have shown high crime rates over the years. Read here to learn more about which city has the highest crime rates in the Bay Area, and why.
The California Department of Justice is completing a five-year effort to develop and implement a new state crime data repository, the California Incident-Based Reporting System (CIBRS), to house the new FBI statistical reporting format. Previously, California used the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Not all law enforcement agencies in the state have yet made the transition.
According to the DOJ’s annual crime report, not all agencies were able to submit a full year of crime data for 2023. Find your city or county on these three interactive charts to discover your city’s trends and quirks and compare them with other cities from 2013 to 2023.
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