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Firefighters fully contain 344-acre fire in Moreno Valley
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MONDAY, JULY 08- JULY 14, 2024
VISIT CORONANEWSPRESS.COM
VOL. 8,
NO. 179
The delusion of advanced plastic recycling using pyrolysis — ProPublica
Riverside supervisors OK mutual aid hazmat compact between county, city
By Lisa Song, illustrations by Max Guther, special to ProPublica
By City News Service
This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
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he Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a 10-year mutual aid agreement between the Riverside County Fire Department and the Riverside Fire Department to assist each other in the event of a hazardous materials incident that requires a large-scale cleanup. The supervisors, without comment, voted unanimously in favor of the compact, which does not involve contractual monetary obligations. It follows an identical agreement in place between the county and city from 2014 to this year. The two have engaged in mutual aid operations going back to 1996. “The parties shall respond to each other’s request for assistance with hazardous materials incidents by dispatching available personnel and resources, provided that such response does not interfere with either party’s responsibility to respond to emergencies of any type ... within their respective jurisdictions,” according to documents posted to the board’s agenda.
See Hazmat Page 27 Photo by tanvi sharma on Unsplash
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ast year, I became obsessed with a plastic cup. It was a small container that held diced fruit, the type thrown into lunch boxes. And it was the first product I’d seen born of what’s being touted as a cure for a crisis. Plastic doesn’t break down in nature. If you turned all of what’s been made into cling wrap, it would cover every inch of the globe. It’s piling up, leaching into our water and poisoning our bodies. Scientists say the key to fixing this is to make less of it; the world churns out 430 million metric tons each year. But businesses that rely on plastic production, like fossil fuel and chemical companies, have worked since the 1980s to spin the pollution as a failure of waste management — one that can be solved with recycling. Industry leaders knew then what we know now: Traditional recycling would barely put a dent in the trash heap. It’s hard to transform
flimsy candy wrappers into sandwich bags, or to make containers that once held motor oil clean enough for milk. Now, the industry is heralding nothing short of a miracle: an “advanced”type of recycling known as pyrolysis — “pyro” means fire and “lysis” means separation. It uses heat to break plastic all the way down to its molecular building blocks. While old-school, “mechanical” recycling yields plastic that’s degraded or contaminated, this type of “chemical” recycling promises plastic that behaves like it’s new, and could usher in what the industry casts as a green revolution: Not only would it save hard-torecycle plastics like frozen food wrappers from the dumpster, but it would turn them into new products that can replace the old ones and be chemically recycled again and again. So when three companies used ExxonMobil’s pyrolysis-based technology to successfully conjure
up that fruit cup, they announced it to the world. “This is a significant milestone,” said Printpack, which turned the plastic into cups. The fruit supplier Pacific Coast Producers called it “the most important initiative a consumerpackaged goods company can pursue.” “ExxonMobil is supporting the circularity of plastics,” the August 2023 news release said, citing a buzzword that implies an infinite loop of using, recycling and reusing. They were so proud, I hoped they would tell me all about how they made the cup, how many of them existed and where I could buy one. Let’s take a closer look at that Printpack press release, which uses convoluted terms to describe the recycled plastic in that fruit cup: “30% ISCC PLUS certified-circular” “mass balance free attriSee Plastic Page 14
bution” It’s easy to conclude the cup was made with 30% recycled plastic — until you break down the numerical sleight of hand that props up that number. It took interviews with a dozen academics, consultants, environmentalists and engineers to help me do just that. Stick with me as I unravel it all. So began my long — and, well, circular — pursuit of the truth at a time when it really matters. This year, nearly all of the world’s countries are hammering out a United Nations treaty to deal with the plastic crisis. As they consider limiting production, the industry is making a hard push to shift the conversation to the wonders of chemical recycling. It’s also buying ads during cable news shows as U.S. states consider laws to limit plastic packaging and lobbying federal agencies to loosen
Gang member who killed man after chase in Riverside headed to state prison By City News Service
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gang member who fatally shot a 20-year-old man during a car-to-car exchange of gunfire that followed a chase stemming from the defendant’s aggressive acts to promote his gang was bound for state prison last week to serve life behind bars. Steven Daniel Carrillo, 24, of Riverside, was convicted in May of first- degree murder for killing Derrion Thomas of Rialto in 2020. Along with the murder count, jurors found Carrillo guilty of attempted murder, special circumstance allegations of killing for the benefit of a criminal street gang and perpetrating a hate crime, as well as sentence-enhancing gun and great bodily injury allegations. He was acquitted of a related attempted murder charge. During a sentencing hearing July 1 at the Riverside Hall of Justice Friday, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Jerry Yang imposed a term of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Carrillo is a documented member of the Eastside Riva, Riverside’s oldest street gang and prevalent in the area along the University Avenue corridor. In late October 2020, he was staying with fellow gang See Gang member Page 28