by Ashley WArren
Tesla TumulT
Caren McNamara and Great Basin Brewing head brewer Nick Taylor stand in front of a pallet donated bottles ready to be shipped to Montana for washing and refilling.
On Oct. 13, the Bay Area News Group reported that Tesla had fired hundreds of its Fremont, California plant workers, and the company said it was a result of annual performance reviews. On Oct. 17, the United Auto Workers filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing the corporation of firing labor union supporters. Also on Oct. 17, former employee Abraham Duarte filed suit, accusing Tesla of violating the California WARN Act (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act) by failing to provide adequate notice to 50 or more employees. “Tesla, Inc. has interfered with, restrained, and coerced employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act by, among other things, terminating and/or disciplining employees for violating a confidentiality agreement that restricts protected concerted activities,” reads the UAW complaint filed with the NLRB Oakland office. Tesla’s Solar City subsidiary has also been terminating employees in California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah. The company has not provided numbers, but CNBC quoted former workers as estimating about 1,200 people have been cut loose in the waves of firings and layoffs at the two firms.
PHOTO/ASHLEY WARREN
marijuana 9, prohibiTion 1 The 2017 off-year elections advanced the legitimized status of marijuana. In California, Palm Springs, Cotati and Pacifica voters approved taxes on legal marijuana. In Colorado, Vail voters approved a marijuana tax. In Detroit, voters relaxed regulations for medical marijuana dispensaries. In Ohio, Athens voters repealed all municipal penalties for marijuana use. It is the fifth Ohio city to do so. In Massachusetts, Amesbury voters vetoed a proposed ban on retail marijuana stores. In Washington, Yakima County voters banned existing marijuana businesses in unincorporated areas, setting up a court fight by 20 retailers. In New Jersey, legal marijuana supporter Phil Murphy was elected governor, replacing prohibitionist Chris Christie. N.J. Senate President Stephen Sweeney said he hoped to make marijuana legal within 100 days. It is expected to generate about $300 million in taxes. In the Virginia governor’s race, decriminilizatioin supporter Ralph Northam was elected.
QuoTes U.S. Sen. Dean Heller said on Oct. 26: “Now, many of you here know that the first piece of legislation I’ve introduced for the past two Congresses is my ‘No Budget-No Pay Act.’ The concept is simple. If Congress can’t pass a budget and all of its spending bills on time, then it shouldn’t be paid. Well, Mr. President, the Senate should apply the same concept, in my opinion, to confirming judges.” Columnist Steve Benen said on Oct. 27: “[W]here was Dean Heller a year ago? Nearly all of the vacancies on the federal bench also existed at the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, and if memory serves, Heller and his Republican brethren refused to hold confirmation votes on almost all of them last year.”
—Dennis Myers
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Bottle it up Refillable glass bottles are making a comeback according to the beer institute, Americans consume an average of 32 gallons of beer every year. (To no one’s surprise, Nevada tops the list at 44 gallons per year. California is more restrained, below the nation’s average, at 26 gallons per year.) While this avid consumption is good for the growing beer market, the lack of an established bottle refilling program makes it exceedingly wasteful, too. But Caren McNamara, founder of Conscious Container, based in Truckee, sees a solution: bringing back the practice of reusing and refilling glass bottles. This means collecting used glass bottles, sanitizing them and refilling them with new beer to sell. Although glass beer bottles are recyclable, processing recycled materials and creating new glass bottles is substantially less sustainable than reusing the existing ones. Refillable bottles use 82 percent less water and 97 percent less energy. Refillable bottles are still in use around the world, in Canada
and in Europe, but reinstating the practice in the U.S. is more complicated. “Refillable glass bottles never went away,” said McNamara. “[The challenge is] that we don’t have that marketplace anymore. Customers are used to buying new glass bottles, so it’s about recreating that marketplace.” The marketplace requires several components: standardized glass bottles that are thicker and can withstand repeated use, washing machinery that can handle large loads, breweries that are willing to invest in the materials needed, and consumers who are willing to participate in the ecosystem by donating their used bottles. McNamara spent a year doing research on refillable bottle reuse worldwide to find out why it stopped and what would need to be done to bring it back. In the U.S., the move away from glass reuse began during World War II. “We had refillables exclusively until the war,” McNamara said. Single-use
packaging was created to make it easier to ship goods to soldiers on the frontlines, and that trend soon permeated citizen life, too. By the 1950s, singleuse packaging had become a staple in American homes. Between the 1940s and the 1970s, the number of breweries steeply declined, from around 700 to 100 nationwide. Fewer breweries made bottle reuse a less common practice, and the infrastructure essentially collapsed. In the 1970s and 80s, five bills were introduced into the Nevada Legislature to establish a beverage container deposit and refund program, but all of them died, due to the challenges of such a program, namely, that there just weren’t enough local breweries to make it sustainable. In 2013, California passed a bill to allow brewers to refill glass growlers. The state has had glass refilling programs since the 1980s, but the practice isn’t yet widespread. Now, there are more than 5,300 craft breweries across the United States, and this makes a nationwide program much more feasible. Many craft breweries are already focused on their communities, said McNamara, and make it a point to source ingredients locally and reduce their carbon footprints. McNamara noted that it’s also a marketing opportunity for breweries trying to distinguish themselves in a crowded market. “We’re in a time now to innovate it a little bit,” she said. McNamara is focusing on the beer industry to start but sees potential in other facets of the alcohol industry. Winemakers tend to be particular about their bottles, said McNamara, so it’s harder to make waves there. She hopes that showing what’s possible with beer will convince other brewers and distillers to get on board.
raise a glass The first step is showing the community what a refillable glass infrastructure looks like in practice. Conscious Container partnered with Great Basin Brewing Company in Reno to launch a pilot program, which is currently running. Tom Young, Great Basin’s founder and brewmaster, was excited to participate. “I think the whole concept of Conscious Containers is noble and the way we need to go,” said Young. “The huge, huge challenge, though, is that the diversity of different bottles and distribution channels makes it really
