San Clemente Times

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Doggy Bag or Compost Pile?

BY JONATHAN VOLZKE

Experimental program tests food-scrap recycling in South County restaurants.

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Adele Lux, owner of Adele’s Café in San Clemente, shows off one of the food-waste collection bins.

Photo by Jonathan Volzke

GOING GREEN The food-

scrap recycling program was one of the efforts cited when The South Orange County Regional Chamber of Commerce this month awarded CR&R its “Going Green” Award.

CR&R converted its hauling fleet to clean-burning liquefied natural gas, officials said, and also spearheaded a bottle and can school recycling program that resulted in one school district receiving approximately $59,000 from CR&R for their collection efforts.

For more information, see www. socchambers.com

sed to be that the food you didn’t finish at a restaurant went home in a doggy bag or straight into the eatery’s trashcans.

But now, depending on where you’re dining, those uneaten scraps could end up in a mountain of compost 150 miles away and maybe even ultimately help grow the food you’ll eat on another night out.

Participating restaurants in eight Orange County cities—including Dana Point, San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano—and the unincorporated areas served by CR&R Waste and Recycling Services have joined in a yearlong experiment to keep food waste out of landfills. Just like the push to recycle paper, aluminum and glass, officials are studying the logistics, costs and practicality of turning food waste into compost.

Every city in California is required to divert at least 50 percent of all its waste away from landfills. A restaurant, on average, disposes of more than 50 tons of organic waste every year. Californians overall throw away more than 5 millions tons of food scraps each year, said Maria Lazaruk, CR&R’s environmental manager.

Funded by a $400,000 grant from the county, the participating restaurants in the Stanton-based trash hauler’s program kept close to 1,000 tons of food scraps out of county landfills in the past 12 months, Lazaruk said.

Dana Point restaurants participating included the Ritz Carlton, St. Regis and Salt Creek Grille, while San Clemente’s participants included Adele’s Café, The Fishermans Restaurant and Tommy’s Family Restaurant. In San Juan Capistrano, the facilities recycling food scraps were a little more diverse and included Farm to Market, a grocery market with a deli, El Campeon

On the Cover

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pecial thanks to San Clemente-based artist and surfer Drew Brophy for providing the Green Issue cover art.

Brophy has been a professional artist for more than 20 years and currently works out of his studio in San Clemente’s Los Molinos District. Through hard work and dedication—as well as the help of his wife and partner Maria—Brophy has become worldrenowned for putting his lively and colorful work on everything from clothing and shoes to guitars and surfboards.

The cover art was inspired by a song Brophy heard at the April 17 Earth Day event at Panhe—a former village and still sacred site for Acjachemen/Juaneño Band of Mission Indians in the San Mateo Creek bed.

“The Acjachemen Indians spoke of how their songs have echoed in San Mateo Creek for hundreds of years,” said Brophy. “I imagined the land as it once was, in all its glory, and how the tribal speaker said ‘the land

Drew Brophy. Courtesy photo

must be happy to hear these songs again.’”

To learn more about Brophy and see more of his art, log on to his website at www. drewbrophy.com. —Andrea Swayne

Mexican restaurant, El Adobe and Casa de Amma, a live-in facility for adults with special needs.

Since the program started, Dana Point restaurants have diverted 272.38 tons of food scraps, San Clemente 109.80 tons and Capistrano 157.97 tons, Lazaruk said.

Also in the program: Two public schools, Ladera Ranch Middle School and Chaparral Elementary School, also in Ladera.

Other restaurants started the program but dropped out.

It doesn’t take much to be in the program, said Marcos Costas, general manager at Salt Creek Grille. Participating restaurants are given additional collection cans to keep inside the restaurants, and employees sort the waste among traditional recyclables such as glass and paper, refuse and the food. CR&R picks up the food scraps twice a week, Costas said. The food-recycling cans are lime green.

“The restaurant’s been open 15 years, so there was 15 years of habits,” Costas said.

“I posted signs where employees punch in for work and put them up where they get information on the daily specials … it took a little bit to get the muscle memory down, but CR&R made it so easy on me.”

Costas said the food-scrap recycling

didn’t cause any problems.

“It’s one of those things you can be proud of for doing, but if I felt it was causing any kinks in the armor operationally, we wouldn’t participate,” Costas said. “It’s not, so we’ve never been prouder.”

Reyes Gallardo, general manager at El Adobe in Capistrano, agreed the program was easy on the restaurant, made famous as one of Richard Nixon’s favorites.

When the scraps leave the restaurants, they are trucked more than 150 miles to Thermal, the home of California Bio-mass, which has permits that allow it create 140,000 tons of compost a year, said Michael J. Hardy, one of “The Hardy Boys” who founded Bio-Mass with his brother in 1991.

The food scraps don’t add much value to the compost Bio-Mass creates from the manure and other waste it composts because it is so high in nitrogen, Hardy said. But the sheer mass amounts of compost created by Bio-Mass means the food scraps are “like a needle in a haystack” and don’t hurt it, either.

But Bio-Mass charges CR&R to take in the waste, then charges customers—most large agricultural operations—for the compost it creates, too.

The process of taking those food scraps (Continued)

Doggy Bag or Compost Pile?

(Continued) and turning them into compost takes about 13 weeks. Upon arrival, the waste is chopped up. Again, because of the huge amounts of materials being mixed, Bio-Mass can blend in dairy scraps and meat products—materials backyard composters can’t work with because they take so long to break down they can pose a health hazard.

The materials are molded into windrows on the 80-acre Bio-Mass property, and turned by machines. Regulations call for monitoring to ensure the material reaches at least 132 degrees for 15 days to kill off harmful bacteria, Hardy said.

Although permitted for 140,000 tons a year, Bio-Mass is doing about 70,000. That’s enough to put it in the top half of compost companies in the state, but leaves plenty of room for the food-waste programs to expand.

“Our ambition is to keep moving these products forward,” Hardy said.

For now, it’s working without the Vintage Steakhouse in Capistrano. Vintage is one of those that withdrew from the program, said Matthew Timmes, one of the owners. While the Vintage owners figured out how to handle the lime green food recycling bins in the restaurant, the eatery’s outside trash bin areas

were too crowded. “Space wise, it was a challenge,” Timmes said.

Still, he added, Vintage—green in another way because it grows basil, thyme, rosemary, sage, tarragon, onions and mints in an herb garden in front of the restaurant—would be happy to rejoin the program in the future.

They, and all restaurants, might have to in the future, Lazaruk said. The pilot program is determining how much the program costs CR&R to operate, and in the future the hauler will work with cities to determine how the program can be implemented with minimal impact on ratepayers, such as charging less for the food scraps than for non-recyclable waste.

But with the changes in participating restaurants, the tonnage generated in the pilot program was less than expected, she said, and the equipment costs a little higher than expected. Those lessons are spurring CR&R to ask the county to extend the program past its original end date this month to November. That will allow them to better nail down their costs and get more feedback from restaurant owners.

“We don’t want this program to go away,” Lazaruk said.

Neither does Adele Lux. The lifelong San Clemente resident owns Adele’s Café at the San Clemente Inn, where she recycles so much—glass, papers, cooking oils and now food waste—that she foresees a day when she might not send anything off to a landfill.

“My customers appreciate it,” she said.

“But this is where I live, and that ocean is where I swim. It all makes a difference.”

Guerilla Gardeners

BY ANDREA SWAYNE

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atricia and Tom Southern live on La Ventana atop the bluff overlooking the Pacific at the corner of Coast Highway and Camino Capistrano. Situated at the border of San Clemente and Capistrano Beach, this corner is heavily traveled by both locals and visitors and, until recently, was nothing great to look at.

Patricia decided to do something about it.

“I got tired of seeing this area looking so bad, full of trash and looking like an abandoned lot,” said Patricia, who with Tom began cleaning up the corner.

“We really wanted to improve our community so we started by planting plumeria cuttings from our garden and picking up the trash. Little by little, we have been planting wildflower seeds and adding drought resistant and native plants to help with erosion and make this corner a beautiful part of our neighborhood.”

Those original plumeria cuttings, placed there about two years ago, took hold and the Southerns were encouraged to keep going.

“A couple of neighbors saw what was happening on the corner but didn’t know it was us, said Patricia. “When they figured it out, some of them joined in to help. It has become a pride of neighborhood type of movement,” she said.

Tom admitted that when Patricia first approached him with the idea of what she wanted to do, he was resistant. The lot

Patricia and Tom Southern work on beautifying the bluff face at the corner of Coast Highway and Camino Capistrano. Photo by Andrea Swayne

was in really sad shape and looked like a huge undertaking, he said.

Now the duo, along with help from a few others, have brought that eyesore of a corner from a patch of crumbly, clumpy dirt riddled with trash to a colorful and beautiful corner of the world.

“It’s called guerilla gardening, and I’ve really gotten into it,” said Tom. “This is a pretty big movement in cities all over the country and it works here too. In Los Angeles folks are beautifying vacant lots, planting near the flood control channels and turning ugly little pieces of dirt into beautiful gardens. All of this is being done completely by volunteers “on the sly” at no cost—aside from a bit of elbow grease—with cuttings and offshoots from existing gardens. We are hoping that this inspires others to see what they can do to improve their own neighborhoods.”

Solar Panels

Home Green Home COMPILED BY PANTEA OMMI MOHAJER

“Take care of the earth, and she will take care of you.” We see this saying on pillows and horseshoes, but how often do we see it in our lives? Take a walk through our Home Green Home, for tips on how to take better care of the earth we live on, in the hopes that she will take care of us, and our children for generations to come.

Solar panels not only help reduce the effects of global warming, but also offer an alternative source of energy. “They generate electricity at a very cost effective rate compared to your traditional utility company, and they are the best source of alternative energy,” says Donn Reese, CEO of Living Green Inc., a San Clemente based company, which offers energy solutions. “Solar panels will last as long as your home. They are an investment in your home that will last not just months, but years,” says Reese. Go to www.livinggreenincsc.com for more information.

Rainbow Sandals had solar panels installed on their offices last October, and “now they’re kicking in gear for summer,” says Pat Huber. They not only try to be a more eco-friendly company by recycling and conserving energy, but they believe people can “save the earth by making and using products that last.” You can find those products at www.rainbowsandals.com.

Electricity Rain Barrels

An energy calculator on the San Diego Gas & Electric web site, www.sdge. com, lets you see how much electricity everyday appliances use. One hour per week with your hair dryer can total up to 62 kWh per year, which translates into $12 per year. Visit their site for more calculating fun, and find ways you can save energy and money.

Harvesting rainwater is an ancient practice, finding its way back into our modern society, due to the rising price of water, as well as use restrictions drought has placed on many US cities. For more information on Rain Catchment Systems, call Eco-Space Green Pro Services at 949.218.5900

Plastic Habitat Gardens

What’s the big deal about plastic?

According to the Surfrider Foundation, and their Rise Above Plastic mission, “plastics do not biodegrade, instead they photodegrade-breaking down under the exposure of the sun’s ultraviolet rays, into smaller and smaller pieces…virtually every piece of plastic that was ever made still exists in some shape or form.” Rise Above Plastic’s mission is “to reduce the impacts of plastics in the marine environment by raising awareness about the dangers of plastic pollution and by advocating for a reduction of single-use plastics and the recycling of all plastics.” Visit www.surfrider.org for more information.

You might love tropical plants, but they’re hard to grow in the desert.

Habitat gardens are designed around your environment, making the best use of what you have, to grow what you can. The use of native, drought tolerant plants means you save on water, while giving back to the ecosystem what it needs most to flourish. Visit the California Native Plant Society at www.cnps.org for more information on your habitat.

Water Conservation

Composting

Carpooling

You can save 5,000-50,000 gallons of water annually by following these simple steps: • Convert sprinklers in your lawn to rotating nozzles, and sprinklers in you planters to drip irrigation.

• Replace old toilets and clothes washer with high-efficiency models.

• Fix leaking faucets, pipes and sprinkler systems immediately.

For more tips on how to save visit www.san-clemente.org

Why compost? According to www.compostguide. com, a blog designed to help you understand why and how to compost, “Landfills are brimming, and new sites are not likely to be easily found. For this reason there is an interest in conserving existing landfill space and in developing alternative methods of dealing with waste.” By using your reusable waste, you not only save landfill space, but save your garden too. Replacing your fertilizer with compost “improves soil fertility and stimulates healthy root development in plants,” explains compostguide.com

According to census data, around 75 percent of commuters in the US drive alone. That’s a lot of cars, leading to a lot of gas use and pollution.

Carpooling offers a solution. Why share? The folks at www.erideshare. com have a few good reasons: “Driving is stressful. Socializing is good for you.” The website offers resources for people who are interested in sharing a ride to work, in order to save money and the environment.

Kick the Battery, Get a Bucket.

BY JONATHAN VOLZKE

For the Love of Butterflies

BY ANDREA SWAYNE

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C Waste & Recycling is giving each customer who visits one of Orange County’s four Household Hazardous Waste Collection Centers from Tuesday through Friday, April 19 to 23, a battery bucket. “The buckets are a great reminder to do the right thing with your batteries,” said Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Campbell. “Batteries contain hazardous materials and don’t belong in the landfill. The bucket is a reminder to properly dispose of your batteries. Having the bucket in your home makes proper

disposal convenient.”

To get the Earth Day reward, residents need only bring some household hazardous waste to one of the centers for proper disposal.

Centers are located in Anaheim, Huntington Beach, Irvine and San Juan Capistrano. Once the bucket is full of batteries, residents bring the bucket to a collection center. The batteries are properly removed and the residents take the bucket back home to fill again.

The closest collection center is in San Juan Capistrano, at 32250 La Pata Avenue, south of Ortega. See www.oclandfills.com for more details.

Sound Body, Sound Earth

BY PANTEA OMMI MOHAJER

T A tagged Monarch butterfly is seen at San Clemente State Park. Photo by Andrea Swayne

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an Clemente State Park Interpreter Cryssie Brommer led the charge last Earth Day to beautify the park by creating a gardening program aimed at reintroducing native plant species that attract pollinators such as butterflies and hummingbirds to the area. Since then, volunteer gardeners from the San Clemente Garden Club, San Clemente High School Environmental Club, city residents, park visitors and others have cultivated and cared for what has become known as the Butterfly Trail pollinator gardens just inside the campground entrance.

A group of about 100 volunteers gathered at the park on April 16 to continue work on the gardens and clean up the area in honor of Earth Day and see some of the butterflies the plants have been attracting.

“This year’s Earth Day grant allowed us to add a live butterfly exhibit in addition to planting 300 new plants focusing on a different bed in the Butterfly Trail pollinator gardens,” said Kris Ethington, San Clemente Garden Club Junior Gardener Program Chair.

“These native butterflies will be released into the park that now, through the help of volunteers, has everything they need to continue their life cycle.”

The butterfly tent allowed park visitors to get an up close look at the butterflies and learn about the plants the habitat restoration project is using to attract them to the gardens. Once inside the tent, people were allowed to attract the butterflies to land on them with fresh cut oranges. Monarchs, Mourning Cloaks, Painted Ladies, West Coast

Ladies fluttered around often landing on those eager to have a closer look at them.

Visitors also got a chance to see the butterfly life cycle from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to flight.

Visitors were surprised to see tiny tags with a phone number printed on them attached to the outside wing of some of the Monarchs in the tent. The tags were part of a study that began last November to track and monitor Monarch butterflies as they either pass by San Clemente on their annual migration or establish a home in the park.

“There are two taggings going on here,” said Ethington. “My daughter Dani is doing one study to tag and test butterflies for OE—a protozoan parasite that is a predator affecting butterfly health—in the park and other gardens in San Clemente.” The first tagging program, started last fall, will continue to monitor the migrating butterflies that stop here and migrant populations to answer questions such as: Where do San Clemente-born butterflies go and do they have a greater or lesser incidence of OE infection than the migrant butterflies? “They can live with OE. It doesn’t eliminate them but it does affect reproduction, Kris said.

To learn how you can volunteer, or for more information about interpretive programs at San Clemente State Park, log on to www.calparks.org. To find out more about the volunteer work of the San Clemente Garden Club, visit www.sanclementegardenclub.com.

his May, Saddleback Memorial Hospital in San Clemente will go live with their Electronic Medical Records system as part of a federal program designed to make the offices of all medical care providers paperless by 2014.

The San Clemente hospital will be the final facility in the MemorialCare System to complete the process, and among only 10 percent of hospitals nationwide, according to data on the American Medical Association website, to put the program in place since former President George W. Bush established the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology position in 2004. The position was designed to help implement the move toward paperless medical offices, with a deadline set for 2014, putting Saddleback years ahead of the game.

The AMA suggests the high cost of the transfer prevented many from making the switch faster. On average, an EMR system can cost about $20,000, making the cost of transferring high, and the financial benefits few.

Financial problems can also arise should medical care providers not meet the dead-

line. Medical facilities that do not meet EMR system standards by 2015 will have their Medicare funding reduced.

“An EMR system is essentially a patient’s health history and medical information stored in electronic, rather than paper format,” said Elisabeth Seznov of Saddleback Memorial Medical Center. According to a news release

by Seznov, the network is highly secure and easily accessible to healthcare providers, making it easier for medical professionals to share a patient’s pertinent files, in order to help them faster and more efficiently.

Electronic health records also reduce the amount of paper being used by medical offices, replacing the endless walls of paper files often seen behind the receptionist’s desk at doctor’s offices, with electronic files instead.

According to Seznov, transferring to electronic files not only makes it faster and easier for doctors to access a patient’s medical history, but also reduces the amount of paper being used, and the space those expired files can take up in landfills. The transfer to EMR systems makes it easier for people to lead healthier lives, while making the earth a healthier place as well.

What do you do to make every day Earth Day?

BY ANDREA SWAYNE

I make it a point to get outside to enjoy and appreciate this beautiful place we live in.

My family and I all do our best to recycle and to avoid single-use coffee cups and water bottles. We all carry our own reusable CamelBak water bottles.

—PETER SODERIN, SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO

We use the Brita water filter system after realizing how many plastic water bottles we were going through in a day.

We were surprised at how easy it is and how much money we save. And the water tastes great, too.

—LARRY LANDES, SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO

I take an hour-long walk around Dana Point every day and pick up trash along the way. I also make it a point to volunteer for local cleanup, restoration and planting projects.

—ROBBIE ROBINSON, DANA POINT

By living the change that I think the Earth needs. I always think about my impact with everything that I do and I’m not afraid to tell others how they can lessen their negative impact on the environment. I also try to pass my passion on to my students at San Clemente High School.

—LISA KERR, SAN CLEMENTE

When shopping for food, I try to buy only free-range, humanely treated animal products at stores like Marbella Farmers Market and locally grown organic produce at South Coast Farms and everyday groceries at a mainstream grocery store. It takes a little extra effort to shop at three stores but it is worth it. Oh, and when shopping, I take my own reusable shopping bags.

—MAGGIE LANDES, SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO

I separate the recyclables like bottles and cans at home, and I try to pick up trash in my neighborhood. In Boy Scouts we do beach cleanups, too.

I retired from teaching in June and this year I helped Marblehead Elementary School start their own garden. Just a few days ago we counted our 625th student planting in the garden. I also volunteer in the State Park butterfly habitat project.

—STEPHANIE ANFINSON, SAN CLEMENTE

—TROY NUEVA, 10, SAN CLEMENTE

I try to set a good example for my son by recycling, use Earth-friendly products, avoiding polystyrene foam; things like that.

I am also very concerned about stopping the practice of killing sharks for their fins. I went to Monterey recently for a speaking engagement on the subject.

Shark fin soup sells for over $100 a bowl in Asia and an estimated 100,000 sharks a year are killed. It is an incredibly cruel practice where fishermen catch a shark, cut off the fin, and then throw it back to die.

—JIM SERPA, DOHENY STATE BEACH SUPERVISING RANGER

I make my own homemade soaps and together with a friend of mine, make bags and purses out of recycled packaging. Also, I recycle everything I can at home.

—TERI HIRASUNA, SAN CLEMENTE