Earth Day protest: Clean up this mess

From Salon.com,

To residents of one predominantly black neighborhood, environmental issues mean how, and how long, they live

Earth Day may have devolved from a spontaneous outburst of benevolence toward nature to a green marketing opportunity in its 40-year history, but for a group of activists and residents of contaminated areas in San Francisco, the day has retained its value. Standing outside the Pacific Gas & Electric headquarters this week, residents of Bayview-Hunters Point, a predominantly African-American section in southeast San Francisco, and activists from the group Greenaction chanted for clean air.

For 25 years, residents of the area fought for the closure of a polluting PG&E power plant. They finally got what they wanted in 2006, but they say the damage had been done, the cleanup has been ineffective, and the effects have lingered.

Go green & help a neighbor!

by Scott Bruner,
SF Goodwill Industries

Goodwill and Whole Foods partner for 2011 Earth Day Donation Drive

This Friday to Sunday (April 15-17), we hope you’ll help us celebrate Earth Day by dropping off household items at your local Whole Foods store to help your neighbors get a hand up.

Goodwill Industries and Whole Foods Markets are teaming up to divert over 20,000 pounds from landfills while helping people transform their lives during the 2011 Goodwill Earth Month Donation Drive.

When you shop this weekend, you’ll see Goodwill Industries’ familiar donation boxes and bins at 14 Whole Foods stores in the Bay Area. To see if your local Whole Foods Market is participating, head to our map of participating stores.

We invite you to drop off items such as clothes, shoes, books and small household goods. At certain locations we’ll take in your old tech goods, from computers to printers, to refurbish or recycle. In 2010, we refurbished 800 computer systems and recycled 13,370 more.

Your donation supports your community in two direct ways. First, your unwanted items won’t be clogging a landfill. Last year Goodwill was able to reuse and recycle nearly 20 million pounds of goods – 600,000 individual donations of goods, enough to fill 15 football fields – significantly lowering the impact on our strained landfills. During this year’s Earth Day Donation Drive, our goal is to receive 20,000 pounds of donated goods – over 125 shopping carts of materials diverted from landfills.