Recycling

NEW YORK - With a running time of three hours and a barrage of alcohol-fueled emotional cruelty, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" would seem like an anomaly on today's frilly Broadway. Or not. Broadway this season has gone, well, a little classics-crazy. A version of Edward Albee's "Woolf' imported from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre is just one of five intense, iconic works playing this fall. The crop also includes Edmond Rostand's late-19th century touchstone "Cyrano de Bergerac," David Mamet's examination of modern male machismo "Glengarry Glen Ross," Henrik Ibsen's social treatise "An Enemy of the People" and Ruth and August Goetz's "The Heiress," derived from Henry James' novelistic staple "Washington Square.

Just over 8.5 billion recyclable cans were sold in California last year. The number redeemed for a nickel under California's recycling law: 8.3 billion. That's a return rate of nearly 100%. That kind of success isn't just impressive, it's unbelievable. But the recycling rate for certain plastic containers was even higher: 104%. California's generous recycling redemption program has led to rampant fraud. Crafty entrepreneurs are driving semi-trailers full of cans from Nevada or Arizona, which don't have deposit laws, across the border and transforming their cargo into truckfuls of nickels.

State officials said Thursday that they will start a task force to target problems posed by scrap metal recycling operations across California, which have been loosely regulated and linked to environmental contamination and numerous fires and explosions in recent years. The move by the state Department of Toxic Substances Control marks the first large-scale attempt to coordinate oversight of such operations, which handle hazardous metals and can generate toxic dust that pollutes the air and the ocean.

Lunch items in the Los Angeles Unified School District have been in flux in recent years - for example, swapping pizza for whole-grain spaghetti - but the sagging plastic foam tray that carried the food survived for decades. That changed too earlier this month, when the foam was switched out for recyclable paper trays at all district schools. District and city leaders made it official during a Thursday lunch-hour announcement at Thomas Starr King Middle School in Los Feliz, where two years ago the activism of some sixth-graders kicked off the effort to ban plastic foam trays.

The explosions came one after another, jolting a South Los Angeles neighborhood. "It felt like an earthquake, and then it was just raining fire," recalled Richard Gomez, who watched a metal recycling facility on Slauson Avenue erupt in flames one day in June 2010. A worker at the United Alloys plant was critically injured in the blaze, which started in a machine that ground titanium into highly flammable flakes. Gomez, who worked at a catering business nearby, said two of his co-workers suffered minor burns when their clothes caught fire.

California may have had hundreds of millions of dollars more on hand than the governor and lawmakers knew about as they struggled to close the budget deficit this year, a Times analysis shows. Officials are scrambling to explain discrepancies in about two dozen state funds identified in a comparison of balance sheets from the controller's office and the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown. One case involved $113 million sitting unnoticed in a bottle recycling program. The money could have helped stave off cuts in welfare, healthcare or parks, but lawmakers were told the program was broke and dipped into other funds to keep it afloat.

Will.i.am, the Black Eyed Peas member and occasional movie star, has a pretty good handle on being cool. And Coca-Cola Co. is betting he can transfer his hipness into a new line of recycled gear. The green-goods industry has been growing in recent years but is still struggling with a perception among many mainstream consumers that recycled products are drab-looking and overpriced. The will.i.am partnership aims to sex up that image with the Ekocycle line, which will attempt to make green living "aspirational yet attainable" with partners such as Dr. Dre and New Era and products such as $349 headphones and $32 hats.

If you are dutifully separating your trash and filling up your blue bins every week, you are probably thinking that America can cross this whole recycling thing off its to-do list. That couldn't be more wrong, according to a new report that says that about $11.4 billion in recyclable materials are still piling up in U.S. landfills every year. The report's most controversial message is contained in its title, "Unfinished Business: The Case for Extended Producer Responsibility for Post-Consumer Packaging.

Los Angeles city prosecutors Wednesday took the unusual step of filing criminal charges against the owners of three metal recycling businesses, accusing them of illegally handling hazardous waste and allowing toxic chemicals to be released into storm water. "These facilities pose a significant threat to human health and the environment," said Patty Bilgin, who heads the Los Angeles city attorney's environmental justice unit. "These are toxic chemicals. We don't know where they are going.

If you haven't seen Aaron Sorkin repeating himself, then you haven't seen Shakespeare the way it was meant to be done. Sorkin's new series, "The Newsroom,"premiered on HBO on Sunday to good ratings and rotten reviews. And though he's been on a career high for a year now (he finally won an Oscar to go alongside his Emmys last year), even longtime fans may be cooling on the prolific writer's way with words. Best example? The current viral hit "Sorkinisms," which has been working its away around the Internet since Monday.