Trash

Ever wanted to know what your dog was doing all day without having to set up a complicated video camera system? People Power, a Palo Alto software company, has released a mobile app that can easily turn an old iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch into a security camera. The company's free app, Presence, makes it possible for users who have Wi-Fi to set up one Apple device as a video camera and another as a monitor. For instance, a dog owner could take an old iPhone, turn it into a camera and then watch the pooch on an iPad at work.

The most sensible solution to the ocean and stream pollution caused by carry-out plastic bags would be to charge a small fee for them. People will do almost anything to avoid even a tiny levy - tote their own reusable bags, toss their loose groceries into the trunk. Unfortunately, none of the three bills in the Legislature to address the plastic bag problem would work that way. Consumers already pay for carry-out bags; they just don't realize it because the cost is rolled into the price of the goods they buy, creating the illusion that the bags are free.

In the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion, there is a village called Cateura built practically on top of the city's main landfill.  Families eke out a living sorting through the trash and selling whatever valuables they can find.  Like many high poverty areas, drugs and gangs are rampant and children grow up with little hope of ever doing much more than sorting trash.   A trailer for a new documentary about Favio Chavez, a local ecologist and...

Beverly Hills police are seeking the public's help in tracking down the driver of a BMW who is captured on video steering his car into a bicyclist, pinning him against a metal trash bin. Police said they consider the hit-and-run to be a road rage incident and are seeking the driver on suspicion of attempted murder. Since April 3, police have been looking for the driver of a newer model, white BMW 328i that was captured on video hitting a bicyclist in an alley in the 9000 block of Wilshire Boulevard.

Trash A Novel Andy Mulligan David Fickling/Random House: 240 pp., $19.99 Popular young adult fiction is dominated by fantasy and tales that trade in the tropes of high school hierarchy and unrequited love. So it's refreshing when a book takes us into the largely unexplored Third World and the experiences of its unprivileged, as is the case with "Trash," a gem of a young adult debut from author Andy Mulligan. Told in multiple first-person voices, primarily from the points of view of "dumpsite boys" who spend their days wading barefoot through piles of waste ?

Congratulations to Alan Miller for his informative article on the garbage crisis, "Trash Time Bomb" (Part I, Feb. 28). As I was quoted, there is no "one way" to solve this problem. The alternatives mentioned in the article certainly enumerate the variety of tools we have to help us diminish and dispose of the 39 million tons of garbage generated each year by Californians. But, even though the Legislature is passing laws to require more recycling, the development of biodegradable containers by industry and further review of the waste to energy process, public support is vital if we are to succeed in our efforts to diminish our trash.

Whether it's banana peels or bald tires, frozen-food containers or soda cans, Americans make 250 million tons of garbage each year. What happens to all our castoffs after we haul them out to the curb is the subject of "Trash Inc.: The Secret Life of Garbage," a one-hour documentary airing Wednesday on CNBC. "I can't tell you how many pairs of pants and shoes I've gone through, traipsing through these dumps and landfills," said Carl Quintanilla, the Emmy-winning CNBC reporter who spent his summer wading through refuse from New York and Pennsylvania to Nevada, Hawaii and Beijing to learn where garbage goes, who handles it and what's at stake economically and environmentally.

Re “ Pot farms take dirty toll ,” Dec. 23 Some years back I purchased a copy of biologist George Wuerthner's guide “California's Wilderness Areas: Mountains and coastal ranges.” As a Southern California native, I was not familiar with geographic locales outside my immediate area, so reading the volume and looking at the beautiful color photos instilled an incredible sense of fascination with California's far north and its incredibly rich...

Tom Binns has pioneered the junk-jewelry genre, making treasures out of trash and trashing treasures -- silver collars etched with the words "statement piece," triple strands of mismatched pearls the size of gum balls, asymmetrical crystal chokers with neon-paint graffiti, forks bent into cuff bracelets. Before there were outsized, tangled chain necklaces at Target and jumbled pearls at J.

Re "Litter by litter, he's helping," Column, April 14 It was a pleasure reading Steve Lopez's column about Hans Svanoe and his service to the community by keeping his environment trash-free. Svanoe, who picks up litter on his morning walks, listed the "three kinds of people in the world" but left off the fourth: the people who see litter and step over it. Indeed, the litterers are "slobs. " I have been picking up trash and litter in my neighborhood by Aliso Creek for 35 years and have removed auto parts, junk motorcycles, furniture, tires, shopping carts and blue bags of dog poop from the creek and adjacent bike trail.

A hotel room was left in such disgusting condition after February's NFL scouting combine that the manager took pictures and sent them to the event's organizer. National Football Scouting president Jeff Foster confirmed to Yahoo!Sports that a room in the Crowne Plaza in Indianapolis was found after the combine with feces and urine scattered in the bathroom, toothpaste on a mirror and garbage, including uneaten food, all over. "I can confirm that a room was left in an inappropriate condition and we're disappointed by both players who occupied the room," Foster said.

A Sacramento County woman was arrested this week after an infant found dead under a bed. The woman, identified as 24-year-old Courtney Addington, was examined in January by personnel at Mercy General Hospital for excessive bleeding. Although hospital staff said she showed signs of recently giving birth, Addington reportedly denied those claims, officials said. The hospital contacted Sacramento County sheriff's deputies, who stopped by Addington's home later that night.

BOGOTA, Colombia - Nohra Padilla spent her childhood at a garbage dump here in Colombia's capital before going on to organize the city's poor recyclers. Now the activist, who travels the world giving talks about waste management, has won one of the world's most prestigious environmental prizes. Padilla is a 2013 winner of the San Francisco-based Goldman Environmental Prize, which comes with a $150,000 cash award, the group announced Monday. She helped organize and formalize the work of 5,000 poor trash collectors and recyclers who spend most nights fanning out over Bogota's streets to cull recyclable paper, plastic, glass and metals for resale.

In the beginning, it was about losing a few pounds. Hans Svanoe, 64, would leave his house in Encino at 5:30 a.m. and walk for an hour before driving over the hill to Century City, where he works as a butler. A what? "A corporate executive butler," said Svanoe, who caters to the domestic needs of media mogul Haim Saban and his business partner, Adam Chesnoff, when they're at the office. Before that, the Norwegian-born Svanoe was a domestic for Milton Berle, who once responded to a Svanoe quip by saying: "I'll tell the jokes around here.

Re "'Unusual mortality event,'" April 2 After reading the heartbreaking article about the demise of so many sea lion pups, I'd like to state what to me is an obvious cause of this "baffling" event. We are turning our oceans into toxic septic tanks filled with human waste and industrial pollutants, also known as poison. In a futile effort to feed an unsustainable global population growth, we are stripping the oceans of life, leaving dwindling fish populations that can't sustain the basic needs of the seals.

I strongly disagree with the Los Angeles Times editorial supporting the trash-burning plant in San Marcos ("Board Should Reopen Talks on Trash Plant," Jan. 22). Your stance ignores the environmental impact caused by incineration. The air quality in San Diego County is continuing to deteriorate. Furthermore, this type of plant will contribute to the greenhouse effect, which is threatening our globe. Also worth consideration is the fact that trash incineration creates highly toxic ash, which is becoming an environmental problem for disposal as well.

Re "A toxic battleground," Nov. 25 Residents of Kettleman City, Calif., claim that toxic waste dumped into a nearby landfill is responsible for illnesses, birth defects and even some children's deaths. Consider India, where crowding in parts of the country forces some citizens to live in waste dumps. Consider the lights of Las Vegas, other lights and store TVs, which are on all the time as if it were a divine right. Consider the ocean being treated as a sewer. Consider the problem of world population growth: thousands of years to reach 1 billion people (1810)

When Christian Gerhartsreiter learned a detective was searching for him, he became paranoid and started living a more clandestine life, a former girlfriend testified Wednesday. He dyed his dark hair and eyebrows blond. He disposed of his garbage in public trash bins. He had his live-in girlfriend, Mihoko Manabe, walk on the opposite side of the street and refused to exit buildings with her at the same time, Manabe said. Gerhartsreiter's odd behavior began in 1988 shortly after Greenwich, Conn., police Det. Daniel Allen left a phone message seeking to meet with him, Manabe said.

I have some things on my mind. - The NFL combine is not one of them. I'd rather watch the wife's reality TV shows all night long and have her tell me about her day during the commercials. - I'm big on "Skyfall," but the fact it's not one of the nominations for movie of the year makes a mockery of the Academy Awards. - I'm also big on Dwight Howard and believe most Lakers fans and the media owe him an apology. And let's begin with ESPN's screamer, Stephen A. Smith , who said this week that no one else has reported it, so he will: He said San Antonio Coach Gregg Popovich had hit Howard with a number of obscenities for not paying attention in a team huddle at the All-Star game.