Sustainable Living – Enviro Updates

State approves ‘Zone Zero’ fire-safe landscaping rules

August 19, 2026

Noah Haggerty & Hayley Smith, LOS ANGELES TIMES

After nearly six years of debate and backlash, California’s Board of Forestry and Fire Protection voted unanimously Wednesday to adopt new landscaping requirements within five feet of homes — an area dubbed “Zone Zero” — for millions of Californians living in fire-prone areas.

The rules ban all plants within a foot of the home and require the first five feet around homes to be free of combustible materials such as firewood, fallen leaves and branches, and mulch or wood chips. They also prohibit wooden sheds in the zone and wooden fences where attached to the house.

The new requirements apply only to Californians living in some of the worst fire hazard zones designated by Cal Fire — specifically, State Responsibility Areas and Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones in local responsibility areas, applying to an estimated 2 million homes. Local areas will have some flexibility to tailor the regulations to their communities.

After the formal rule-making process completes, most likely in September, Californians will have up to five years to comply. New constructions will have to adhere immediately.

Climate Change & Energy, Sustainable LivingCalifornia, wildfire hazard, wildland urban interface, Zone Zero

Goats deployed again to reduce wildfire fuels

June 15, 2026

Santa Rosa Fire Department

s wildfire season advances, the Santa Rosa Fire Department (SRFD) and City Parks crews are once again using livestock grazing to strengthen vegetation management and improve fire resilience. SRFD first incorporated grazing into its annual program last year, and in the 2026 season it will be used at seven sites encompassing approximately 80 acres of City parklands and open spaces, with priority given to areas within the wildland–urban interface.

Grazing provides a natural and effective way to reduce fire fuels, break up continuous vegetation, and support overall ecosystem health. One of its most immediate benefits is the removal of fine fuels—especially dried grasses. By reducing both the amount and continuity of vegetation, grazing helps limit how fire spreads. Animals create a mosaic of heavily grazed and lightly grazed areas, disrupting uninterrupted stretches of flammable material and making potential fires easier to manage.

In addition to fire prevention, well-managed grazing supports habitat conservation and biodiversity. It helps control invasive grasses, encourages native plant species, shapes habitat structure, and benefits local wildlife.

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Goats deployed again to reduce wildfire fuelsRead More »

Sustainable Livinggoats, vegetation management, wildfire fuel reduction

Oak Grove Elementary School teacher Hayley Blondin named Sonoma County teacher of the year

May 31, 2026

Adriana Gutierrez, PRESS DEMOCRAT

A group of Oak Grove Elementary School second graders buzzed around the school’s outdoor academic space in Sebastopol last Tuesday afternoon as part of an exercise to learn about pollination.

Their teacher, Hayley Blondin, hovered nearby as the students pretended to be bees and butterflies, visiting handmade paper flowers filled with faux pollen.

The outdoor exercise is one of many that the students have participated in since the school year began. Blondin’s commitment to creating those unique learning experiences for students is one of the reasons she was selected as the 2026 Sonoma County teacher of the year. The award is bestowed by the county’s Office of Education.

Blondin has nearly 20 years of experience teaching, mostly in bilingual Spanish language instruction. She spent the first decade of her career teaching in other countries.

Her love for outdoor education blossomed during her first international teaching role at the Cloud Forest School in Costa Rica. The school is known for its robust, integrated environmental instruction.

Sustainable Livingenvironmental education, nature, schools

Camp for environmental learning, inclusivity this summer in Guerneville

May 30, 2026

Janet Perry, PRESS DEMOCRAT

School Garden Network’s new summer camp to be held at Solar Punk Farms

Schoolyards across Sonoma County have become places of bounty, learning and healing through the advent of school gardens. Teachers take classes out into those gardens where they incorporate the beautiful space into an outdoor learning lab for math and science as well as writing, art and more. Students who are anxious are able to find peace and solace there that helps them to regulate their nervous systems. Many of those gardens were started with the help of the School Garden Network.

There are now around 150 school gardens in the School Garden Network. Once those gardens are established the network helps teachers by providing resources such as plants and seeds as well as hosting helpful workshops throughout the school year.

Since 2021 the School Garden Network has also been hosting weeklong summer day camps where students learn new skills, make new friends and enjoy time in the garden. The team behind the network includes Sue Davis, executive director; Jesse Schmieg, Summer Garden Camp manager; and Hayley Dougan, farm manager at Solar Punk Farms where the newest camp takes place.

Agriculture/Food System, Local Organizations, Sustainable Livingenvironmental education, gardening, School Garden Network, school gardens

Sonoma County officials resurrect decade-long effort for local composting facility

May 13, 2026

Anna Armstrong, PRESS DEMOCRAT

More than a decade after Sonoma County lost its commercial composting facility, county officials are moving forward with a proposal for a new regional site northwest of Santa Rosa they say could process most of the county’s residential green bin waste locally.

At an April 28 meeting, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors authorized the environmental review for a prospective compositing facility at 5200 Slusser Road, immediately west of the county’s airport at the former county landfill site.

Should the facility move forward, the site would process up to 70,000 tons of residential green bin waste annually, accounting for around 80% of the total amount of compostable waste generated across the county.

County officials say the centrally-located facility could help reduce truck traffic and greenhouse gas emissions associated with hauling the material out of the county, while fulfilling state requirements to divert organic waste from landfills.

Agriculture/Food System, Sustainable Livingcomposting facilities, landfill, Zero Waste Sonoma

Reckoning with plastics recycling

April 23, 2026

Marisa Endicott, PRESS DEMOCRAT

“They’re always coming up with some new solution that is still based on plastic waste recycling, and plastic recycling fundamentally doesn’t work,” Dell said.

At an 85,000-square-foot solid waste plant in south Santa Rosa, a tractor loader scooped up the blue bin contents from hundreds of Sonoma and Marin County curbside garbage customers. The mix of recyclables was then funneled through a maze of conveyor belts, chutes and optical sorters.

Paper traveled up along a fish ladder to be baled, while heavier materials continued down the line, where a separator diverted aluminum in one direction and a magnet pulled steel cans off the line and flung them into a cage. People posted along the way served as a “last line of defense,” as Recology Sonoma Marin‘s Senior General Manager Logan Harvey put it, making sure the discarded containers, cardboard and paper products were headed for the right place.

The whirring high-tech machinery is part of a $35 million upgrade completed two years ago at Recology Sonoma Marin’s Materials Recovery Facility. The Standish Avenue plant, the main destination for blue bin materials across Recology’s service area in the region, now takes in and processes roughly 350 tons of recycling a day — 40 to 50 tons per hour — from 13 communities in Sonoma and Marin counties.

Sustainable Livingplastic recycling, plastics, Recology Sonoma Marin

No, compostable bags don’t go in the green bin

January 15, 2026

Amie Windsor, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Rob Carey was surprised after garbage pickup day to see the pink notice affixed to his green bin.

The note left for the Sebastopol resident was a soft reprimand from the city’s curbside hauler, Sonoma County Resource Recovery.

Carey, who regards himself a considerate customer, had been called out for for using green compostable bags to discard his fruit and vegetable scraps.

“They said, ‘We don’t want that,’” he said, confounded. “And here I thought these bags were good.”

Carey considers himself a ‘recycler,’ so he was surprised to learn he’d been going about his green waste disposal in the wrong way.

He is likely not alone.

While single-use bags labeled as compostable are an alternative for plastic bags, they are not be disposed of in the green bins used to collect compostable waste, including food scraps and yard debris.

Sustainable Living'biodegradeable' plastic, compost, plastic pollution, plastic waste