Author: David Goldstein

by David Goldstein Are you waiting until your incandescent light bulbs burn out before switching to LED bulbs? Experts agree, from both a financial and an environmental perspective, that it makes sense to throw your perfectly working incandescent bulbs in the trash and replace them with LEDs. Severin Borenstein, a professor at University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business, in his online Berkeley Blog, uses people’s unwillingness to discard working incandescent bulbs as an example of the “sunk cost fallacy,” a common error in judgment resulting from decision-making abilities becoming warped by previous investments. As Southern California Edison...

by David Goldstein A recent article in MarketWatch, an online personal finance magazine, had the following alarming subheading: “About 5 billion pounds of returned merchandise ends up in landfills every year.” This wave of waste comes despite the sophisticated system of retail return management provided by B-Stock, Optoro and other companies helping retailers. Return management companies operate business-to-business online auction marketplaces for retailers and manufacturers to sell returned and excess inventory to secondary-market business buyers. Locally, one of the largest of these secondary market buyers is Bulldog Inc., which holds auctions and operates retail stores in Simi Valley and...

by David Goldstein With the new year comes a new area of focus for recycling. Until now, recycling has focused mostly on items like cans, bottles, paper, cardboard and plastic. A Jan. 1, 2020 target set by California Senate Bill (SB) 1383 (which was passed in 2016) directs California to recycle half of all organic waste. It also set a much more ambitious mandate for California to boost organic waste recycling to 75 percent by 2025. “Organic waste” and “organics” are terms used to describe waste originating from living organisms and capable of being turned into compost, mulch or...

by David Goldstein Both Christmas and Hanukkah begin next week, and those who have not yet bought gifts for everyone on their list may be tempted to wade into holiday shopping crowds and buy items they would not have purchased if they had more time to consider what recipients want. As stated in often-quoted statistics on the website of the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle), “Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, more than one million tons of additional waste is generated each week nationwide.” As an example, 38,000 miles of ribbon alone is thrown out each...