Big events are a big source of food waste. What does it take to “walk the sustainability walk” when you have to feed hundreds of people?
Earth to conference-goers: According to the Environmental Protection Agency, food waste accounts for about 20% of municipal solid waste in U.S. landfills, but makes up nearly 60% of annual landfill methane emissions. Conferences and events are major contributors to those problems.
Who's doing something about it? West Los Angeles College held a conference last month on climate careers. But they also wanted to make the lunch a model of sustainable practices.
How hard can that be? People need to be fed. That food needs to come from somewhere. It costs money to produce. It has an environmental cost. It won't all be eaten. That waste needs to go somewhere. Also: People really want their coffee.
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How A Conference About Climate Change Tackled Its Own Food Waste (But Didn't Skimp On The Coffee)
Wearing gloves past their wrists, Alekos Tetradis stood guard by a cluster of compost, recycling, and landfill bins. Around them, attendees at this West Los Angeles College climate conference mulled where to toss their trash. If someone went for the wrong bin, Tetradis, a WLAC biochemistry student, stooped, reached in with gusto, and righted the wrong.
“It can seem a little daunting to know what is and isn’t compost, but that’s why I’m here,” Tetradis said.
Tetradis was excited to volunteer for this work at the West Los Angeles’ Climate Careers Conference. The conference’s stated goal was to identify new curriculum and training programs to advance sustainability careers.
LAist’s goal was to watch the food line: Would it be any different from other conferences, with rows of boxed lunches that might get tossed? Would participants be given those red “delicious” apples only to then just throw them away? What does it take to “walk the sustainability walk” when you have to feed hundreds of people?
The plan to spend money
Tetradis stepped away to consult with another volunteer about the coffee cups, which seemed compostable — they looked brown and felt rough, as if made from recycled material. Tetradis and the volunteer determined the inside had a wax coating, so it would fall under recycling.
(Editor's note: After this story published, there was some discussion about whether a coffee cup with a wax coating is recyclable. Tetradis did note that it technically requires a special facility. These things are complicated.)
“We have to care to compost because if you're not thinking about the effects, if you're not thinking about honestly how easy it is to separate your trash before you throw it away, you just toss everything into one bin,” Tetradis said. “It's so much easier.”
Jo Tavares, the director of the California Center for Climate Change Education, said the planning committee began meeting several months in advance, “making sure that we were aligned with practices with the things that we're telling the world that we all need to change. Perhaps not overnight, but culturally speaking, right? Like a culture of reducing waste in general.”
Jo Tavares is the director of the California Center for Climate Change Education at West L.A. college.
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For instance, the committee spent more on aluminum water bottles than plastic — at around $2 an aluminum bottle, four times more. Before the event, participants were also encouraged to bring reusable bottles.
“When you plan an event, you have a budget, and you have to make sure that you try — especially when you're using public money, which is our case — you have to try to minimize costs. But everything that we do has a hidden cost, right,” Tavares said.
For example: the pollution from a single-use plastic water bottle isn’t reflected in the consumer price of 50 cents. And the aluminum water bottles can be recycled.
The necessary provisions of calories and caffeine
Then there’s the first meal of the day: A breakfast of bagels, danishes, muffins, quick breads, cut fruit, and of course, coffee.
But, Tavares said, “we’re still in a situation that I cannot have a conference that starts at 8:30 a.m. and not offer coffee to the participants, right? It's something that culturally would be absolutely unacceptable."
A cart carrying the leftovers from breakfast gets wheeled away.
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Mid-morning, a cart carrying half-full bowls of cut fruit, muffins, and bagels made its exit. Research from the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment and World Wildlife Fund identified those items as among the most common kinds of food waste at events.
The committee decided to pay a local organization to manage the compostable waste and leftover food, which cost $2,000 spread over three days of events. There are composting centers available for drop-off, but Tavares said it made sense to pay another organization to manage the waste and leftovers.
“What is it that is important to you? What are these trade-offs that you're willing to do? And, you know, do they really need to be sacrifices all the time? Are there substitutions or new ways of looking at the way things ought to be?” Tavares said.
A lot of events stick with the tried and true.
“I’m looking at breakfast buffets and hotels — it’s sugar, it’s pastries, and things like that,” Tracy Stuckrath, a certified events planner, told LAist.
Struckrath works for thrive! meetings & events, which specializes in safe, sustainable, and inclusive dining. She also runs a podcast called Eating at a Meeting, and said she asked her audience what they wanted to eat for breakfast.
“They said they were looking for protein and you don’t get that on a continental breakfast,” said Stuckrath, who pointed out adding eggs, bacon, and sausage could add $20 per person.
Adding a lot of meat has other costs, too, though. But it’s still early; we’ll save that discussion for lunch.
California has made it a requirement to divert organic waste from landfills and reduce methane emissions since the passage of SB 1383. By 2025, the state aims to reduce organic waste in landfills by 75% and redirect at least 20% of currently disposed edible food for people to eat.
Alekos Tetradis, a second year West L.A. student
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West L.A. College student Alekos Tetradis sorts through the compost bin.
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To help sort through its own waste and minimize harm, the center conference relied on friendly student volunteers, like Tetradis.
Tetradis talked to LAist about “greenwashing,” how items may be marketed as plant-based, but in reality may be mixed with chemicals that ultimately renders them not compostable. They believe the labeling should be more transparent.
Examining the cutlery at today’s event, Tetradis found out what it was made of: “Oh, the forks are metal! Oh this is perfect.”
Fabio Miranda’s locally based company City Fare catered the event. City Fare has been incorporating more compostable disposables and more vegan options, which he anticipates there will be increasing demand for. In theory, he said, catering for an event means preparing food for a set number of people, so there would be less waste than the uncertainty restaurants face.
With catering for events, however, “there’s always attrition,” Miranda said. “There’s always last minute no-shows even though individuals have RSVP’d, and that’s a little difficult to kind of gauge and estimate. How many people will be no-shows?”
He points out that no one hosting events wants to run out of food either.
Fabio Miranda represents the catering company City Fare at West L.A. college.
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Stuckrath, the events planner who specializes in sustainability, told LAist, “it really comes down to monitoring your attendee arrivals and departures schedules.”
There have been financial and cultural incentives for providing extra food, said Jackie Suggitt, director of capital, innovation and engagement at ReFED, a national nonprofit dedicated to ending food loss and waste. Vendors would need to compensate attendees if food runs out and event attendees “regardless of what we say about our sustainability preferences, we like the options, even if we’re the last one going through the buffet.”
Suggitt said one of the solutions their organization proposes from their own event planning experience and case studies is to actually underproduce. ReFED will produce food for 50% to 85% of the people registered for the event. (By day two of an event, “No one actually comes down for breakfast, they just want coffee,” she said.)
“I mean, that's hard, right? Like over the fear of running out of food. You may run out of one of your dishes and that happens. Right?” Suggitt said.
She observed this earth friendly mindset could be acceptable at a conference about food waste, but elsewhere “can be kind of a difficult norm to break away from.”
The environmentally conscious plant-based lunch
The climate conference lunch was a taco bar buffet spread with traditional fixings of rice, beans, tortillas, guacamole, salsa, and, among other items, plant-based beef fajitas.
Vegan beef fajitas are served for lunch as part of the taco buffet bar.
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Meat and plant-based preferences is something the organizer Tavares did wrestle with, worrying that students, particularly high school students attending this week’s events, may not eat the vegan options.
But Jade Allison, a conference participant, said the plant-based lunch menu showed the organizers are aligned in practice with their sustainable messages.
Some liked the plant-based meat. “I love rice and beans, and I like the Beyond Meat steak,” said Andrea Abrego, a West L.A. student who participated in an internship panel.
Ayman Sharafat, though, preferred a meat option. He's doing a fellowship in Texas with the Climate Action Network, but originally hails from Jordan. While the lunch was “delicious and healthy,” when asked how he would design the ideal conference lunch, he said, “some people like lamb, some people like pork, beef, and chicken.”
The necessary origin of the food
Seated at a round table, conference participant Beth Yirga chimed in to a conversation about the food’s origins and final destination.
“I want to know the history of my plate…I want every piece of my plate to be connected to a community that is doing this work to heal the planet," Yirga said. "And I'm, we're, supporting their efforts and nourishing our bodies at the same time.”
Mariela Bazán, chief sustainability officer for the Events Industry Council, a global organization that has established sustainable event standards, calls this “social procurement.”
Social procurement means “where are you purchasing from? Do you have a policy of sourcing from small and medium enterprises? Are you looking for diversity in your supply chain? Are you looking for fair labor, not child labor, in your supply chain?” Bazán said.
She said in the past, when considering sustainability, the events industry used to focus on materials like plastic water bottles and reducing waste, but over time, considering the climate impact of travel and social procurement has grown in importance. That means considering things like chocolate certifications, fair trade coffee, and other elements of sourcing (seafood, for example, can be notorious to track, but one can start the conversation by asking).
The final fate of the waste
Not all of this conference’s food would make its way onto people’s ceramic lunch plates.
“I think that is a hidden side of something like conference lunches and buffets that we don't really get to know,” said attendee Allison, who wanted to know what would happen to the leftovers. “Like a product’s life cycle and lifespan is much larger than it being on a plate in front of me. And I think, like, for sustainability, we have to shift our mindset to incorporate the full picture more often.”
CCCCE contracted the organization Compostable to bring the compost to partner farms and urban growing spaces within 10 miles of the event, and redistribute the leftovers to Free Food Collective, a local organization which delivers food to unhoused people in West L.A.
Becca Scheuer takes away the leftover food and compost. The leftover food will go to a local organization that will distribute the food to unhoused people and the compost will go to partner farms and urban growing spaces.
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At the end of the day, Becca Scheuer from Compostable weighed the food waste and leftover food — approximately 60 pounds of food waste to become compost, about 80 pounds of leftover food to be redistributed.
“So that is great,” Scheuer said while loading up the pickup truck. “None of that is in the landfill.”
Kevin Tidmarsh
is a producer for LAist, covering news and culture. He’s been an audio/web journalist for about a decade.
Published October 21, 2026 5:00 AM
L.A. County election workers tallying votes in 2022.
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Topline:
The U.S. Department of Justice has attempted to use a number of tactics in recent weeks to remove California voters they say are likely noncitizens from state voter rolls. Election experts stressed that there are safeguards in place to ensure voters’ legitimate ballots are counted.
About the case: Election security officials told LAist that the federal government’s case is unlikely to succeed and that voters should proceed filling out their ballots as normal. “I don't think most people in the L.A. area or beyond will actually encounter any of the disruption that the administration is trying to project,” Loyola Marymount law professor Justin Levitt said.
The backstory: Last week, Department of Justice election officials sent a list of 20,000 California voters it says it has “high confidence” are not citizens. L.A. County election officials said they received records on a thumb drive, which they could not open for security reasons. Two days later, the Trump administration sued California for not complying with its request to use the list to remove any noncitizens from local voter rolls. California on Tuesday filed an extensive response to the DOJ lawsuit, saying it “borders on the absurd.”
Casting your vote: Levitt recommended voting as early as possible to give time to check your registration and resolve any issues. If you have concerns, he recommended visiting an early voting center in person.
After you vote: UCLA law professor Rick Hasen encouraged voters to double-check the status of their ballots to ensure they’ve been processed and counted. “We have very good ballot tracking,” Hasen said. “California is not going to simply start throwing out ballots from people who are on an unvetted federal list of supposed noncitizen voters.”
Read on ... for more about the back-and-forth between the federal government and the state.
The U.S. Department of Justice has attempted to use a number of tactics in recent weeks to remove California voters they say are likely noncitizens from state voter rolls — despite the voting process having already begun.
Election security experts told LAist, however, that the federal government’s case is unlikely to succeed, and that voters should proceed filling out their ballots as normal.
“I don't think most people in the L.A. area or beyond will actually encounter any of the disruption that the administration is trying to project,” Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt said.
The backstory
Last week, Department of Justice election officials sent a list of 20,000 California voters it says it has “high confidence” are not citizens. (L.A. County election officials said they received records on a thumb drive, which they could not open for security reasons.) Two days later, the Trump administration sued California for not complying with its request to use the list to remove any noncitizens from local voter rolls.
California on Tuesday filed an extensive response to the DOJ lawsuit, saying it “borders on the absurd.”
Separately this week, the DOJ announced it had filed charges against 28 people, accusing them of registering to vote as noncitizens.
What is the DOJ claiming?
DOJ representatives said Monday they are attempting to keep U.S. citizens’ votes from being canceled out by noncitizens.
“We have an election coming up next month,” Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney, said. “Our biggest priority is to safeguard the integrity of the election.”
Essayli suggested he may prosecute election officials who knowingly process ballots “once we’ve informed them who the non-citizens are” and indicated the DOJ is working on “many more cases.”
Regarding the list sent to state and local officials, DOJ officials also said they have “high confidence” — not complete certainty — that the people on the federal government’s list are noncitizens.
“There may be some names on there who it turns out ultimately are citizens,” Trent McCotter, acting deputy attorney general, said Monday. “We're not perfect, and that's why we've asked California to cooperate with us.”
In a court declaration filed today, L.A. County Assistant Registrar Monica Flores said the DOJ’s list is “unreliable.” Analyzing a sample of 200 records, she said a majority are not active voters, and nearly 40% of the records indicate the individual was born in the U.S.
The L.A. County registrar of voters said officials here did not comply with the request to use the federal list and began coordinating with state officials — a point DOJ officials stressed on Monday, with McCotter saying this is “an emergency of their own [California’s] creation.”
Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor who runs the school’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, disagreed.
“The federal government didn't produce its list of voters or its methodology to California until just a few days ago, so this is not an emergency of California's own making,” Hasen said. “It is not the federal government's job to decide who is on voting rolls. That is a job that is given to states.”
In large part, Hasen and Levitt said officials will play the same role that they always have, even though more eyes will be on them. County election officials send out ballots, process and verify signatures, and reach out to voters if there are any outstanding issues. The registrar then has 13 days to report on ballots to the state, including provisional ballots and same-day registration ballots, and 30 days to finish counting them.
That said, Hasen said Essayli’s threat of possible criminal prosecution against election officials is “really dangerous” — even though he said these cases are also unlikely to succeed.
“We've got a threat of criminal prosecution against election administrators for not being aggressive enough in policing voting rolls to the Trump administration's liking,” Hasen said. “Even if they were negligent in how they policed their voting rolls, there's no criminal liability here.”
What should voters do?
Levitt, who previously worked on voting rights at the Justice Department, said he doesn’t think Trump’s DOJ is serious about the legal merits of their lawsuit against California.
“I can completely understand that people may be freaked out,” he said. “Part of what DOJ is doing is an attempt to freak people out.”
For their part, local officials have reassured voters that they should proceed to cast their ballots. In a statement, L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn called the DOJ’s actions “voter intimidation and a blatant attempt to undermine trust in our midterm elections.”
Levitt recommended voting as early as possible to give voters time to check their registration and resolve any issues. If you have concerns, he recommended visiting an early voting center in person.
“We have very good ballot tracking,” Hasen said. “California is not going to simply start throwing out ballots from people who are on an unvetted federal list of supposed noncitizen voters.”
Hasen and Levitt said the legal problems with the federal government’s arguments can be traced back to federal law and the Constitution.
“The Constitution gives states the power to run elections subject to Congress passing laws that can override that,” Hasen said. “There's no congressional override that would give the federal government the authority to do this.”
That makes the DOJ’s case unlikely to succeed, the professors agreed.
“It's possible that a court might not even really deal with it at all,” Levitt said.
What about the people accused of voting fraud?
The charges announced this week against 28 people accused of registering or voting as noncitizens, however, may be more successful, depending on the evidence presented in each case.
“Isolated cases of alleged voter fraud occur in red and blue states alike, and they should be prosecuted wherever they occur,” a spokesperson for California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.
But Bonta noted that the 28 people charged represent 0.0001% of California’s registered voters. The percentage is about the same in L.A. County: The 12 L.A. County residents charged this week make up roughly 0.0002% of people on the voter rolls.
Erin Stone
covers climate and environmental issues in Southern California.
Published October 20, 2026 3:48 PM
The sun sets behind power lines near homes during a heat wave in Los Angeles.
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Topline:
For the rest of the year, Los Angeles residents won't get their water and power shut off if they can’t pay their bills.
The details: Mayor Karen Bass announced Tuesday that she asked the L.A. Department of Water and Power’s board to pause any residential shutoffs for nonpayment through the end of 2026. The request comes after a series of record-breaking heatwaves this summer and fall. A spokesperson for LADWP said the changes will be implemented immediately. The board is expected to formally vote to approve the ask at its next meeting, set for Oct. 27 at 10 a.m., according to a spokesperson for Bass. According to the LADWP spokesperson, customers who need assistance will get extra time to pay their bill by entering into a payment arrangement without any interest or late fees.
Bill breakdown: DWP bills two months at a time, and right now, many customers are being hit with one of their highest bills of the year — from August and September. In those months, 2% of DWP's 1.6 million customers received a bill of over $3,000, the DWP said; 3% were between $2,000 and $3,000; 12% were between $1,000 and $2,000; and 18% were between $500 and $1,000. At least 60% were under $500, the DWP said. LADWP says customers can call 800-DIAL-DWP (342-5397) if they have questions about their bills.
The backstory: As atmospheric pollution drives hotter, longer heat waves, utility bills are soaring too. That's why, in 2023, LADWP's board voted to end power shutoffs for all customers during extreme weather. Under that policy, LADWP will not shut a customer’s water and power off if they are delinquent on their bill when the National Weather Service has issued an extreme heat or cold weather advisory or warning. Outside of such weather advisories, however, customers can still face shutoffs. Under Bass’ request, shutoffs won’t occur through the rest of the year regardless of weather advisories.
Other resources: Bass encouraged customers to sign up for LADWP’s Level Pay program, which allows customers to pay off past-due bills over time or even out the peaks of high-energy-use seasons across a longer term. You can sign up and find other bill assistance programs on the DWP website.
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District staff are clearing drains, trimming trees and checking roofs, windows and doors, in preparation for El Niño.
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Topline:
The Los Angeles Unified School District is preparing for possible “Super El Niño” storms that could damage schools and lead to closures, the district announced in a media release Tuesday.
What's being done: District staff are clearing drains, trimming trees and checking roofs, windows and doors. LAUSD is also testing emergency equipment, including pumps and emergency lighting systems, and stocking supplies such as flashlights and drinking water.
Guidance for families during this year's El Niño season: LAUSD encouraged families to update their contact information to ensure they receive district calls, texts and emails. Families should also monitor weather alerts, follow emergency officials’ instructions, avoid flooded roads and review safe routes to and from school, according to the release.
The Los Angeles Unified School District is preparing for possible “Super El Niño” storms that could damage schools and lead to closures, the district announced in a media release Tuesday.
District staff are clearing drains, trimming trees and checking roofs, windows and doors. LAUSD is also testing emergency equipment, including pumps and emergency lighting systems, and stocking supplies such as flashlights and drinking water.
“Preparing for severe weather starts well before the first raindrop,” Superintendent Andrés Chait said in a statement. “We can’t control the weather, but we can take steps now to protect our students and employees and help our schools stay ready.”
The district will monitor weather patterns using information from the National Weather Service and local emergency officials, it said.
LAUSD encouraged families to update their contact information to ensure they receive district calls, texts and emails. Families should also monitor weather alerts, follow emergency officials’ instructions, avoid flooded roads and review safe routes to and from school, according to the release.
“Preparing for a storm is a shared effort — from the crews maintaining school buildings to the principals reviewing emergency plans and the families making sure they can receive critical updates,” LAUSD said in the release. “By taking these steps before the rain begins, Los Angeles Unified is working to help students and employees stay safe and keep school communities as prepared as possible for the winter ahead.”
EdSource is an independent nonprofit organization that provides analysis on key education issues facing California and the nation. LAist republishes articles from EdSource with permission.
Lucas Brady Woods
covers the weather and disasters, among other climate and science topics.
Published October 20, 2026 3:08 PM
Rain is expected Wednesday night and Thursday morning across Southern California. It will be the first cold storm of the rainy season.
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Topline:
Significant rain is in the forecast this week, just days after heat and Santa Ana winds fueled wildfires across Southern California
The rain: The bulk of the rain is expected on Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Most of L.A. and Orange counties could get around an inch, with more expected in the hills and mountains. There is also a chance of thunderstorms and hail.
Flood risk: A National Weather Service flood watch is in effect for the Santa Monica Mountains and surrounding communities. The area includes burn scars from last week’s Bryson Fire and last year’s Palisades Fire. Wildfire burn scars are susceptible to landslides and flooding during heavy rain.
Cooldown: Forecasters say the storm will bring cool air into southern California. Highs on Wednesday and Thursday will peak in the 60s and low 70s in most places. High elevations will likely be even cooler.
Read on … for more on this week’s forecast.
Southern California is likely in for a solid dose of rain this week, just days after heat and Santa Ana winds helped fuelseveralwildfiresacross the region.
Forecasters expect the bulk of the rain to roll into the Los Angeles basin Wednesday night and continue into Thursday morning, with a small chance of thunderstorms and hail.
The San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Valley and coastal areas across L.A. and Orange counties could get around an inch over the next few days. Hills and mountains could get up to 3 inches.
“We could see some pretty high rain rates,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Wofford. “It's a good storm for this time of year — it's a little stronger than what we would see normally.”
The possibility of significant rain in the mountains raises concerns about flooding in areas recently burned in wildfires, particularly around the Bryson Fire burn scar near Malibu, which is only a few days old. Burn scars can’t absorb heavy rainfall and are susceptible to landslides.
The National Weather Service has issued a flood watch for the Santa Monica Mountains and surrounding communities from Wednesday afternoon through Thursday. That means heavy rain there could flood streets, creeks and rivers. The flood watch area includes both the Bryson Fire and Palisades Fire burn scars.
This will also be the first nontropical storm of the season, meaning it’s moving into the region from the north. Most storms that hit Southern California follow a similar path, especially during the winter, unlike the tropical storms that formed off the coast of Mexico and brought muggy weather to the region this summer.
Nontropical storms also bring cold air to the region. On Wednesday and Thursday, forecasters expect highs in the 60s and 70s. High elevations will be even cooler.
