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.”
Libby Rainey
has been reporting on L.A.'s preparations for World Cup games this year.
Published May 12, 2026 5:00 AM
The Los Angeles will host eight FIFA World Cup matches at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood this summer.
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Topline:
Advocates had pushed L.A.’s World Cup host committee, an arm of the Los Angeles Sports & Entertainment Commission, to produce its human rights plan. But now that it's out, they're not satisfied.
What's in the plan? It includes a list of online resources including where to file complaints with various local and state level agencies and a summary of local, state and federal laws protecting human and civil rights. The committee is also touting a partnership with L.A. County in which people can call 211 to report a concern during the tournament.
How are activists responding? "Los Angeles is weeks away from hosting one of the largest sporting events in the world, and yet what has been posted is not a plan,” Stephanie Richard, director of the Sunita Jain Anti‑ at Loyola Law School, said in a statement. “It is a list of laws and hotline numbers."
Read on…for concerns about ICE and other issues dropped in the human rights guidance.
The Los Angeles World Cup host committee has quietly posted its guidance on human rights after months of speculation over where the plan was and when it would be published.
Advocates had pushed the committee, an arm of the Los Angeles Sports & Entertainment Commission, to produce its plan. But now that it's out, they're not satisfied with what they're seeing.
The human rights guidance is required by FIFA and outlined on the host committee's website. It includes a list of online resources including where to file complaints with various local and state level agencies and a summary of local, state and federal laws protecting human and civil rights. The committee is also touting a partnership with L.A. County in which people can call 211 to report a concern during the tournament.
"Los Angeles is weeks away from hosting one of the largest sporting events in the world, and yet what has been posted is not a plan,” Stephanie Richard, director of the Sunita Jain Anti‑Trafficking Initiative at Loyola Law School, said in a statement. “It is a list of laws and hotline numbers."
The human rights document also skirts fears around ICE and its potential presence at the tournament and surrounding celebrations. Todd Lyons, the agency's head, said earlier this year that ICE's investigatory branch will play a key role in security for the tournament.
But ICE and immigration enforcement aren't mentioned on the host committee's web page on human rights or in its outline of its approach to human rights. "Immigration status" only gets a mention in the list of existing anti-discrimination laws.
"It certainly could have been much stronger," Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles, said of the plan. She added that her organization participated in a roundtable on the plan, and she was disappointed ICE and recent immigration sweeps weren't mentioned in the resulting document.
"In order for all of this to happen, immigrant workers are part of it," she said of the World Cup. "Your hotel workers, your service workers, stadium workers, drivers."
What other host committees are saying about ICE
There have been some recent signs that other host committees aren't concerned that ICE will disrupt the tournament.
The head of the Miami host committee recently told The Athletic that Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally assured him that ICE would not be at World Cup stadiums.
The head of security for Houston's host committee told Axios that plans with the federal government had never included immigration enforcement.
LAist reached out to spokespeople for the host committee for comment via email, phone and text, but did not hear back in time for publication. FIFA's press team also did not respond to an email from LAist.
According to the host committee's website, the human rights plan is the result of coordination with the city and county of Los Angeles, the city of Inglewood, and 14 roundtable discussions held in the fall of 2025.
"As a non-profit organization, the Host Committee’s role is primarily and necessarily focused on aligning and collaborating with governmental and non-governmental organizations," the document sums up the committee's approach.
The plan also promises more actions, including "Know Your Rights" training for L.A. residents and visitors and "Know Your Responsibilities" training for businesses and vendors. The committee also says it will develop a "rapid response" strategy to respond to potential problems at the tournament.
Available details on those plans were scant. And with the tournament just 30 days away, labor unions and community groups are continuing to voice concerns about potential ICE presence at SoFi Stadium and other potential consequences of the tournament coming to town.
Dana Littlefield
is a senior editor who oversees coverage of politics, health, housing and homelessness.
Published May 11, 2026 5:24 PM
The City of Arcadia posted notice Monday on its website that Mayor Eileen Wang had resigned.
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Topline:
The mayor of Arcadia has agreed to plead guilty to a charge she acted as an agent for China, federal prosecutors announced Monday. She has resigned from her position with the city.
The charges:Eileen Wang, 58, faces one count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The charge carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun of Chino Hills, worked at the direction of the Chinese government and with individuals based in the U.S. to promote pro-People’s Republic of China propaganda in the United States. Those actions occurred between 2020 and 2022, prosecutors said.
What's next: Wang, who was elected to the City Council in November 2022, was expected to make her first appearance in U.S. District Court Monday afternoon. Citing a plea agreement, prosecutors said she's expected to enter the guilty plea within the next few weeks.
Read on... for more on the charges and allegations.
The mayor of Arcadia has agreed to plead guilty to a charge she acted as an agent for China, federal prosecutors announced Monday. She has resigned from her position with the city.
Eileen Wang, 58, faces one count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The charge carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison.
What we know about the criminal case
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun of Chino Hills worked at the direction of the Chinese government and with individuals based in the U.S. to promote pro-People’s Republic of China propaganda in the United States. Those actions occurred between 2020 and 2022, prosecutors said.
According to federal prosecutors, Wang and Sun operated a website — known as U.S. News Center — billed as a news source for the local Chinese American community in Los Angeles County. They posted content on the site, described as "pre-written articles," based on directives from Chinese government officials.
Sun, 65, pleaded guilty in October 2025 in federal court to acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government. He is serving a four-year federal prison sentence.
Prosecutors also said Wang communicated with John Chen, whom they described as “a high-level member of the [Chinese government] intelligence apparatus,” in November 2021, and asked him to post an article from her website.
In a group chat, Wang referenced the article and wrote: “This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Chen pleaded guilty in New York to acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China and conspiracy to bribe a public official. In 2024, he was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison.
What's next
Wang, who was elected to the City Council in November 2022, was expected to make her first appearance in U.S. District Court Monday afternoon.
Citing a plea agreement, prosecutors said she's expected to enter the guilty plea within the next few weeks.
Arcadia's mayor is selected from the elected council members. A post on the city's website announced that Wang had resigned her position as of Monday and that a new mayor would be picked from the remaining council members at the next meeting.
Next Arcadia City Council meeting
Date: Tuesday, May 19, 2026 Location: Council Chambers, 240 West Huntington Drive, Arcadia Time: 7 p.m. Watch: Live stream or via live broadcast on lon the Arcadia Community Television Channel (AT&T channel 99, Spectrum digital channel 3). Daily replays at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m.
Keep up with LAist.
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Elly Yu
reports on early childhood. From housing to health, she covers issues facing the youngest Angelenos and their families.
Published May 11, 2026 3:36 PM
The state is partnering with Baby2Baby to send 400 free diapers home with families when they’re discharged from the hospital.
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Topline:
Starting next month, families in California will get hundreds of free diapers for their newborns in a new state initiative.
What’s new: The state is partnering with Baby2Baby, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit, to send 400 free diapers home with families when they’re discharged from the hospital. Any baby born in a participating hospital would be eligible, regardless of income.
Which hospitals? State officials say the program will be first prioritized in hospitals that serve a large number of Medi-Cal patients, but said there isn’t a current list of participating hospitals. A spokesperson for the state’s Department of Health Care Access and Information said once hospitals begin to opt-in, a list will be available on Baby2Baby’s website.
Why now: Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said the program is aimed at easing the financial strain of raising a family. Newborns can need up to 12 diapers a day — and families spend about $1,000 on diapers in the first year of a baby’s life, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The Supreme Court on Monday gave itself more time to consider a national ban on telemedicine access to the abortion pill mifepristone. Rules for prescribing mifepristone online or through the mail remain in effect through Thursday at a minimum.
The backstory: The tumult over the future of telemedicine access to mifipristone started on May 1 with a ruling from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling re-instituted prescribing rules from before the pandemic that required patients to receive mifepristone in person in a doctor's office or clinic. The Food and Drug Administration determined that the rule was medically unnecessary in 2021. The state of Louisiana sued last fall, arguing that telemedicine access undermines the state's abortion ban.
What is telemedicine abortion: The telemedicine abortion process starts with a patient connecting with a healthcare provider on the phone or online. If the patient is eligible, that provider can prescribe two medications — mifepristone and another pill called misoprostol. Patients can pick up the medicine at a local pharmacy, or providers can mail the drugs to a patient's home. Now, most abortions in the U.S. use this combination of medications, and one quarter happen via telemedicine. After the 5th Circuit ruling, some providers said they would continue offering telemedicine access to abortion medication using a different protocol that involves higher doses of misoprostol and no mifepristone.
Read on... for more on what's at stake.
The Supreme Court on Monday gave itself more time to consider a national ban on telemedicine access to the abortion pill mifepristone.
Justice Samuel Alito extended an earlier order he issued by three more days, so rules for prescribing mifepristone online or through the mail remain in effect through Thursday at a minimum.
The case at issue
The tumult over the future of telemedicine access to mifipristone started on May 1 with a ruling from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling re-instituted prescribing rules from before the pandemic that required patients to receive mifepristone in person in a doctor's office or clinic.
The Food and Drug Administration determined that the rule was medically unnecessary in 2021. The state of Louisiana sued last fall, arguing that telemedicine access undermines the state's abortion ban.
What is telemedicine abortion?
The telemedicine abortion process starts with a patient connecting with a healthcare provider on the phone or online. If the patient is eligible, that provider can prescribe two medications — mifepristone and another pill called misoprostol. Patients can pick up the medicine at a local pharmacy, or providers can mail the drugs to a patient's home.
That access is a big part of the reason why the number of abortions nationally has actually increased since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. Now, most abortions in the U.S. use this combination of medications, and one quarter happen via telemedicine.
After the 5th Circuit ruling, some providers said they would continue offering telemedicine access to abortion medication using a different protocol that involves higher doses of misoprostol and no mifepristone.
Researchers say that method is just as safe and effective, but tends to cause more pain for patients and more side effects, like nausea and diarrhea. Misoprostol has other medical uses, such as treating gastric ulcers and hemorrhage, and has been on the market longer than mifepristone. It is likely to remain fully accessible, even if mifepristone is restricted.
Since the FDA's prescribing rules for medications apply to the whole country, a change to the rules about how mifepristone can be accessed has national impact. That means it affects states with constitutionally-protected access to abortion, states with criminal bans, like Louisiana, and all states in between.
States' rights
Nearly two dozen Democratic-led states submitted an amicus brief in this case, writing that the appeals court decision put the policy choices of states with bans above the choices of states "that have made the different but equally sovereign determinations to promote access to abortion care."
There are also stakes related to the power of FDA and other expert agencies to set rules. While the Trump administration's FDA did not respond to the Supreme Court's request for briefs, a group of former leaders of the agency, who served under mainly Democratic and some Republican presidents, wrote about this in an amicus brief.
They defended the FDA's process in approving the medication and modifying the rules for prescribing it, and say the appeals court decision "would upend FDA's gold-standard, science-based drug approval system."
