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patioproductions · 1 year

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Patio Productions Opens San Diego Patio Furniture Showroom

Formerly known as San Diego Patio, Patio Productions has converged it's online presence with a patio furniture showroom centrally located in San Diego, CA. You might remember us a few years back when we had our Pacific Beach Showroom off Santa Fe Road. San Diego Patio.com is now Patio Productions. Please Note: As of 2017 - Our Sorrento Valley Location is Closed Our New Primary Location: Patio Productions San Diego 2161 Hancock St San Diego, CA 92110 Our North County Location: Patio Productions San Marcos 260 S Pacific St. Suite 120A San Marcos, CA 92078 We've found a new home that has an outdoor furniture showroom that is just a hop and a skip away no matter which part of San Diego you're coming from! If you're looking for the best prices, quality furniture, and first-class service, you need to make the trip! The Best Outdoor Furniture Outlet in San Diego, CA Although Patio Productions is primarily an online company, we are based in Sunny San Diego. This works out for you because this means you have access to our patio furniture warehouse! Get a discount on patio furniture because we import directly, house products in our San Diego Warehouse, and sell directly to you at discounted prices. No middleman! We've supplied patio furniture for people coming from San Marcos all the way down to Mission Hills. Patio Productions also works for Commercial Projects. We've furnished local venues like the Westfield Shopping Center, the Pantai Inn located in La Jolla, and most recently the Ronald McDonald House at Rady's Children's Hospital! Learn more about Commercial Furniture Projects. Purchase from a Reputable Outdoor Furniture Company Patio Productions has a stout reputation for providing quality patio furniture with the highest level of customer service. We've been featured on Houzz.com and sell furniture on Amazon.com (yes, this is the warehouse it will ship out of)! Patio Production on Houzz Here's a review Brian W. left us on Yelp.com: "Purchased the outdoor wicker sectional sofa set up (Urbana) a month ago. Love it. Get tons of compliments from guests on it's look and comfort. Did tons of shopping prior to finding this company and set up. Feel like I got a great deal on it. Glad my budget and my wife's tastes agree in time to enjoy the set all summer. no real constructive criticism needed, the products and service were as advertised.....great." -Brian W. from Escondido, CA San Diego Patio Furniture Showroom When searching for the best furniture store in San Diego, you must visit Patio Productions! Patio Productions stands amongst local San Diego furniture companies like Hauser Patio Furniture and Saddleback Patio Furniture. We have both a Warehouse and a Showroom. Because of this, we can offer the of the best prices guaranteed! Whether you are looking for teak patio furniture, wicker patio furniture, bar stools, bar tables, sofa sectionals, outdoor daybeds, or just a few patio umbrellas, Patio Productions can get you everything you need! We work with some of the top brands in the industry and have a growing reputation that has been evolving over the past 7 years! Patio Furniture San Diego Clearance Looking for clearance on luxury outdoor furniture priced to sell here in San Diego? You're in luck. Patio Productions is currently having a Summer Patio Sale for a limited time only! We've overstocked a few items and need to clear out space before the next shipment arrives. All of the products in our warehouse can be found on our website. We recommend taking a look the following collections before visiting so you have an idea of what you're looking for. Here is what you can find on sale at our San Diego Patio Furniture Outlet Store: Featuring Showroom Products from: - Harmonia Living - Forever Patio - Sunset West Please Note: As of 2017 - Our Sorrento Valley Location is Closed - Check out our NEW LOCATION Address: Patio Productions San Diego 2161 Hancock St San Diego, CA 92110 About the Author This post was written on behalf of Patio Productions by Cheryl Khan. She is a seasoned blogger, DIY fanatic, and an admitted designaholic. To get in touch with her, you can send her a message on G+ or follow her on twitter @SuperInteriors. Read the full article

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jeremylabahn-blog · 4 years

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Covid-19: How Our Business Pivoted

Our business finished 2019 on a high note with much anticipation for the new year. You know that feeling when you sorta feel like nothing can go wrong? Like when you have had so many good days in a row that you forgot what it was like to have a really bad day? Our company, Wonder Event Rentals, operates in the San Diego Wedding & Event Industry specializing in farm table rentals, wedding chair rentals, and lounge furniture rentals. The last couple of years we have experienced a lot of growth and things were trending in the right direction. We were expecting 2020 to be one of our greatest years yet and I know of several other rental companies in San Diego that had similar expectations, but it all changed in March.

Covid-19

The first few months of mask mandates, lockdowns and lack of toilet paper was definitely an adjustment. Quickly we watched the majority of our booked events for the year begin to either cancel or postpone. We had several team members out of work. We watched our sales funnel dry up since people were hesitant to plan future events with so many unknowns. It was easily discouraging and frustrating. All of this happened so quickly and for the first few months and it felt like there was nothing that we could do.

How We Adapted

We have always envisioned that ‘Wonder’ would act as a brand with many different companies under that name. We’ve also wanted to start other businesses in different industries. In June we decided it was time to adjust to our new reality, so we started Wonder Moving Company, providing local moving services throughout San Diego County. Here’s why we decided to do this:

First, we are passionate about business and people so starting another company seems like the logical thing to do.

We wanted to do everything in our power to keep our team members working with a steady flow of available work.

We already had much of the needed start-up equipment: Trucks, dollies, moving blankets, shrink wrap, a warehouse, team members, etc. Considering all of this, our start-up costs were fairly low.

The moving industry is different than the event industry, but there are a lot of similar logistics.

Lastly, I thought what’s the worst that could happen for trying?

Since launching I’ve been pretty surprised at the amount of work that has naturally poured in just by talking about it and it’s been great to feel the support from our community. Our new company may never amount to anything significant, but why not give it a shot?

Building and Maintaining

Our rental company is still up and running and is not going away. Now we are maintaining what was already working, and starting something completely new. It’s been a lot of fun but has also been challenging. Moving other people’s stuff is hard work and I understand why people are willing to pay a company to do it for them.

What’s Next

It has been just about 8 months of living in the everyday normalcy of Covid: Masks, restrictions on gatherings, limited capacity in restaurants, social distancing, shutdowns, and overall regulation. I’m not sure if we will offer moving services forever, but for now we are going to focus on the present. A lot of people have asked me “What are you going to do when you have too much work to handle between events and moving?” Honestly, I can’t wait to have that problem.

Wonder Event Rentals: Website, Instagram, and Facebook Wonder Moving Company: Website, Instagram, and Facebook

#business #moving #covid19

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randomvarious · 4 years

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Buck-O-Nine - “Pass the Dutchie” Emusic: The Extreme Collection Song released in 1995. Compilation released in 2000. Ska-Punk

Before getting into maybe San Diego’s best ska-punk band and the origins of the song “Pass the Dutchie,” let me provide you with an absurd sentence I read on Wikipedia about one of Buck-O-Nine’s albums, 1997′s Twenty-Eight Teeth:

Twenty-Eight Teeth sold over 200,000 copies, appearing in a top spot on the Billboard HeatSeekers chart at one point, and appearing in the Billboard Top 200 for one week, peaking at No. 190.

You get that? The album sold over two hundred thousand copies and peaked at #190 on the Billboard 200 and was only on the chart for one week. Wanna know how many album-equivalent units the current #1 album in the country, Big Sean’s Detroit 2, sold in the past week? One hundred three thousand. Now I know Twenty-Eight Teeth didn’t move those 200K-plus units in one week, but still, holy shit, dude. Album sales were BOOMING in those pre-p2p days of the late 90s.

Okay, now on to some of Buck-O-Nine’s history, with a few grafs from an archived copy of their website:

Buck-O-Nine formed in a small warehouse in the early part of 1991. Based in San Diego, the band was on the horizon of a change in the music industry. At the time the catch phrase was “Grunge.” The band was eager to take a different path. With their backgrounds in Punk/Metal bands, Reggae bands and 2nd wave Ska bands, Buck-O-Nine had the formula for what was to become a new mutation of sounds. Inspired by the early founders of this new sound, Buck-O-Nine admired the works of Fishbone, Operation Ivy, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and the Voodoo Glow Skulls.

By the end of 1992 the band had recorded a demo tape, entitled “Buck Naked.” This was sold at local shows around southern California. The songs on the tape were to become half of the songs recorded on their debut album, “Songs in Key of Bree,” released in 1994. While recording Key of Bree, which was to be self-released, the band caught the ear of their recording engineer, who also owned a small San Diego based label called Immune Records. The band licensed the album to Immune for 2 years. In the meantime they started what would become a relentless touring schedule and continued to write new songs.

After a show in San Diego sometime in the early part of 1995, Curtis Casella, the owner of the Boston based label, Taang Records (at the time home to the Mighty Mighty Bosstones) approached the band. Casella, having just moved his label to San Diego was taken by their choice of cover songs and was interested in releasing them on an EP. In the recording session of what was to become, “Barfly,” the band zipped through the 4 cover songs in an hour with plenty of time in the session for more. They quickly called Casella and agreed to record some new originals. This resulted in the 1995 release of “Barfly.”

Barfly ended up being a split of originals and covers and one of those covers was the made-for-live-gigging “Pass the Dutchie,” originally released in 1982 by Musical Youth, who were a reggae band of Jamaican kids. Musical Youth’s version of the song managed to break the top-ten in the U.S. and hit #1 in the UK as well.

The conception of Musical Youth’s “Pass the Dutchie” is actually pretty funny and bears explaining though. The song’s not an original, but is a mix of two other songs, “Gimme the Music” by U Brown, and “Pass the Kouchie” by Mighty Diamonds. Kouchie is a slang term for a marijuana pipe. When Musical Youth recorded “Pass the Dutchie,” they wanted to remove any reference to marijuana, so they replaced the line “how does it feel when you got no herb?” with “how does it feel when you got no food?” and exchanged the word “kouchie” for “dutchie”. Now, I know what you may be thinking: “Dummy, a dutchie is a reference to marijuana...” but it actually wasn’t back then. In keeping along with the “got no food” bit, Musical Youth used the term “dutchie” to refer literally to a Dutch oven or a cooking pot. Their song was about a group of guys passing around a pot of food rather than just...pot. However, since “Pass the Dutchie”’s release, the term “dutchie” has been used to refer to the Dutch Master cigar that one might use to pack a blunt. Funny how all of that worked out, huh?

Buck-O-Nine’s 1995 rendition of “Pass the Dutchie” sees the band taking that classic piece of reggae novelty and turning it into faster ska and then even faster ska-punk. Outside of the intro, this song is just your run-of-the-mill, fun, sort of tongue-in-cheek ska cover that’s just a bit more uptempo than the original. But as the band keeps performing the song, the punk guitar scratchiness enters the fray, and the speed raises considerably, transforming this track, which had been maintaining a nice and steady sway, to a suddenly turbulent jaunt.

This ska-punkified version of “Pass the Dutchie” proved to be so popular that in 1998, the song was re-recorded for an EP by the same name. That re-recording would then feature on the soundtrack for the total box office bomb, Homegrown, which starred John Lithgow, Billy Bob Thornton, and Hank Azaria. In 2000, the online mp3 retailer eMusic would include Buck-O-Nine’s first version of “Pass the Dutchie” on their Extreme Collection compilation, which was deemed the unofficial soundtrack of the 2000 Winter X Games. Coincidentally (or maybe not), some of Buck-O-Nine’s members were snowboard enthusiasts themselves.

Super fun late 90s ska-punk cover of an early 80s reggae classic.

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reallifenow · 2 years

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5Lesha Montoya- Assoc. VP Sales & Leasing Pacific Coast Commercial DRE#02007808 FOR SALE- Marina District 541 2nd Ave SD, 92101 Units 1 & 2 Industrial Warehouse/Retail/Office FOR S... https://youtu.be/Em4SFtGiVsI via @YouTube Between Island and Market. [email protected]; 619-992-5863 both units together discounted and offered at $1,800,000. 0.13 acres in Marina District. Contact agent to schedule a tour. Owner/User or Mixed-Use Redevelopment Project. Unit 1, apprx. 1209 SF offered at $700,000 and Unit 2 apprx. 2509 SF is offered at $1,340,000. Pacific Coast Commercial 10721 Treena Street, Suite 200, San Diego, CA 9213141 2nd Ave SD, 92101 #'s 1 & 2 Industrial Warehouse/Retail/Office FOR S...

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livinginlandmarketing · 3 years

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In California’s Inland Empire, the supply chain doesn’t just flow. It gushes.

Logistics dominates the former citrus powerhouse where almost 5 million live. For better or worse, the region’s present and future are tied to mammoth, sleek-walled warehouses and an 18-wheeled armada connecting the fruits of overseas labor to shopping aisles and doorsteps.

That change hit light speed during the the coronavirus pandemic, which spiked demand for online shopping and warehouses to store goods bought virtually with one-day delivery. In 2020, the top 500 North American retailers generated $849.5 billion in online sales, up 45.3% from 2019 and the biggest jump since 2006, Forbes reported.

“What we see happening on the ground today is a result of our choices as a society, to shop more online, to change the way that we acquire products,” said Juan Perez, Riverside County’s chief operating officer.

The story of the Inland warehouse boom has chapters in geography, globalization and demographics — take out a chapter and the ending changes. It’s a long-running drama pitting those who see logistics as the best option for a low-skilled workforce against those who blame warehouses and the diesel-belching trucks filling them for poisoning the air, clogging freeways and paying low wages.

A logistics area at San Bernardino Avenue and California Street in Redlands is seen Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Saia LTL Freight facility on Santa Ana Avenue in Fontana is seen Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Trucks at a Walmart distribution center in Eastvale are seen Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The Costco distribution center in Jurupa Valley is seen Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The Amazon Fulfillment Center on San Bernardino Avenue in Redlands is seen Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

An industrial area at San Bernardino Avenue and California Street in Redlands is seen Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The Union Pacific Railroad facility in Bloomington is seen Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. Freight trains haul goods offloaded at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to Inland Empire warehouses. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The Union Pacific Railroad facility in Bloomington is seen Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. Freight trains ferry goods from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to Inland logistics centers. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The Costco distribution center in Jurupa Valley is seen Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Semi-trucks make their way up California Street in Redlands on Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Saia LTL Freight facility on Santa Ana Avenue in Fontana is seen Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Industrial and logistics facilities in the vicinity of Nevada Street, south of San Bernardino Avenue, in Redlands are seen Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Warehouses on the north side of the 60 Freeway at Etiwanda Avenue in Jurupa Valley are seen Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Warehouses in the vicinity of Nevada Street in Redlands are seen Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. Because of several factors, the Inland Empire has become a hub for the logistics industry. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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It’s also a story that — like the logistics industry — keeps growing:

From 2004 to 2020, the Inland logistics footprint roughly doubled to almost 600 million square feet, according to commercial real estate firm CBRE.

The number of Inland “big box” distribution centers grew 54% from 463 in 2009 to 711 in 2020, according to Statista, a market and consumer data firm.

In 2019, the Inland Empire was home to 21 of the nation’s 100 biggest logistics leases, the California attorney general’s office reported.

An estimated 40% of the nation’s consumer goods come through the region, Bloomberg News reported, and the logistics industry employed almost 1 in 8 Inland workers as of early 2021.

Amazon is Riverside County’s second-largest employer, according to the county budget report.

And these examples don’t include the planned World Logistics Center, which will bring 40 million square feet — 705 football fields — of warehouse space to eastern Moreno Valley.

The Inland region is “one of five or six locations like this in the world” for logistics, said Paul Granillo, president and CEO of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership. “The question we as a region need to grapple with is how do we take advantage of the economic engine that this sector is for us.”

In fighting new warehouses, residents often ask why something else — a shopping center, for example — can’t be built instead.

Jeff Greene, chief of staff to Riverside County Supervisor Kevin Jeffries, said a developer reportedly looked into building an outdoor retail plaza similar to Rancho Cucamonga’s Victoria Gardens in Mead Valley, a rural unincorporated area where warehouses are popping up.

“The population density (and) the demographics just don’t come anywhere close to penciling out,” Greene said.

While cargo planes fly to Ontario and San Bernardino, Inland logistics owes its scale to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in San Pedro Bay. Both ports are about 65 miles from Riverside.

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Unlike San Francisco and Seattle, San Pedro Bay has the geography and infrastructure to handle a large volume of seaborne cargo, said Juan De Lara, an associate professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California and author the book “Inland Shift: Race, Space and Capital in Inland Southern California.”

The rise of Asian manufacturing in the past 40 years “created an incredible flow of goods coming through San Pedro Bay,” said Nick Vyas, founding executive director of the Randall K. Kendrick Global Supply Chain Institute and USC’s Marshall School of Business.

“As we look at this volume coming in, a lot of this volume had to be absorbed,” Vyas said. “We needed the warehouse spaces so when goods come in, we can store them.”

At first, that meant port-adjacent warehouses. But Los Angeles County started running out of logistics space and in recent years, L.A. County warehouses have been converted into lofts and workspaces, said Jay Dick, a CBRE executive.

Troy Plotkin, vice president of operations for Approved Freight Forwarders, a shipping company in the City of Industry, called the Inland Empire “the next closest place, really, to get freight out of the port and yet stay in this very large clientele base.”

At least 20 million consumers are within a two-hour drive of the region, he said, adding that Inland warehouses can be built with higher ceilings, which cuts costs because goods can be stacked higher.

Roads, rail, land, workers fueled warehouse growth

As the logistics industry moved eastward, it followed existing roads and rail lines. The launch of the U.S. interstate network in the 1950s led to the 10 Freeway, which runs from Santa Monica to Florida, and the 15 Freeway, which flows Inland and through Las Vegas to Montana.

A 1964 renaming of highways christened what is now the 60 Freeway connecting Riverside to L.A. The 10, 60, and 15 converge in Mira Loma, a neighborhood in Jurupa Valley that was an early hotbed of warehouse activity in Riverside County.

In the 1800s, Inland railroads replaced stagecoaches and brought in settlers and tourists, said Juliann Emmons Allison, a UC Riverside professor studying sustainability and environmental policy. But starting in the 1980s and continuing through the early 2000s, railroad companies spent tens of millions of dollars upgrading their facilities to move large volumes of goods more efficiently, De Lara said.

All that was needed was flat, vacant land — “You can’t build a warehouse on the hills,” Dick said — and the Inland Empire had plenty of it, along with a ready-to-go workforce.

A pro-logistics argument is “we have the least educated workforce in Southern California,” Greene said. “These people aren’t going to work in biotech … so therefore, warehouses are the best thing they can get. And that’s been kind of their pitch.”

Roughly a third of Inland households are under the $50,000-income level, compared to 25% for Orange County and 29% for San Diego County, 2019 census data shows. About 20% of residents in Riverside and San Bernardino counties have a bachelor’s degree or higher. In Orange and San Diego counties, it’s 41% and 40%, respectively.

The Inland area’s need for jobs grew in the 1980s when Kaiser Steel closed in Fontana and the 1990s when Norton Air Force Base closed in San Bernardino and March Air Force Base downshifted to become March Air Reserve Base.

Norton became San Bernardino International Airport and, in 2016, the agency responsible for redeveloping Norton announced that the 9,000-plus jobs lost in the closure had been restored. Amazon accounted for about a third of them.

Warehouse jobs are available in the Inland Empire “but it does nothing to change (the community) if you keep bringing the things here that are lower wages,” Allison said.

Catherine Gudis, a UC Riverside history professor, sees parallels between warehouse workers and those who toiled in farm fields a century ago. “It’s an exploitation of labor for the purposes of gaining the greatest value out of the cheapest possible production of the commodity,” she said.

There’s a line of thought that the Inland Empire “has always served the coastal communities,” Allison said.

“So land becomes more expensive there and those areas become places where people live, and these Inland counties become places that support those people,” she said. “So there’s also kind of an extension there that you’re not going to put your warehouses in Irvine. You’re going to put them out here.”

It’s no coincidence that whiter, wealthier communities are less likely to have a warehouse next door, Inland social justice activists said.

In May, the South Coast Air Quality Management District board, which is tasked with helping Inland residents breathe easier in a region with routinely poor air quality grades, passed new regulations targeting pollution from warehouse-bound diesel trucks. In making their case for the new rules, district officials said those living within half a mile of a warehouse “are more likely to include communities of color.”

Those whose shopping habits support warehouses are farthest from them and “people of color get all the burden,” said Andrea Vidaurre, policy lead for the Inland-based People’s Collective for Environmental Justice. The disproportionate number of warehouses in minority communities is “environmental racism,” Vidaurre said, adding that 80% of the warehouses her group studied were in zip codes where mostly people of color live.

More than half of residents in Riverside and San Bernardino counties are Black or Hispanic, compared to 39% for San Diego County and 36% for Orange County, according to 2019 census numbers.

Paul Granillo, CEO of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership, seen Monday, Aug. 5, 2019, said the growth of logistics is “a reality that we have to deal with. This is a new way for people to purchase things.” (File photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

Granillo defended the logistics industry and its growth.

“What is the remedy? We’re not gonna purchase anything? Fulfillment is the new retail,” he said. “It’s growing at a much faster rate than anyone predicted. This is a reality that we have to deal with. This is a new way for people to purchase things.”

Granillo added: “We need to look at the complexity of what this sector is comprised of and not just run to our corners and point fingers.”

Was logistics focus a choice?

While geography and demographics laid the groundwork for logistics, so did land-use policy, said Jeffries, who was first elected Riverside County supervisor in 2012.

Riverside County Supervisor Kevin Jeffries said of the prevalence of warehouses in the area that “we’ve done this to ourselves.” (Courtesy of Riverside County)

“I would argue that the county for many years had the welcome mat out for logistics and perhaps you could argue still does,” said Jeffries, whose district, especially south of Riverside and west of the 215 Freeway, is ground zero for logistics.

For example, Jeffries said his county’s development impact fees, levied on development projects to offset their burden on public services, incentivize logistics.

Perez, Riverside County’s operations officer, said fees are based on studies of how growth affects roads and other public services. Logistics projects fees “proportionally … are somewhat lower” than for other projects, Perez said.

It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison between warehouse traffic and shopping center traffic, Greene said.

“All the warehouse vehicles are slow, giant … diesel-y vehicles,” he said. “Getting stuck behind a passenger vehicle … isn’t nearly as annoying as getting stuck behind a semi.”

Riverside County’s development fees are being reviewed and new rates should be established by year’s end, county spokesperson Brooke Federico said.

San Bernardino County does not have development impact fees, but looks at project impacts on a case-by-case basis, spokesperson David Wert said via email. Land Use Services Director Terri Rahhal said in an email that county zoning rules “are not organized to make it easier or harder for particular land uses.”

Logistics projects are in a land-use category that requires conditional-use permits, which have more public transparency as well as “more intensive design review and conditions of approval,” Rahhal added.

Developers also benefit from decades-old zoning maps that make it almost impossible to reject warehouses because they’re an allowed land use, Jeffries said.

Warehouses “seem to have zero obligation to be a partner in the community to make those communities better,” he said. “You can come in, you can build your big ugly boxes, you can clog all the roads with tractor-trailer rigs. But you don’t have to really help with anything.”

In 2019, Jeffries proposed a Good Neighbor Policy to help unincorporated communities with large warehouses. Among other rules, the policy called for trucks to be limited to five minutes of idling, truck bays and loading docks to be at least 300 feet from homes and lighting to be directed downward into a project’s interior.

Riverside County’s Board of Supervisors passed the policy by a 3-2 vote, but not before changing it so supervisors could decide whether to enact the rules in their districts.

What else is there besides warehouses?

There are glimpses of an Inland future beyond logistics.

Inland leaders hope the California Air Resources Board headquarters under construction in Riverside and medical schools at UC Riverside and California University of Science and Medicine in San Bernardino — the first classes enrolled in 2013 and 2018, respectively — will foster the types of high-paying, high-end jobs enjoyed in coastal California.

Renewable energy could be key to Riverside County’s future economy, Perez said, noting there’s demand for clean energy and “we’ve got land and a lot of sunlight.”

Meanwhile, the supply chain shows no signs of slowing down.

“I think (logistics) is a major employer and will continue to be,” Granillo said.

Related links

$47 million settlement reached in World Logistics Center lawsuit

Southern California warehouses must cut emissions, air board approves new rule

California 1st state to set warehouse worker quota limits for retailers like Amazon

Amazon triples Southern California delivery hubs to get packages out faster

45-day warehouse moratorium in San Bernardino fails by 1 vote

“As we look at the next generations of logistics to create even better-paying jobs, more technical jobs … it’s an opportunity to bring companies doing innovative work in the logistics area to our region.”

Plotkin, of Approved Freight Forwarders, lives in Moreno Valley and commutes to the City of Industry every day.

Truck traffic frustrates Plotkin, too, but he believes “there’s a lot of things the (logistics) industry is doing responsibly … they’ve worked on improving the vehicles and emissions” and logistics companies volunteer in the community and donate to local charities, often without fanfare.

Still Jeffries remains frustrated by the number of warehouses rising, saying “we’ve done this to ourselves.”

“We’re accepting what should not be high on our list an industry — yeah, we’ve got to have it out here — we’ve got 2.4 million customers (in Riverside County),” he said. “But do we have to be the center of the universe of logistics?”

-on September 29, 2021 at 05:51AM by Jeff Horseman

#riversidenews

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christianniro21 · 2 years

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hollywoodjuliorivas · 4 years

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How an ‘Employees First’ Pandemic Response Pays Off

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PriceSmart CEO Sherry Bahrambeygui talks with Wharton's Mike Useem about how she has led her company during the pandemic.

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From the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, Sherry Bahrambeygui was sure of one time-honored adage: Take care of your employees, and they will take care of your business. Bahrambeygui, who is CEO of San Diego-based PriceSmart, a $3.3 billion operator of warehouse clubs, acted swiftly in February when the early signs of COVID-19 were visible.

A publicly traded company, PriceSmart operates 45 clubs in 13 different markets across the Caribbean, Central America and South America. Following the coronavirus outbreak, Bahrambeygui led her top management team to put in place remote working arrangements for employees in vulnerable circumstances, extending that by mid-March to most of its 9,000 employees, barring essential staff.

Bahrambeygui shared what she has learned from navigating the crisis during an interview with Wharton management professor Michael Useem as part of a new virtual event series titled “Leadership in the Wake of COVID-19: What Enterprise Leaders Will Need to Survive and Prosper in the Years Ahead.” The series is hosted by Knowledge@Wharton in partnership with the 2020 Wharton Leadership Conference, the Wharton Center for Human Resources, and the McNulty Leadership Program.

An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

Michael Useem: Sherry, let’s go back a couple of months. I think near February you were seeing the signs that the coronavirus was coming to your region. You referred to it as a kind of an existential moment for you and your company. Could you walk us through what you did? I was particularly impressed with the fact you asked your top team to meet with you every day, except for Easter Sunday.

Sherry Bahrambeygui: In February we started hearing about the threat of the coronavirus and the pandemic. As a CEO, you’re always responsible for looking around the corner and anticipating those things that people may not be focused on when they’re meeting their day-to-day responsibilities. But in a leadership position you’re always trying to look out for what might be out there, what could be threatening, and how to best protect your people and your company.

I don’t even think it was declared as a pandemic at that point, but when this virus started getting a lot of traction in the media, I made an effort to do a lot of reading about it. [I began following] what was happening in Europe and China, seeing how the trend was moving, trying to decide whether or not this was something that was going to sooner or later become a challenge for us in the U.S. and in the regions where PriceSmart operates.

I decided that we as a company … had to start thinking about what we would do, assuming that we were faced with the same threats. The first thing I recognized was that given how highly contagious [the disease] was, the ability to protect our employees and offsite them, and allow for remote work was very important.

[Remote work] was not part of our culture. In mid- to late February, I assembled my leadership team and started an action task force to review [the question]: If tomorrow you were told you can’t come back into your office, what impact would that have on you, and what you would need to be able to continue working?

This [covered] everything from our CFO, the ability to transact, move money, pay bills, and do buying, et cetera. So, they went off and came back and realized that this was no small undertaking. At some risk of being viewed as being a little bit of an alarmist at the time, I made sure that every employee in the two states where we have our U.S. employees — a thousand of them are in San Diego and Miami — had the ability to work from home.

“In a leadership position you’re always trying to look out for what might be out there, what could be threatening, and how to best protect your people and your company.” –Sherry Bahrambeygui

The leadership of the company just kicked into action to make sure that we had the capabilities. One was the ability to work remotely. The other was that each leadership team member had to find and identify an alter ego so that if something were to happen to them, that person would step in for them.

At the beginning, people were skeptical about whether we would need to make much of a change at all, and that this was another influenza that was coming down the pike. We ordered all the equipment that was necessary, got everybody set up, and then by the beginning of the second week of March, I had everybody off-sited.

A lot of teaching and education happened before that, not only about the technology [for remote working], but about how to stay safe, and the importance of self-quarantining and minimizing exposure. Educating our employees about the health risks was really important, and convincing them that even though it hadn’t hit our shores in any meaningful way yet, it was something that was likely a challenge we were going to have to contend with.

‘Transformative Moment’

When we off-sited, everything changed about the way we worked with each other. We had a whole series of meetings that I had [instituted] when I had become the CEO [in January 2019]. I had started making changes along the edges, because you don’t want to come in and be too disruptive at once. We have a lot of great people in our company with decades of experience, and I was coming in as a new person.

[The virus outbreak] was an opportunity for me to basically step back from the way we had been doing everything and the way we had communicated with each other and say, “If I were to look at the most effective way for us to communicate effectively, and to solve a problem in the shortest period of time, how would I have to do it?”

There are 16 people that covered the entire universe of the company. I concluded that if I could speak to them every morning, we would be able to figure it out from there. So, we abandoned all of our business review meetings and our weekly staff meetings. It also made us realize how many hours of meetings we were actually conducting every week.

KNOWLEDGE@WHARTON HIGH SCHOOL

With the cross collaboration that organically evolved as a result of this regular communication with all parts of the company, we had a 360-degree view as a team of what each other was doing. That was one of the most transformative moments for the company since I’ve been there. It has forever changed the way we do business and lead and make decisions for the company.

It’s been uniformly recognized how much time has been wasted, communication has gotten lost in translation when there have been pockets or silos or multiple meetings. Dedicating an hour or two every morning with each other during this crisis allowed us to be very quick, very nimble. It galvanized the group; it created a really strong bond, and as a result everybody was in problem-solving mode.

It didn’t take long before we went from triage mode to asking, “What do we need to do for the future?” — looking beyond this crisis [to see] where are the opportunities that could take us to the next level as a company.

That became a positive motivator, and we had traction to push forward things that we had been talking about for months, if not years. We were able to deliver on, and put into action, some initiatives in a matter of weeks that we otherwise thought were going to take months.

Employees First

Useem: You were an early mover. You got on this, you had to invent your way forward. My guess is you were also looking over your shoulder a bit maybe at Costco, maybe at Walmart, and at others in the retail industry. Were there any practices that you had seen already used elsewhere that you decided either to avoid because they weren’t working, or to bring into your enterprise because they were?

Bahrambeygui: Frankly, I think we were a little ahead. I was paying attention to Costco. Costco and PriceSmart have a common DNA by heritage – the founders are common. I say we were ahead [of Costco] relatively speaking, because this virus spread to the U.S. before it was starting to have an impact in in the regions where we are, in Central America, the Caribbean, and South America.

I recall the notion of not doing demos with food, wiping down carts, and things like that. But it was more about our team collaborating and saying, “What are all the ways we can keep our members safe and our employees safe?” The guiding principle for us was: There is so much going on right now, and we’re in so many different markets, each with different governments that have different restrictions and different limitations. How can we simplify all of this?

Our first priority was our people, and our people meant our employees, their safety and wellbeing, and our members’ safety and wellbeing. [Then we focused on] making sure that we had the appropriate supply, the flow of goods to get to our members, and mitigating any supply chain disruption.

That mandate allowed us to implement online [sales, which] had been in the works for years. In a matter of weeks, we went live on that. Finally, [we were] making sure that capital and cash flow and cash management were being closely monitored.

“Dedicating an hour or two every morning with each other during this crisis … galvanized the group; it created a really strong bond, and as a result everybody was in problem-solving mode.” –Sherry Bahrambeygui

Agility and Focus

Useem: You were a litigator, an investment manager and a stock broker. How did those experiences or the various mentors you’ve had help you prepare to react early to COVID-19, to get on it, and address the problem before it began to blow up in your face?

Bahrambeygui: You say it very nicely, but it’s no secret that I was an unconventional pick. I did not come from retail. I had been in numerous leadership positions in different arenas, and I did have the legal background. But there are two things that positioned me to be able to take this on, and handle it with some degree of confidence and ability to bring my groups together to support the effort.

The first was, frankly, values. To your point about mentors, Sol Price (founder of PriceSmart and its predecessor company, Price Club) was a tremendous mentor for me when I was a litigator and he was a client. [He instilled] this concept of your employees coming first. When you take care of them, they will take care of your members or your customers. When you take care of those two, your shareholders will be taken care of.

Also, the training you get as a trial lawyer is to be very analytical and ask a lot of questions. That curiosity and asking and asking and asking until you really narrow it down to specific answers, and not letting things float ambiguously, is very effective in getting to the bottom of things quickly. It’s very effective in holding people accountable.

Not coming from a retail background, I found that skillset has been helpful to me to know how to ask the right questions, to get a comfort level, and to make sure that all bases are covered. Also, as a trial lawyer you learn to work in a crisis mode. When you’re in trial for months at a time and stakes are high, [you need to have] the ability to focus really well when you’re under pressure, and when you’ve got adversaries.

In this situation, the adversary was the virus. It was an existential threat to us.

Changing Work Environment

Knowledge@Wharton: We have a number of good questions from the audience. The first one is, has this experience made you rethink in-person work as a cultural norm?

Bahrambeygui: Absolutely. The company has enjoyed many years of success, and there was an established mentality that you have to show up at work. That’s where you are held accountable, and that’s how people know you’re working. There’s a generational issue there, to be perfectly frank.

I’m the first female leader of the company, and I could tell when I first came in there were a lot of female employees who were asking about why we didn’t have more flexibility. I was slowly trying to get us to evolve, both because of the fact that it’s important for women, and it’s important for men who want to be involved with their family life and have [work-life] balance.

But it is also because the next generation expects this. If you want to attract the right talent and keep them, you’ve got to shift [your] mode of accountability. The onus is on the supervisor to be able to know what they’re expecting of their employee so that they get the value that they want from that employee delivered – as opposed to holding someone accountable just for showing up. Those are two different mindsets.

This necessity has allowed all of us to work remotely and see how effective we’ve become, and some might argue, more effective. Now I’m not saying it’s ideal to stay like this. But the fact that we’ve proven we’re capable of doing it goes a really long way. It will be used in [re-opening] our business.

I’ve decided that through the end of summer [our] people will continue to work remotely. And then as we open things up, people who are most vulnerable, are older or have underlying health conditions or are pregnant will be able to stay home. They will be required to come in only if there’s a business necessity.

In time, we will come up with rotating schedules that will incorporate social distancing, allow for outdoor meetings and new protocols. So, we’re going to transform our work environment absolutely, and I think it will be for the better.

“When you take care of [your employees], they will take care of your members or your customers. When you take care of those two, your shareholders will be taken care of.” –Sherry Bahrambeygui

Knowledge@Wharton: How have you kept track of your staff members’ wellbeing during this time?

Bahrambeygui: In the morning meetings, I have our head of HR there. We made sure that people knew that if they were showing symptoms or if they were living with someone who was showing symptoms, that they should not come to work. This was even before we [began] remote work. [Our] front line employees had to be managed completely differently. [We provided] the PPE that they required, with quarantining, contact tracing and mapping….

It’s sort of a waterfall approach. I keep track of my executive team, [they] keep track of the people that report to them, and so on. We’ve tried to remove all obstacles for people to be disincentivized, being open about the fact that they may have the illness, or that they’re having trouble, or that they may be having illnesses that are unrelated.

I’ve been very transparent with my own team. Frankly, the other day I shared my own personal experience. I think for years, especially as a female, there’s been this sense of having to constantly show that you’re 100% in control of everything. You can be, but we’re all still humans, and things happen, and life happens. For example, my own father had a major health issue, and I debated whether or not this was something I should share with the team. I decided I wanted to because I wanted to make sure they knew that I’m aware that things happen at home, and as a team we need to be there to support each other.

Knowledge@Wharton: You demonstrated a lot of foresight in all of this. One question from the audience is, has there been a significant change in your company culture as you’ve moved from being reactive to predictive?

Bahrambeygui: I’m constantly sending out articles and information, and encouraging [our employees] to share those materials when they find it relevant to their area of work. I think this has helped us become more external facing as a company, just by promoting a culture of being a student, a continual student. One of the silver linings in all of this is now there’s a lot more discussion about new ideas and new ways of doing things, and it’s much more of a group and collaborative dynamic.

Knowledge@Wharton: What has this crisis taught you the most about leadership?

Bahrambeygui: I think communication, being honest with your people, and with all of your constituents – your employees, your members, your shareholders, and in the case of a public company, being transparent. Letting them know when you don’t have the answer. Create an inviting environment for your team to find answers, to brainstorm together.

If you are not completely authentic in what you’re facing, whether it’s excitement about opportunity or concern about an existential threat, you will not get the best thinking at the table. When employees feel that their views are being valued and you’re being honest with them, they jump on board to help solve problems.

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kara-patili-kedi · 4 years

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" CBD Vending Machines and Hemp Cigarettes are the future of the industry Come meet Sandro Piancone and the Hempacco team, Brian Zamudio and the Retail Automated Concepts team and talk about private label hemp cigarettes, CBD vending machines and how you can create your own brand of smokables. Hempacco will be there with their CBD Kiosk partner Retail Automated Concepts, showing off their new fully merchandised Hemp and CBD vending machines. Hempacco owns the high end Hemp Smokable brand The Real Stuff. A 100% high speed machine made and machine packed smokable, the first of its kind made with 100% Organic Hemp. This means the entire hemp cigarette is made out of hemp including the filter, the paper, and even the box. Yes, these smokables also contain around 10% CBD. The Real Stuff is currently taking pre-orders for their twenty pack and their new counter display “Single Stick”, perfect for smoke shops, convenience stores and cannabis stores that are looking for high profit counter displays. Advantages of CBD Vending Machines: Age verification Consumer Education No theft – strict inventory control Full sales and reporting automation Works 24 hours per day and never complains Advantages of Machine Made Hemp Cigarettes: Production is 3 million packs of 20 per month Strict compliance Standardization of hemp, CBD, and all ingredients Private label cigarettes Costumise the blend, filter, paper, box, CBD, CBD, and Hemp “We welcome everyone to our home city of San Diego, and you’re invited to visit our Hemp and CBD refrigerated and frozen warehouses in Otay Mesa,” said Sandro Piancone, CEO and founder of Hempacco. “Come visit us at our booth and we can talk about how you can buy, lease, and co-brand our Hemp Vending Machines. We still have territories available in the USA.” New CBD Vending Machines for Hemp Cigarettes or any other CBD or CBG consumer goods Hempacco together with its partner and Retail Automated Concepts aims to solve the CBD retail dilemma all over the USA. The two companies provide an ID verified over eighteen solution that works twenty-four hours per day selling CBD products. Machine owners can place the Hemp Kiosks at supermarkets, pharmacies, and at malls. The CBD vending machines have two flat screen televisions that can be used for advertising, or to explain to the user how to use the machine, insert credit or debit cards, and advertise best sellers. About Hempacco, Inc. Hempacco is a vertically integrated Hemp manufacturing company in San Diego, California. It owns The Real Stuff Hemp Smokable brand, offers hemp cigarettes as a private label supplier and owns its own CBD and Hemp vending machines to roll out product around the country. Besides owning and manufacturing its own name brand, Hempacco also provides private label services for smokable products, and CBD automated retail concepts with vending machines. Hempacco’s mission is to be the most recognized name brand of Hemp Smokable products in the world. Contact Information for Hempacco Hemp Cigarettes For more information on The Real Stuff hemp smokables, private label hemp cigarettes, CBD vending machines or to contact investor relations just call or email: Phone: (775) 473 1201 Email: [email protected] " https://thetopvideotube.blogspot.com/2020/04/cbd-vending-machines-and-hemp.html

#CBD Vending Machines and Hemp Cigarettes are the future…

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sweetreena · 4 years

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I found this CBD Vending Machines and Hemp Cigarettes are the future of the industry Come meet Sandro Piancone and the Hempacco team, Brian Zamudio and the Retail Automated Concepts team and talk about private label hemp cigarettes, CBD vending machines and how you can create your own brand of smokables. Hempacco will be there with their CBD Kiosk partner Retail Automated Concepts, showing off their new fully merchandised Hemp and CBD vending machines. Hempacco owns the high end Hemp Smokable brand The Real Stuff. A 100% high speed machine made and machine packed smokable, the first of its kind made with 100% Organic Hemp. This means the entire hemp cigarette is made out of hemp including the filter, the paper, and even the box. Yes, these smokables also contain around 10% CBD. The Real Stuff is currently taking pre-orders for their twenty pack and their new counter display “Single Stick”, perfect for smoke shops, convenience stores and cannabis stores that are looking for high profit counter displays. Advantages of CBD Vending Machines: Age verification Consumer Education No theft – strict inventory control Full sales and reporting automation Works 24 hours per day and never complains Advantages of Machine Made Hemp Cigarettes: Production is 3 million packs of 20 per month Strict compliance Standardization of hemp, CBD, and all ingredients Private label cigarettes Costumise the blend, filter, paper, box, CBD, CBD, and Hemp “We welcome everyone to our home city of San Diego, and you’re invited to visit our Hemp and CBD refrigerated and frozen warehouses in Otay Mesa,” said Sandro Piancone, CEO and founder of Hempacco. “Come visit us at our booth and we can talk about how you can buy, lease, and co-brand our Hemp Vending Machines. We still have territories available in the USA.” New CBD Vending Machines for Hemp Cigarettes or any other CBD or CBG consumer goods Hempacco together with its partner and Retail Automated Concepts aims to solve the CBD retail dilemma all over the USA. The two companies provide an ID verified over eighteen solution that works twenty-four hours per day selling CBD products. Machine owners can place the Hemp Kiosks at supermarkets, pharmacies, and at malls. The CBD vending machines have two flat screen televisions that can be used for advertising, or to explain to the user how to use the machine, insert credit or debit cards, and advertise best sellers. About Hempacco, Inc. Hempacco is a vertically integrated Hemp manufacturing company in San Diego, California. It owns The Real Stuff Hemp Smokable brand, offers hemp cigarettes as a private label supplier and owns its own CBD and Hemp vending machines to roll out product around the country. Besides owning and manufacturing its own name brand, Hempacco also provides private label services for smokable products, and CBD automated retail concepts with vending machines. Hempacco’s mission is to be the most recognized name brand of Hemp Smokable products in the world. Contact Information for Hempacco Hemp Cigarettes For more information on The Real Stuff hemp smokables, private label hemp cigarettes, CBD vending machines or to contact investor relations just call or email: Phone: (775) 473 1201 Email: [email protected] from https://syndicator.myimplace.com/cbd-vending-machines-and-hemp-cigarettes-are-the-future/ right here: https://megavideosuperblog.blogspot.com/2020/04/cbd-vending-machines-and-hemp.html

#CBD Vending Machines and Hemp Cigarettes are the future…

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uberclanger · 4 years

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CBD Vending Machines and Hemp Cigarettes are the future of the industry Come meet Sandro Piancone and the Hempacco team, Brian Zamudio and the Retail Automated Concepts team and talk about private label hemp cigarettes, CBD vending machines and how you can create your own brand of smokables. Hempacco will be there with their CBD Kiosk partner Retail Automated Concepts, showing off their new fully merchandised Hemp and CBD vending machines. Hempacco owns the high end Hemp Smokable brand The Real Stuff. A 100% high speed machine made and machine packed smokable, the first of its kind made with 100% Organic Hemp. This means the entire hemp cigarette is made out of hemp including the filter, the paper, and even the box. Yes, these smokables also contain around 10% CBD. The Real Stuff is currently taking pre-orders for their twenty pack and their new counter display “Single Stick”, perfect for smoke shops, convenience stores and cannabis stores that are looking for high profit counter displays. Advantages of CBD Vending Machines: Age verification Consumer Education No theft – strict inventory control Full sales and reporting automation Works 24 hours per day and never complains Advantages of Machine Made Hemp Cigarettes: Production is 3 million packs of 20 per month Strict compliance Standardization of hemp, CBD, and all ingredients Private label cigarettes Costumise the blend, filter, paper, box, CBD, CBD, and Hemp “We welcome everyone to our home city of San Diego, and you’re invited to visit our Hemp and CBD refrigerated and frozen warehouses in Otay Mesa,” said Sandro Piancone, CEO and founder of Hempacco. “Come visit us at our booth and we can talk about how you can buy, lease, and co-brand our Hemp Vending Machines. We still have territories available in the USA.” New CBD Vending Machines for Hemp Cigarettes or any other CBD or CBG consumer goods Hempacco together with its partner and Retail Automated Concepts aims to solve the CBD retail dilemma all over the USA. The two companies provide an ID verified over eighteen solution that works twenty-four hours per day selling CBD products. Machine owners can place the Hemp Kiosks at supermarkets, pharmacies, and at malls. The CBD vending machines have two flat screen televisions that can be used for advertising, or to explain to the user how to use the machine, insert credit or debit cards, and advertise best sellers. About Hempacco, Inc. Hempacco is a vertically integrated Hemp manufacturing company in San Diego, California. It owns The Real Stuff Hemp Smokable brand, offers hemp cigarettes as a private label supplier and owns its own CBD and Hemp vending machines to roll out product around the country. Besides owning and manufacturing its own name brand, Hempacco also provides private label services for smokable products, and CBD automated retail concepts with vending machines. Hempacco’s mission is to be the most recognized name brand of Hemp Smokable products in the world. Contact Information for Hempacco Hemp Cigarettes For more information on The Real Stuff hemp smokables, private label hemp cigarettes, CBD vending machines or to contact investor relations just call or email: Phone: (775) 473 1201 Email: [email protected] CBD Vending Machines and Hemp Cigarettes are the future… via https://syndicator.myimplace.com/cbd-vending-machines-and-hemp-cigarettes-are-the-future/ approved by https://www.google.com

#CBD Vending Machines and Hemp Cigarettes are the future…

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bigyack-com · 5 years

Text

Your Foam Coffee Cup Is Fighting for Its Life

MASON, Mich. — The Dart Container Corporation, by some measures, is an American success story. The family-owned business was co-founded in Michigan by a World War II veteran with a triple major in mathematics, engineering and metallurgy, and it developed products that, in no small way, helped fuel the modern economy. Dart makes, by the millions, white foam cups, clamshells, coffee cup lids, and disposable forks and knives — the single-use containers that enable Americans to eat and drink on the go. It employs about 15,000 people across 14 states. But now many of the products that this low-profile Midwestern company creates are being labeled by critics as environmental blights contributing to the world’s plastic pollution problem. Cities and states are increasingly banning one of Dart’s signature products, foam food and beverage containers, which can harm fish and other marine life. In December, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York proposed a statewide ban on single-use food containers made of “expanded polystyrene” foam, more commonly, but inaccurately, known as Styrofoam. (Styrofoam is a trademarked material typically used as insulation.) Maine and Maryland banned polystyrene foam containers last year, and nearly 60 nations have enacted or are in the process of passing similar prohibitions. Some elected officials and environmental groups say polystyrene containers are difficult to recycle in any meaningful way. “There is overwhelming evidence that this material is seriously damaging the earth,” said Brooke Lierman, a Maryland lawmaker who sponsored her state’s ban. But Dart Container, which has been owned by the Dart family since its founding in 1950s, is not backing down. While many plastics companies work to protect their product through trade groups and feel-good marketing campaigns, Dart is challenging regulation directly and aggressively. Shortly after Maryland voted to ban foam, Dart shut down its two warehouses in the state, displacing 90 workers and sending a signal to other locales considering similar laws. San Diego recently decided to suspend enforcement of its polystyrene ban in the face of a lawsuit by Dart and a restaurant trade group, which argued the city should have conducted a detailed environmental impact study before enacting the law. The city is now performing that analysis. “We don’t believe there are good, objective reasons to single out certain materials,” Dart’s chief executive officer, Jim Lammers, said in a recent interview at the company’s headquarters. The interview was one of the first times Dart had allowed a journalist broad access to its facilities on a leafy campus in Mason, where there are running trails, a garden honoring employees and boulders inscribed with words like “Meritocracy.” Dart is waging a broader campaign to argue that its products are being used as scapegoats for a society fueled by on-the-go consumerism. Dart says that critics of polystyrene are ignoring the negative environmental impacts of other products, like many paper cups, which are derived from trees and can emit greenhouse gases as they degrade in landfills. By Dart’s reasoning, most materials inflict some negative impact on the environment, so it doesn’t make sense to ban one and not another. “If you just give up on foam,” said Michael Westerfield, director of recycling at Dart, “what are they going to want to do next?” The backlash against foam is taking its toll. Polystyrene foam sales have been declining, and the company has been broadening its offerings to include more paper products, including coffee cups sold at Starbucks and Dunkin’. It is also experimenting with containers that can be composted or fashioned from recycled content. Today, foam makes up only a fifth of all the products that Dart sells. The company says overall sales of food and beverage containers, which generate $3 billion in annual revenue, are essentially flat. Even as the market for polystyrene shrinks, many environmental groups want to abolish foam entirely because if it ends up as litter, it can break down easily into small pieces, harming fish and animals that ingest it. For humans, plastic fibers have been found in everything from drinking water to table salt, though the long-term health consequences are still being studied. Industry and academic experts are still debating how best to quantify the long-term impact that single-use containers made from varying materials — plastics, paper, glass — can have on climate change. But the harm that plastic pollution can inflict on marine life is immediate, environmentalists say. “A paper cup, as far as I know, has never killed any sea creatures,” said Jan Dell, an engineer who used to work in the plastics industry and now runs the Last Beach Cleanup, an advocacy group focused on plastic pollution. The same properties that can make foam an environmental problem also make it profitable to manufacture. The costs are low because foam is 95 percent air and can be made using relatively little raw plastic. William A. Dart did not invent foam cups, but he did master their mass production. After returning from World War II and graduating from the University of Michigan, Mr. Dart spent a year working for the DuPont chemical company. In the late 1950s, brimming with ideas about plastic, he returned to his father’s welding factory in Mason, a small city next to Lansing. Mr. Dart began experimenting with creating cups from polystyrene, a material with seemingly magical insulating properties that would serve the growing fast-food industry. Chick-fil-A was one of Dart’s first major accounts. The company also sold its plastic to hospitals and schools, sports stadiums and the food service giants Sysco and US Foods. The company celebrates its long history of manufacturing in the United States. While many American factories moved to Asia in search of cheaper workers, foam cannot be imported profitably from overseas; the cost of importing the lightweight containers would offset any savings in labor, Dart says. Mr. Lammers said the company was growing frustrated with the intensifying blowback against foam. “Food and beverage packaging, like a lot of things in life, is not a sound-bite discussion,” said Mr. Lammers, who joined the company in 1986. A lawyer by training, Mr. Lammers shuttles around Dart’s sprawling corporate campus in Mason in a blue Honda Accord. He proudly walked a reporter through a small museum in the lobby where single-use plastic products are arrayed like fine art. One display charts the history of the clam shell container. Another shows coffee lids through the years. It is a shrine to the throwaway items of everyday life: blue coffee cups with the Greek-style design and tiny clear plastic cups found in dentists’ offices. Dart makes them all. The one area that was off limits was Building No. 1, where the white foam cups are made. The company says the foam machinery, designed by Mr. Dart in the 1950s and refined over decades, is such a closely guarded secret that only select employees and customers are allowed on the factory floor. Mr. Dart’s heirs are also intensely private. His sons Robert and Kenneth Dart have been involved in running the company, to varying degrees, since the 1980s. Kenneth, who renounced his American citizenship, decamped to the Cayman Islands and now develops real estate there. He’s worth an estimated $5.8 billion, according to Bloomberg. Robert also renounced his citizenship and relocated to London, where he still lives. The Dart brothers’ moves partially spurred the Senate to propose a law in the 1990s closing a tax loophole for expatriates. Although the two brothers are no longer involved in the container company’s daily operations, they serve on the board and provide advice on “major capital expenditures and strategic decisions,” a Dart spokeswoman said in a statement. A third brother, Thomas, ended his involvement with the company in the 1980s, Dart said. In 2012, Dart acquired another Midwestern container company, Solo, for $1 billion. The deal greatly expanded Dart’s product line into more paper and rigid plastic containers like the Solo cups that are ubiquitous at college keg parties and football tailgates. Yet even as it diversified, Dart never gave up on polystyrene foam. For years, the company has emphasized how polystyrene foam can be recycled, just like some other forms of plastic containers. The problem is that most communities do not accept foam in municipal recycling systems because it can be difficult to find buyers willing to pay enough money for the used material. So Dart offers to collect and transport the used foam containers for cities at no cost. But it takes considerable energy to transport and recycle foam, as shown by a visit to a new recycling facility that Robert Dart has helped develop in Indianpolis. The warehouse is filled with large bricks of crushed foam cups and egg cartons that have been transported there by truck or train from as far away as Canada and California. The foam is sorted and shredded into small pieces and then resold. Foam food containers cannot be turned into new containers because health regulators have not approved them for such use, Dart says. Currently, the most common uses for the recycled polystyrene include picture frames and plastic rolls that spool out cash register receipts. Dart says it’s possible that used polystyrene could eventually be made into new drinking cups en masse, but right now there is limited collection and processing capacity. “We’d love to get there,” said Mr. Westerfield, the recycling director. And some communities doubt they ever will. Growing up in Baltimore, Claire Wayner and her family used to haul their egg cartons and foam packaging to a drop-off site that Dart supported in the city. Volunteers in the local schools used to wipe down macaroni and cheese remnants and cheeseburger juices from hundreds of foam lunch trays and drive them to the recycling site. Despite all of these good intentions, Ms. Wayner wondered how much of the city’s polystyrene was actually being recycled and questioned how large the market was for used foam beyond niche products like picture frames. “It seems so random and ridiculous,” said Ms. Wayner, who is now a sophomore at Princeton University. In high school, Ms. Wayner and other students started Baltimore Beyond Plastic, a group that convinced school officials to remove the foam lunch trays from the city’s public schools. The student group, working with other environmental activists, then pushed successfully for a citywide ban on foam food containers. After the vote, Dart closed the recycling drop-off location it supported in Baltimore. Asked about the closing, the Dart spokeswoman Becky Warren said in a statement, “We invest our recycling resources in communities that support our customers and our company.” To Ms. Wayner and others, the move showed that Dart did not truly consider polystyrene recycling a viable enterprise, but rather a bargaining chip to ward off regulation. “As soon as they lost, it was like they took their marbles and went home,” said Martha Ainsworth, a volunteer leader with the Sierra Club in Maryland. Even with the foam ban, Baltimore still faces challenges in achieving its sustainability goals. The Baltimore schools now serve lunch on compostable trays. But there are no facilities in the city that can compost material commercially so the trays are sent to landfills or an incinerator, according to a spokeswoman for the city school system. Dart executives say many of their customers also want more sustainable containers, but are facing the financial realities. Some food and beverage companies, they said, want containers made from more recycled and compostable material, but not everyone is willing to accept the additional costs. Last year, the company opened a laboratory in Mason, where chemists wearing white lab coats and blue rubber gloves hover over beakers and reactors. In one room, technicians tested new coatings for paper coffee cups that are not made of plastic. In another, they analyzed soil samples to test how quickly a compostable cup breaks down. It’s not clear how long it will take before some of these experiments result in marketable products, but Mr. Lammers said “it is close.” “I guarantee you we are going to be different 10 years from now,’’ he said. Read the full article

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