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Report | CALPIRG Education Fund | Solid Waste

The State of Waste in California

Californians throw away 6 pounds of trash every day, equivalent to almost 2200 pounds every year, roughly the weight of a subcompact car. These individual results more than double the state’s 2020 goal of 2.7 pounds per person per day (PPD).

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Blog Post | Financial Reform

2019 Fight Over Data Privacy Rights Heating Up Already | Ed Mierzwinski

Next year, a highly-anticipated privacy and data rights battle will occur in Congress. Powerful special interests from Google to Facebook are responding to the new European General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) by seeking to quash any similar effort to protect U.S. consumers while simultaneously seeking to preempt a new California privacy law before it takes effect in 2020. Will we continue as data collector products, not their customers, or will we gain control over our own financial DNA? The state PIRGs are in this one; guess which side we're on. Today we joined 34 leading groups in issuing shared Privacy Principles.

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Blog Post | Public Health

Chlorpyrifos: Too Toxic for California | Laura Deehan

Today, CALPIRG joined Californians for Pesticide Reform and 116 other groups strongly supporting the Department of Pesticide Regulation proposal to designate chlorpyrifos as a toxic air contaminant. But the state must not stop there; protecting the public from risks posed by chlorpyrifos means preventing its use completely. The Dept Pesticide Regulation should also cancel all registrations of chlorpyrifos, and immediately suspend current registration of chlorpyrifos containing products.

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Blog Post | Public Health

Water in half of San Francisco Unified School District tested positive for lead

We've visualized the lead problem in San Francisco schools, and the picture is an alarming one.

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Blog Post | Transportation

Emily Rusch to state air quality board: Electric buses are here and ready

Cleaner, healthier buses may soon be coming to every city in California.

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News Release | CALPIRG Education Fund | Transportation

Ditching diesel isn’t just good for public health and the environment -- it’s affordable

Getting rid of that black cloud of exhaust behind our buses, and the negative health and environmental effects that come along with it, is easier than it may seem. Electric buses are not only cleaner and healthier than diesel buses, but transit agencies and school districts have many affordable options at their disposal to adopt them.

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News Release | CALPIRG | Antibiotics

Chain Reaction report urges burger restaurants to beef up policies to eliminate routine use of antibiotics

The vast majority of hamburger chains — 22 of the top 25, including giants such as McDonald’s and In-N-Out — got an “F” grade on our Chain Reaction scorecard because they lack established policies restricting antibiotic use in their beef supply chains.

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News Release | CALPIRG Education Fund | Public Health

Lead Found In Water in Half of San Francisco Unified District Schools

Today CALPIRG Education Fund released an analysis of San Francisco lead testing results from the last school year in a new interactive map, finding that half of San Francisco Unified district schools found some lead in the drinking water. “Given that even low levels of lead exposure can cause irreversible loss of IQ, San Francisco Unified School District should take action to get the lead out wherever it is getting into drinking water,” said Laura Deehan, Public Health Advocate with CALPIRG Education Fund.

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News Release | U.S. PIRG | Consumer Protection

U.S. PIRG response to reports of Facebook security breach

Facebook announced today that earlier this week, "attackers exploited a vulnerability in Facebook’s code that impacted “View As”, a feature that lets people see what their own profile looks like to someone else. This allowed them to steal Facebook access tokens which they could then use to take over people’s accounts."

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News Release | CALPIRG Education Fund | Public Health

Lead in School Drinking Water a Pervasive Problem

With a new school year in full swing, CALPIRG Education Fund today released its 2018 “Get the Lead Out: Back to School Toolkit” to help parents, teachers, and administrators get the lead out of schools’ drinking water.

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Result | Democracy

Delivering one million petitions to President Obama on dark money

U.S. PIRG joined a broad coalition to deliver one million petitions from Americans, including U.S. PIRG members and supporters, calling on President Obama to shine a light on dark money, or secret political spending.

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Result | Health Care

Consumer-Friendly Health Care

In the fall of 2015, the state Legislature passed a series of CALPIRG-backed bills designed to help promote a more consumer-friendly and affordable health care system in California. State Bill (SB) 137 will give consumers accurate, up-to-date information about their health plan’s network; Assembly Bill (AB) 339 will ensure people with chronic health conditions are not discriminated against by insurers; AB 1305 will limit deductibles and annual out-of-pocket maximums for individual members of families; and SB 546 will require health insurance companies to justify rate increases for large employers’ health insurance plans.

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Result | Consumer Protection

30 years of toy safety

For the past thirty years, our sister organization U.S. PIRG Education Fund has taken a close look at the safety of toys sold in stores. Their reports have led to more than 150 regulatory actions. In November 2015, they released our 30th annual Trouble in Toyland report.

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Result | Consumer Protection

Keeping Children Safe From Dangerous Toys

Every year, as consumers begin purchasing toys for the holiday season, CALPIRG Education Fund visits numerous toy stores, malls and dollar stores to find potentially dangerous toys sitting on store shelves. In November 2015, we released our 30th annual report, "Trouble in Toyland 2015." Over the years, our reports have led to more than 150 recalls and other regulatory actions, helping to remove dangerous products from store shelves and keep children safe.

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Result | Democracy

Giving more Americans a greater voice in our elections

In our democracy, the size of your wallet shouldn’t determine the volume of your voice. In 2015, we helped win reforms in Maine and Seattle to ensure that more Americans have a greater say in our elections. Seattle’s Initiative-122 empowers small donors with “democracy vouchers” that can be donated to local candidates and lowers the cap on contributions. In Maine, the state’s Clean Elections Act was improved by strengthening campaign finance disclosure laws and offering qualifying candidates increased public funding.

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Report | CALPIRG Education Fund | Solid Waste

The State of Waste in California

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Report | CALPIRG Education Fund | Transportation

Paying for Electric Buses: Financing Tools for Cities and Agencies to Ditch Diesel

Most of America’s school and transit buses run on diesel, a highly-polluting fuel, but there is a better option. All-electric buses are here, and they’re cleaner, healthier and save money for transit agencies, school districts and bus contractors to run in the long-term.

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Report | U.S. PIRG Education Fund

A Citizen's Guide to Reducing Energy Waste

The future is here—but we’re living in the past.

Clean energy from the sun and wind can provide for our energy needs without the global consequences of pollution, yet we’re still producing and consuming virtually all of our energy in ways that do lasting damage to our environment, our health and our climate. To make matters worse, much of the dirty energy we produce goes to waste.

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Report | CALPIRG Education Fund | Public Health

Get the Lead Out: Back to School Toolkit

Our children need safe drinking water—especially at school where they go to learn and play each day. Unfortunately, lead is contaminating drinking water at schools and pre-schools across the country. This “Back to School” toolkit is designed to help parents, teachers and school officials get the facts on lead in drinking water and make the case for strong local action to ensure safe drinking water at school.

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Report | CALPIRG Education Fund | Consumer Protection

Equifax Breach: One Year Later

One year after publicly announcing the worst data breach in history, Equifax still hasn’t paid a price or provided the information and tools consumers need to adequately protect themselves. The purpose of this report is to make sure consumers have the information they need to protect themselves as much as possible, review what has happened in the last year, and point out the need for state and federal action to prevent breaches as bad as this one from ever happening again.

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