With 30-plus years of experience, Marin County is a leader in recycling. Which means they have done the easy things already and are now tackling some of the most challenging aspects of reducing the overall waste stream.

At the huge indoor Marin Recycling and Resource Recovery center, near the bay shoreline in San Rafael, a house-sized, Rube Goldberg-like system of interlocking machines ingests mixed recycleables (above). They are sorted and segregated mechanically as much as possible, before the final step (below), where work crews reach in to make the final decisions

Recycling organic household waste is one of the next big challenges facing companies like Marin Sanitary, but spokeswoman Devi Peri says there are compelling reasons to work toward diverting those materials from landfills.

Recycling has a long and progressive history in Marin County, which Devi Peri summarizes.

If death is thought of as a natural part of the life cycle, why not burial as well? That's the approach being taken by a Marin County cemetery.

The view from the hilltop at Fernwood Cemetery, with the historic gravesite area in the foreground. The newer, natural burial area is downslope and to the left. While the details of natural burial are certainly non-tradition,  manager Kathy Curry says the funeral or memorial services accompanying those burials can be whatever  the deceased of their family want them to be.

For those who are comfortable with the concept of natural burial, Fernwood Cemetery manager Kathy Curry adds that it can be significantly less expensive, too.

You can read a short history of  Fernwood Cemetery here, and locate it on the map below.

The North Bay is finally on its way to getting passenger rail service rolling again. But what if it used solar and hydrogen fuel cell technology to be non-polluting and carbon-free?

This artist's conception of a future Sun Train was drawn by David Vasquez, who used it as the cover illustration for his book, Mr. Swan's Big Idea, which details and sets out a case for this forward-looking  update of passeger rail travel. He notes that building a new rail system is an expensive undertaking, but Vasquez urges putting the costs into perspective by comparing them highway construction.

America has a proud history of rail service reaching back more than a century, notes David Vasquez (right), but much of that has been forgotten as other modes of transportation took precedence.

Mr. Swan's Big Idea  is built on the concepts developed by architect and rail advocate Christopher Swann (left) , whose on recent book, Electric Water, concentrates on his vision of a future hydrogen-based economy.

  David Vasquez will present a multi-media slideshow about the Sun Train concept at Aqus Cafe in Petaluma , on Wednesday, April 22, 6:30 - 8:30 pm.

A widely used electronic voting machine has been decertified in California, after tests confirmed it sometimes deleted groups of ballots without counting them.

 A co-founder and director of the Election Defense Alliance, Dan Ashby says this latest setback for electronic voting machines is further confirmation of their dubious reliability.

s