Follow these pioneers
Abstract
Bravo to Irvine, Calif. for acting on the environment where national governments have been loathe to tread.
Irvine is frustrated by the plodding pace of national measures to phase out use of chemicals that deplete the earth's ozone layer. So this small city is adopting what may be the world's toughest measures against the use of such chemicals. It is showing precisely the sort of resolve this newspaper has repeatedly called on Montreal city hall and the Quebec government to demonstrate.
Irvine is, for example, requiring repair shops and garages to capture and recycle chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in refrigerators and in the air conditioners commonly used in automobiles, homes and businesses. It is banning halons, the most damaging to the ozone layer of all chemicals, in fire extinguishers. And it is phasing out the use of CFCs In such Industrial processes as cleaning computer circuitry.