Start talking about much bigger business and much bigger problems? out on the west coast the port of los angeles is one of the busiest in the world, yet they are finding ways to reduce their impact on the environment. in today s green solutions in focus, gabe ramirez takes us there. the port of los angeles is the largest container port in the united states. so no matter where you live in the united states, you have things that you wear, in your home that came through our port complex. i would say about a decade ago, the ports weren t even acknowledging that they created an air pollution problem for local residents. we have seen higher rates of childhood asthma, cancer clusters, premature deaths linked to diesel pollution created by all the ships, trucks and trains that visit our ports daily. they actually produce more
Smog-forming pollution than all six million cars in the region. when all of the sudden it was shown that we could be affecting human health, that s when the whole thing changed. that s when expansion at this port came to a grinding halt. we realized, we re going to have to eliminate health risk of port operations on the community. ever since that time, i think the port and nrdc have been able to move together collaboratively to try to address the air pollution problem there. a ship that sits at the berth spews out a ton of emissions a day. if we hook them to shoreside electrical power, there is a huge savings in emissions for the local community. we have reduced the emissions from trucks coming in and out of this port by 80%. so what is the truck of the future? it s an all electric truck with enough battery life that it can