In the Know: San Diego's New Organic Recycling Law

The state of California has enforced a new law requiring recycling of yard trimmings, food scraps and other organic waste. This means huge changes are coming for the city of San Diego and the nearly 300,000 homes that its trash and recycling trucks serve.

Customers will have to begin separating out food waste and food-soiled paper products from their trash so they can place that waste in a green bin for recycling.

The city must spend millions buying thousands of green waste bins for customers in single-family homes, in addition to adding trucks and hiring new drivers to comply with the new state law, which takes effect Jan. 1.

The state law, SB 1383, also requires more recycling at businesses, apartment complexes and condominiums, which are served by private haulers instead of city trucks.

A city law called the People’s Ordinance requires San Diego to provide free trash service to all residents living in single-family homes with access to a public street, so those customers won’t pay anything for the new organic waste service.

The private haulers are expected — in most cases — to pass their higher costs for handling organic waste on to their customers, so many businesses, apartments and condominiums will pay more.

The City Council last month took preliminary steps toward meeting the goals of the new state law, which includes fines as large as $10,000 a day per violation for cities that fail to comply.

San Diego must make some big changes quickly to comply with the new organic waste requirements.

Only about two-thirds of city single-family home customers now have green recycling service, leaving about 90,000 homes without any such service.

And of the nearly 200,000 homes that do have service, only about 45,000 have green rolling carts required by the new state law. The rest either use their own 32-gallon trash cans, or they bundle green recycling together and wrap it in twine.

The city must buy enough green carts so that all 290,000 single-family home customers have one and it must extend green recycling service to the 89,000 customers who currently have none.

The state law also requires cities to collect green recycling once a week, forcing San Diego to double its existing recycling service, which is once every two weeks.

“We’re going to need more trucks, more containers, more drivers,” said Ken Prue, the city’s recycling program manager. “We’re in a planning phase now to identify all of our needs and necessary funding.”

Prue said the city, which now spends about $34 million a year on trash service, will have to spend millions more. But he declined to provide a more specific estimate.

“It’s significant,” said Prue, adding that the process is complicated and time-consuming. “We definitely won’t be citywide by Jan. 1.”

The changes will also affect single-family homes in the city that are serviced by private haulers, not city trucks, because they are in gated areas or they are not on a public street.

Like single-family homes served by city trucks, they must start recycling yard trimmings, non-hazardous wood waste, food scraps and food-soiled paper mixed with food on Jan. 1. Their private haulers will provide them with green rolling carts.

The changes are more complicated for multi-family housing — apartments and condominiums.

The city had been granting recycling exemptions to multifamily properties with fewer than five units or which had been generating less than 4 cubic yards per week of solid waste.

Last month, the city ended those exemptions and began requiring all multifamily properties to begin using blue bins and recycling bottles, cans and other non-organic recyclables.

The changes approved last month also require multifamily properties to immediately begin recycling yard trimmings and non-hazardous wood waste, but there is an exemption for properties that generate less than half a cubic yard of organic waste per week.

In January, that exemption will go away and multifamily properties will be required to expand their green recycling efforts to include food scraps and food-soiled paper mixed with food.

The changes also affect businesses.

The new requirements adopted by the city last month require businesses to begin recycling all organic waste unless they generate less than half a cubic yard of organic waste per week. In January, that exemption will go away.

Prue said the city plans to compost the organic waste at the Miramar Greenery, which will reduce the amount of methane that escapes into the atmosphere and accelerates climate change.

The methane produced by organic materials in landfills produces 80 times more greenhouse gas emissions than carbon dioxide, state officials say.

Some trash haulers, including EDCO, plan to use anaerobic digestion facilities to transform organic waste into natural gas. Prue said city officials have no plans to do that.

Instead the city will compost the organic waste into soil-type products, mulch or wood chips, Prue said.

Some private haulers also are providing customers with kitchen caddies, plastic devices that help people separate food and organic waste from trash inside their home and then carry it out to green containers later.

Prue said the city is evaluating caddies.

In addition to increased expenses for organic waste recycling, the city is facing financial challenges caused by China’s policy shift a few years ago away from buying recycled goods from the United States.

The city had been generating about $4 million a year from selling recycled goods but now is spending between $4 million and $5 million a year processing those goods.

Prue said there is still a market for the goods, so the city doesn’t need to dump recyclables into the landfill with trash. But, he said, the financial shift is a big challenge.

Source: The San Diego Union Tribune