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California's fight against climate change gets a little messy

The food scrap pre-processor at the Santa Cruz landfill. The facility is how Santa Cruz is complying with a new state law that requires everyone in California to divert their food scraps from landfills.
Frances Horwitz
/
KAZU News
The food scrap pre-processor at the Santa Cruz landfill. The facility is how Santa Cruz is complying with a new state law that requires everyone in California to divert their food scraps from landfills.

Californians are used to recycling cans and bottles, but a new state law is adding banana peels, coffee grounds and other food scraps to the list.

The Short-lived Climate Pollutants Reduction act, or SB 1383, mandates that nearly all communities in California provide an organic waste recycling service to their residents.

“It is the biggest change to our trash since we started recycling in the 1980s,” said Rachel Machi Wagoner, the director of CalRecycle, the state’s waste management agency.

The city of Santa Cruz rolled out its food scrap collection program earlier this year, distributing a six-gallon pail — roughly the size of a small trash can — to every single-family home. Residents fill the pail with food scraps and set it on the curb on trash day.

Greg Larson, a Santa Cruz resident, calls himself a "true believer" when it comes to the environment.

"I am fully supportive of composting and waste management," he said.

Back in the '90s, he was the director of environmental services for the city of San Jose, where he says he helped create one of the most ambitious recycling programs in the country at the time.

But he's not a huge fan of the city's food scrap recycling program.

"I do think the novel approach taken by the city of Santa Cruz is creating a bit of a steep hill for a lot of my neighbors and other residents to adopt," he said.

That's because the bins are messy. Larson keeps his bin in the kitchen next to his refrigerator, and adds baking soda to help with the smell. But because bags aren't allowed in the bins — including compostable ones — Larson says he's left with a mess to clean up each week after the bins are emptied.

Greg Larson's food scrap container. He uses baking soda to reduce the odor in his kitchen
Jerimiah Oetting
/
KAZU News
Greg Larson's food scrap container. He uses baking soda to reduce the odor in his kitchen

Larson called it his new "grossest chore" each week in a post on the social media app Nextdoor. The post received hundreds of comments from other Santa Cruz residents who are also grossed out by city-provided bins.

But Rachel Machi Wagoner, the director of CalRecycle, says the new law is a huge win for the environment.

“It is going to be the simplest and easiest thing that each and every one of us can do to reduce our impact on climate," she said.

As organic waste breaks down in landfills, it releases methane — a potent greenhouse gas. Roughly a fifth of California's methane is emitted from landfills.

"If we get to our goal of 75 percent reduction of organic waste in landfills, that's the equivalent of taking three million cars off of the road," Wagoner said.

SB 1383 passed in 2016. Every community in California was supposed to have developed a program by Jan. 1 of this year to comply with the law.

"Much like our waste and recycling collection systems, every jurisdiction does it a little bit differently," Wagoner said.

But just over half of the state has complied so far. The law allows for penalties of up to $10,000 a day for communities that are out of compliance, but Wagoner said many were given extensions because of the COVID-19 pandemic and other issues.

"I have yet to see a jurisdiction that just flat out says, 'No, I'm not going to comply with the law,'" she said.

Outside of the city of Santa Cruz, residents in Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties simply add their food scraps to their green bin, alongside their yard waste. The bins are emptied at a composting facility, where the organic waste breaks down into soil.

But unlike most of California, the city of Santa Cruz isn’t composting its residents’ food scraps, because there isn’t space for an industrial composting facility.

Instead, the city invested $2 million to build a new facility called a food scrap pre-processor.

The processor churns through organic waste, separating out contaminants and mashing the food scraps into a pulp.

The Santa Cruz food scrap pre-processor

The mash is then transported about 40 miles to another facility in Santa Clara, where it’s converted into products like animal feed, fertilizer and bio fuel.

Leslie O'Malley, the waste reduction program manager for the city of Santa Cruz, says the facility is processing between two and four tons of food scraps per day from residents, and about 20 tons a week from commercial businesses. All of that waste doesn’t end up leeching methane in the landfill.

"I think overall it's going pretty well," she said. "Like any new program, there's hiccups."

O'Malley is well aware of the "ick factor" — that many Santa Cruz residents are grossed out by the bins, particularly because bags aren't allowed.

"The consensus for us is at this time, we just really can't introduce three to five thousand small bags a day" to the pre-processor, she said, adding that bags get wound around the machinery.

Instead, O'Malley recommends alternative solutions to keep the bins clean, like freezing the food scraps throughout the week so they don't rot in the bins.

"We wish it were easier. We wish it were cleaner and tidier," she said. But she adds that people also hated recycling when it was first introduced.

“Now it’s almost a religion in Santa Cruz,” she said. "People could not imagine us not collecting recycling.”

Greg Larson, the true environmental believer in Santa Cruz, said he will continue to use the bins until a better solution comes along.

"People are smart and creative and they try to find solutions," he said. "I think this will evolve."

Until food scrap recycling becomes the next environmental religion — or a new solution evolves — the state’s fight against climate change may require Californians to get their hands a little dirty.

Corrected: October 26, 2022 at 12:13 PM PDT
The audio version of this story incorrectly names SB 1383 the "Short-term Climate Pollutants Reduction act." The correct name of the law is the "Short-lived Climate Pollutants Reduction act."
Jerimiah Oetting is KAZU’s news director. Prior to his career in public media, he was a field biologist with the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service.
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