In a little-heralded move with potentially sweeping implications, the California Air Resources Board last month announced a push to halt disposal of nearly all organic waste by 2025. The shift would likely require building new processing facilities, prod cities and counties to develop ways to collect it, and add an extra trash-sorting step before Californians drag bins to the curb.
Left to decompose in a landfill, food scraps and yard trimmings spew methane. But a composting facility, where smaller heaps of organic matter are regularly turned over and exposed to oxygen, emits much less. The Air Resources Board released its new proposal after Brown, stung by a defeat in the Legislature, vowed to flex his executive authority.

“Methane is a very potent pollutant,” said Californians Against Waste lobbyist Nick Lapis. “We believe that every Californian should be given the option of recycling their organic waste.”

The Air Resources Board is building on existing mandates. Bills that Brown signed into law set a statewide goal of recycling or composting 75 percent of waste by 2020 and compel businesses to recycle their food waste starting in April 2016.

“There will be some challenges in the back of the house and kitchens in terms of separating food, but those doing it already are finding they’re having far fewer trash pickups and are saving money already,” said Matthew Sutton, a lobbyist for the California Restaurant Association.

Starting next year, cities and counties will be required to have plans in place to manage the flow of commercial organic waste – everything from plant matter from nurseries to food scraps from restaurants. That obligation illuminates a broad underlying need: finding a place to put it.

Organic matter makes up nearly half of California’s solid waste, the total volume of which is projected to reach 80 million tons by 2020. Unlike such raw materials as glass and metal, it can’t be exported easily.

Facilities scattered around the state can absorb only a third to half of the 10 million tons of food and plant matter annually ending up in landfills, according to CalRecycle, and the amount of infrastructure has barely budged in the past decade.

“Figuring out where to take it is the hard part,” said Tim Dewey-Mattia, recycling and public education manager for Napa Recycling and Waste Services. “That’s probably the biggest challenge, is having the capacity in California to handle all this material that isn’t going to the landfill.”

“We’re aware it could be a problem if the whole state mobilizes, so we’re going to continue to talk to people about facility development,” said Gary Wolff, executive director of StopWaste, Alameda County’s public agency focused on reducing waste.

Building waste-processing facilities such as composting sites entails navigating a complex regulatory process that includes specific siting rules and protections for local water supplies. Mohajer said “it is next to impossible to get an air permit” for an outdoor composting facility.
It also costs money. Some of the funding could come from California’s cap-and-trade program, which requires businesses to purchase carbon emissions permits and then allocates the proceeds to emission-curbing products. Legislators submitted a raft of proposals for carving up that pot this year, requesting funds for everything from port improvements to clean trucks, and $30 million has been allocated to CalRecyle.

“I think we’re certainly going to need investments using cap and trade dollars for creation of these facilities,” said League of California Cities lobbyist Jason Rhine, but even with that outlay, the initiative is “going to require additional money either from those developing these facilities or from our ratepayers.”

Composting the waste is one option. Napa has the advantage of a county-owned composting facility. Davis, which collected 255 tons of food scraps from businesses and schools last year and is planning to have residents separate their food waste into special carts starting next summer, sends its organic matter to a private composting outfit in Lathrop.

Other cities and counties could turn to technology that tries to spin garbage into gold.

An aerobic digesters convert organic waste into biogas that can be used for fuel or electricity. Michele Wong, CEO of Sacramento-based digester manufacturer CleanWorld, described ballooning interest in the machines, which sell for $3 million to $12 million.

“Beginning this summer, we’ve seen incredible activity from the various municipalities as well as large waste producers starting to figure out how they’re going to handle the recycling of those organics,” Wong said. “There’s just a complete lack of infrastructure to deal with organic waste recycling.”

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