www.montereycountyweekly.com may 4-10, 2023 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 23 I magine being in a cafe somewhere in Monterey County, ordering a coffee and croissant. After receiving both, you sit down at a table to read a newspaper, perhaps, or engage with your digital device. And before you take your first sip of coffee, you notice the lid is slightly opaque, and has the word “compostable” on it. When you’re finished with both your coffee and croissant, you notice the cafe has three different waste bins—one each for trash, recycling and compost. A picture above each bin shows what types of items go into it, and for the compost bin that includes paper plates and cups, wooden stir sticks, napkins, compostable lids and cutlery, and food scraps. As someone who strives to be eco-conscious and informed, you chuck it all into the compost bin, but wonder: Why can’t I throw any of these items, aside from food waste, into my curbside green bin at home? (They cannot go into the recycling, either.) If this seems confusing, you’re not alone, and you’re not to blame: There are companies that fuel their profits by sowing that confusion. People who do understand “what goes where” include those who work in the local waste management industry, and they are fighting an uphill battle against a single-use product consumer culture that has become the norm in America, and much of the world, over the last half-century. This is a paradigm that some corporations have a vested interest in maintaining, but others, like local waste management districts ReGen Monterey and Salinas Valley Recycles—which collectively serve the whole county— are trying, along with environmentalists, nonprofits and state regulators, to battle against. And in this battle, the stakes are high: Food waste that goes into landfills, or is left to rot, accounts for approximately one-sixth of global greenhouse gas emissions. And in America, about 38 percent of our food supply, per data from 2021, is wasted— it’s low-hanging fruit that, instead of being picked and eaten, just falls to the ground. Or worse, it goes into a landfill and emits methane, a greenhouse gas more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide, and which is created by things decomposing in an anaerobic environment. According to CalRecycle, 20 percent of the methane emitted in California comes from decomposing organic matter in landfills. It is for this reason that California enacted Senate Bill 1383, which then-governor Jerry Brown signed into law in 2016 and which, starting in 2022, requires every jurisdiction to provide a service to collect organic waste—including food waste—so that it can be turned into end products like compost or natural gas. How many Monterey County residents are utilizing that service so far remains an unknown, though people are creatures of habit, so it’s fair to say many are not—just look down the street in a residential neighborhood on trash pickup day and, depending on where you live, you might notice some households don’t even put out a green bin on the curb. Some still don’t even put out a recycling bin. Change is hard. So it’s fair to ask, just over a year after SB 1383 went into effect: How are we doing? And where are we going? The answers, like nearly everything related to waste management, are complicated. It’s a windy spring afternoon as Michael Brautovich, who manages the compost operation at a 45-acre site at ReGen Monterey’s facility in Marina, leads the way through rows of organic material—mostly—in the process of breaking down. Thermal activity is a key factor in the process. These rows have to maintain a minimum temperature of 131 degrees fahrenheit in order to kill off E. coli and salmonella. The heat also accelerates the decomposition of the organic matter. Near where Brautovich starts walking are piles of cut, downed trees from winter storms, representing about a 30-percent increase over a normal year. It is all self-haul waste, predominantly trees and yard trimmings, and it awaits a trip into a grinder. Next is a row from the commercial stream that comes from restaurants, cafes, grocery stores and special events. It’s visibly contaminated with pieces of plastic bags and plastic cutlery—some of which might be bioplastic, made from plants, which is theoretically compostable. The commercial stream processed at ReGen allows for bioplastics and soiled paper, unlike the residential composting feedstock. It is decontaminated on the front end, before being shoved into a row, by a primitive method: “We clean on the floor,” Brautovich says. In other words, workers from Keith Day Company, the contractor for ReGen that processes and sells the compost (Brautovich works for Keith Day), decontaminate the incoming material dumped by hauling trucks by bending over, picking up contaminants (such as plastic) with their hands, and putting it into a trash bin. (For more on the process, see sidebar, p. 26.) Because the feedstock for this commercial stream allows bioplastics, it can’t be classified under federal regulations as acceptable for organic growing. ReGen calls this their “Grade B” compost for that reason—although it’s not necessarily of lower quality—and Keith Day Co. sells the end product to vineyards, even though it could be used for row crops that aren’t organic. A recently enacted state law aiming to keep food waste out of landfills presents great challenges, but also a vital opportunity. By David Schmalz Top: Michael Brautovich manages the composting operation at ReGen Monterey. Below: A hauling truck dumps a fresh load of green waste on the ground; the load will soon be covered with other material to prevent scavenging by seagulls.
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