24 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY may 4-10, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com As he keeps leading the way through the site, Brautovich points to a pile and says, “Underneath that pile right there is a load of food. As soon as a truck comes in, we cover it up to deter the birds.” He adds that the compost dumped from the commercial stream is “a mix of food, trash and foil,” and “if we leave it uncovered the seagulls come in for breakfast, lunch and dinner.” On the surface of the pile, partially buried, are the tattered remnants of a compostable bag made of bioplastic. It looks different than a regular plastic bag; it looks soft. “If it was only that,” Brautovich says, referring to the compostable bag, “it would be more manageable on the commercial end, but it opens the door for everything else.” It’s that “everything else” that ReGen’s public education coordinator, Eric Palmer, says prompted them to forbid people from adding compostable products like bags to residential green bins. “This is what we didn’t want to happen when we opened the residential program,” he says. “This is a big shift. We’re just going to get better at it over time.” The first place in the U.S. that allowed food waste to be mixed in with yard trimmings in curbside bins was San Francisco, in 1996, at the behest of city leaders. It started out as a pilot program in the Richmond district and a wholesale food market, and by 2001, residents all over the city were able to opt in. In 2009, a city ordinance passed mandating curbside compostable waste collection for all properties, more than a dozen years before it became required statewide. And in San Francisco, unlike residential compost streams in Monterey County, that includes soiled paper like pizza boxes, other paper products like napkins, cups and plates as well as, notably, (theoretically) compostable bioplastics. The company that carried out that program from the start is now called Recology, and handles the waste for San Francisco and a number of other municipalities in northern and central California. Recology’s composting facility that handles San Francisco’s green waste, as well as 19 other Bay Area cities, is called Blossom Valley Organics, and is in Vernalis, which is in the Central Valley just east of I-5 and southeast of Tracy. On April 20, Recology’s PR manager Robert Reed leads a tour of the facility and Tim Hester, Recology’s general manager of the operation, gives an overview of how the material moves through the site. Once unloaded, the material is conveyed through a process where it is screened for contaminants, and on the front end, workers stand on either side of the conveyor belt to pull out what they can. It then goes to an aerated static pile for 30 days, and then it’s put into a row for another 30-45 days, and then it’s screened again and is market ready. The 80-acre site is clearly more technologically advanced than the site at ReGen—it has several millions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure—but it’s not that different, except that it’s more efficient. And the finished product, which is sold to orchards and vineyards, appears pure both to the eye and touch. (Scratch beneath the surface a bit, and the compost feels hot to the touch—that’s microbes at work.) But how well does it break down bioplastics? Hester says some of it may break down, but some definitely does not. And Reed, when asked how much trash, as a percentage, is screened out in the final screening at Blossom Valley, says he doesn’t know. Like recycling, a key aspect of industrial-scale composting is markets—once you process a material, you need to have someone willing to buy it, or it just piles up. Recology spent years developing markets for its compost, Reed says, and much of that involved convincing farmers of compost’s benefits. When used with cover crops, it prevents erosion, and long-term, it makes the soil healthier—the soil is alive, and not full of chemicals. When local waste management districts—ReGen, Salinas Valley Recycles—rolled out their programs to collect residential food waste, they wanted to keep it as clean as possible so that they felt confident local growers would buy it. “Farmers are very specific about what they want and don’t want,” says Patrick Mathews, general manager of Salinas Valley Recycles. Of what those in the industry call “clean green” compost—made from just yard clippings and food waste—Mathews says, “That’s the stuff the ag community really wants. Some of it has to do with the uniqueness of what we grow here.” Brautovich, who previously worked for close to 15 years at Earthbound Farm on food safety and compliance, echoes that. Because the Salinas Valley produces “predominantly raw agricultural commodities, the quality and the safety of the compost is the highest in the nation,” he says. But at least part of what might make farmers wary of compost made from curbside bins, whether residential or commercial, is simply its newness. “[Farmers] are stewards of the land,” Mathews says. “That soil is all they’ve got, and they are very concerned about putting things in there they’re not used to.” Everyone in the industry admits bioplastics are problematic. Even the types that are certified as compostable usually don’t break down within the time of an industrial compost operation, especially if they’re rigid, like forks and knives. Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for nonprofit Californians Against Waste, acknowledges, “There’s really not a lot in it for composters to take the stuff… once you start taking any form of packaging, it’s much harder to notice contamination.” He adds, however, “I would hate to Blue Strike Environmental workers sort waste at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February. Many big events have strived toward a zero-waste concept (Blue Strike achieved 70-percent diversion in this one), made possible by sending various products into the compost stream. That may change, as ReGen is looking to limit the compost to food waste. “If we leave it uncovered the seagulls come in for breakfast, lunch and dinner.” SB 1383: The ins and outs California Senate Bill 1383, which requires municipalities to collect food waste from homes and businesses and keep it out of landfills, was signed into law in 2016 and went into effect in 2022. At its core, it is a climate bill, and mandates a 40-percent reduction in methane emissions (from 2013 levels) by 2030. (Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 25 times as potent as CO2; it is created when organic matter breaks down without oxygen. Landfilled organic waste accounts for 20 percent of California’s methane emissions.) The law focuses on diverting food waste, and calls for a 75-percent reduction statewide of organic waste (from 2014 levels) by 2025. The bill also seeks to reduce methane emissions by 40 percent (of 2013 levels) by 2030 for manure created by livestock operations.
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