26 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY may 4-10, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.commontereycountyweekly.com foreclose on [bioplastics] on the whole. We’re not going to roll out a successful food waste program statewide if people don’t have anything to line their pails.” Recology encourages customers to line pails with paper towels, which cuts down on odors and helps keep the pail clean. But at ReGen, Brautovich says the paper takes longer to break down than food waste—locally, it’s not currently accepted in residential green waste, nor are compostable bags made of bioplastic. (For more on what is and is not accepted as compost, see p. 28.) Bob Shaffer, a Hawaii-based agronomist who’s consulted farmers on composting operations for decades, including in Northern California, agrees that composting paper or cardboard has its challenges, but says it’s very much doable. The main challenge to composting it, he says, is structural—it needs to be mixed with enough other organic matter like yard waste so that it can break down aerobically, as wet paper flattens out when wet and becomes “an anaerobic mess.” But properly balanced with other materials, he says, paper breaks down very well if it has enough oxygen and water. “It’s just carbon,” he says. Another challenge for local composting operations is how to process waste from special events—things like music festivals, Car Week, and last weekend’s Big Sur International Marathon. Karen Ferlito, a member of Carmel City Council and the ReGen board of directors, recalls that in 2008, when she was volunteering at the marathon, she saw all the dumpsters filled with trash at the end of the event and said to herself: “There has got to be a better way.” That led to transitioning to compostable cups and plates. (Recyclable cups were off the table because they could blow away and end up in the ocean “forever.”) The marathon’s waste stream is managed by Blue Strike Environmental, which also manages waste at other big local events, including the AT&T Pro-Am. For years, Blue Strike has worked with event organizers to reduce their waste footprint, including a visible presence at big events, guiding attendees for how to sort their compostable waste from trash. For many of those years, the compostable waste from those events went into an anaerobic digester that was part of a pilot project at ReGen. The digester, which was never intended to be a permanent fixture, was taken offline in 2019, and ever since then, the compostable waste from the events has been processed in a commercial compostable waste stream at ReGen—the “B” grade compost. (A disclosure: Blue Strike’s founder and CEO is Kristin Cushman, who is married to Weekly Publisher Erik Cushman.) But Brautovich says composting the waste from events is uniquely difficult—it often contains very little food, At the AT&T Pro-Am in February, workers from Blue Strike Environmental pick through waste on a table and sort it into three different streams: trash, recycling and compost. Break Down How the compost system at ReGen Monterey works. Piles at ReGen Monterey typically sit on the site for 90-120 days— many have sat longer this year because the planting season was delayed by the wet winter—but their “active” phase is the first 30-45 days, and they are turned every two to three days so the outside layer can cook in the row’s “thermal core,” and are tested repeatedly for their temperature and moisture levels. In the 60- to 90-day window, the compost is tested for pathogen levels. ReGen is also in the stages converting the “active” phase rows into what are called “aerated static piles,” which are covered—in ReGen’s case, it will be with finished compost—to keep temperatures stable, and pipes will push air through the piles to give microbes the oxygen they require to survive and break down the material. The cover, in ReGen’s case, will also act as a biofilter to prevent the escape of greenhouse gases. Michael Brautovich of Keith Day Company, the contractor that manages the compost, says this process will allow for more control of the pile’s temperature, reduce emissions and also allow the site to process more tonnage of material—it’s more compact. After about 60-90 days, the compost is put through a trommel screen system, which is a rotating, perforated metal tube. There, the compost fines (and also some small contaminants like produce stickers) fall through the holes, and what’s left is called the “overs,” which contain large pieces of organic material that hasn’t broken down yet, or trash (including bioplastic that hasn’t broken down yet). The organic material in the “overs” can contain things like wood that escaped getting cut up by a grinder on the front end, or pits from stone fruits like avocados, peaches or plums, which don’t break down as fast as other organic matter. The “overs” can either be re-composted to further break down, or, if it’s from the residential stream, it can be used as what’s called “alternative daily cover,” pursuant to a state law requiring landfills to be covered at the end of every operating day to prevent vectors, fires, odors and scavenging. (The overs from the commercial stream get landfilled.) In both the commercial and residential compost streams, the overs constitute about 40 percent of the material that’s put through the trommel screen, although the percentage of trash in each is different— Brautovich estimates the commercial overs contain about 5- to 8-percent trash, versus 2 to 3 percent for the residential stream. and consists of mostly paper products. If it were up to him, he would stop collecting compostable waste from these events altogether (it would instead go straight to the landfill). And locally, that’s how things are trending: Kristin Cushman says ReGen has informed her that as of June 30, they will no longer accept compostable products (aside from food waste) from the events Blue Strike works. Zoë Shoats, ReGen’s communications director, says nothing has been “finalized” with Blue Strike to that end. “She’s done a ton of work to get vendors from single-use plastics to compostables,” Shoats says of Cushman. “But this is an industry problem.” Shoats says that there have been talks with Blue Strike about transitioning the events from compostable products to reusables, which is a movement gaining traction elsewhere too. But Shoats concedes that will be a tough battle when consumers have been conditioned for years to be able to just throw everything away. Cushman is hoping ReGen agrees to a five-year transition period, instead of just flipping the switch after event organizers have been working for years to make their events zero-waste, even if only theoretically. Otherwise, she says, everything could just revert back to plastics, and we’re right back to where we started. Not to mention many event organizers, and businesses, have spent more money buying compostable products— which are considerably more expensive than plastic—just to see it all get landfilled anyway. When Palmer says, “We’re just going to get better at it over time,” it sounds like it is fait accompli. But nothing is in the waste management industry. Hopefully, part of getting better includes a push to develop and expand the market for the Grade B compost, which can be every bit as rich in nutrients as the residential and selfhaul stream, even if it can’t be used on organic crops. And if local growers of row crops “This is a big shift. We’re just going to get better at it over time.”
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