What You Need To Know About Changes Coming To San Diego's Green Waste Recycling

Speaker 1: 00:00 The pandemic has been on the top of our minds for over a year now with sickness and surges and vaccines taking up most of our attention, but there have been other things going on. Other changes in the works, sometimes big changes that have flown beneath the radar. One of them has to do with recycling and San Diego. The city is in the process of rolling out a whole extra layer of waste pickup. Organic or food waste will have to be separated and placed in new green bins. It's a state mandate. It will cost the city a bundle and it will start in January. Johnnie Mae is Ken Prue, city of San Diego's recycling program manager. Ken, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me now, what exactly what types of waste will need to be recycled when this new law goes into Speaker 2: 00:48 Effect? When the new requirements from SB 13 D three take effect in January, 2022, basically all generators. So whether it's single family residence, multifamily residents, or businesses or other commercial entities, basically we'll have to recycle all of their bloomin' materials, which is largely the case now, but specifically they will all have to recycle organic materials. And it includes materials such as yard trimmings and untreated wood waste, as well as food scraps and food soiled paper and, uh, other, other similar items. And why Speaker 1: 01:24 Is the state mandating this additional waste Speaker 2: 01:27 It's to divert organic materials from landfills. And it's largely because those materials generate significant about amounts of methane as they decomposed in a landfill setting. And so it's diverting that material one to reduce the emissions, but also to create valuable and needed materials or products that can help benefit the soil and just the overall environment and Speaker 1: 01:50 In our region, how do you expect this change will affect capacity at San Diego's Speaker 2: 01:55 Land? Well, it'll definitely help because it, it in diverting materials from the landfill, it really extends the capacity of the landfills. So, uh, that, that, that will help. And it will also help us in reaching our zero waste planning, climate action plan goals. Speaker 1: 02:09 The city will compost the waste at Miramar greenery will the capacity of the greenery need to be in, Speaker 2: 02:17 We, we have capacity and we'll be doing some modifications to our facility. The main material that we will receive in this setting will be from the, the waste that we collect from the city service residences. And, uh, there will also be other privately operated facilities, both existing, and also new facilities coming online that will process a lot of the material from businesses and condo complexes and, and, uh, entities like that. Speaker 1: 02:45 One of the hurdles in complying with this new state law is that most single family residences don't have a green band currently. So how are they going to Speaker 2: 02:53 Get one? Well, that's something we're going through the planning stages now, but the state law, the new new law requires that all generators will have to have containers. So for those homes that are serviced by the city of San Diego, we will have to provide those green containers and as well as collecting that material. And actually it will need to be collected weekly. So currently about two thirds of the homes have service, many of which provide their own old-style trashcan to use for the yard trimmings. So we'll actually have to convert the program to weekly. We'll have to get the automated carts, the green cards, and then we will also actually have to add the food scrap materials to the program. So then there'll be able to put their, their yard trimmings, their wood waste and their food scraps all in one bin and that'll get serviced weekly. Speaker 1: 03:41 This is a tremendous increase in resources that the city is going to have to dedicate to recycling. Tell us more about that. What, what are you going to, I have to add Speaker 2: 03:50 For the city service residents, we will have to be doing a lot of procurement, both of the existing containers, as well as, uh, purchasing a number of additional collection trucks. We also have to hire a significant number of staff, and we also have to upgrade facilities both for the fueling system for the, uh, compressed natural gas, uh, to fill the trucks, but also things like locker rooms. And you have just some of the basic infrastructure kind of the behind the scenes stuff. And, and then we also have to do a substantial effort, both for the city service customers, as well as across the board, a lot of education and outreach and also coordination and regulation of our franchise haulers that PR that service, the multi-family complexes and businesses. And there's a lot of reporting requirements. It's, it's a huge, huge undertaking and a huge, huge responsibility, or even you could consider it a burden placed on, on the jurisdictions. How much is this going to cost the city? It's a, it's a, it's going to be significant. And it's something that we're still in undergoing the planning phases. So I don't have a dollar amount off, off the tip of my tongue. The, Speaker 1: 04:56 I believe spends about $34 million on trash service now. So what are we talking millions more? Speaker 2: 05:01 Well, the, the $34 million or so that is just for the black bin collection, the refuse collection. Then there's also money currently spent on the recycling collection. So for the blue bins and the yard trimmings collections, and then there'll be a significant add with having to purchase all of these automated containers and a number of new collection, packer trucks and the staff. And it's definitely, uh, in the millions of dollars, uh, that will be required to meet these requirements, Speaker 1: 05:32 This huge, additional cost for waste recycling and waste pickup in the city. Could this be the final straw that may end free garbage pickup for single family homes in San Diego Speaker 2: 05:46 Is that would be referring to the people's ordinance of 1919. And that that's something that would require a vote. And so that's something that could not be just decided at, at the staff or at the, at the city level, per se of say the city council, it's something that's currently with with implementing these requirements. The, uh, they're becoming a general fund costs. And so that's definitely does these new funding. Considerations are something that are not taken lightly. Speaker 1: 06:15 People will now be asked to put food waste with their yard waste in these new green bins. What kind of outreach does the city plan to do this? Speaker 2: 06:24 Because the city is so large, it will be a phased expansion. And so what we'll be doing is we'll be reaching out to residents as the service will be expanded into their area. And there'll be mailing. We'll also be doing outreach on social media and various platforms basically to let them know the services coming and to help them understand what the new requirements will be and basically how to participate and really present it in a way that it'll be easy to do. And something that people can easily get used to. One thing that we will offer is, uh, what's, what's known as a kitchen pale, and basically it would be a pale that you, uh, could put your food scraps in and use it to store the food scraps in your kitchen, say under your sink, or even in your freezer, then take that out to your collection container before you put it out at the curb. And so it's something where it'll make it convenient and also it'll have nice graphics on it to help people understand the types of materials they can put in the container. You know, we really want to convey to people too, that it's as easy as possible to, to do and get used to. Speaker 1: 07:28 Now, state law requires that this becomes effective January 1st, and there are large fines for not complying by then, is the city in danger of facing the, Speaker 2: 07:38 The city takes the implementation of these new requirements very seriously. And we're working very closely with Cal recycle the agency that, that regulates us on this, on these matters and explaining to them where we're at with our implementation. And we're, we're doing everything that we can to, to implement in time. Uh, we know that we will not be able to have everything a hundred percent rolled out by January one of 2022. And it's, it's in part a with the timing of the administrative regulations, the implementation regulations for this law only getting finalized, uh, in, uh, last December, early January. So originally they intended to have about three years of planning for jurisdictions and with COVID and everything else. It took longer. So we really have a very short lead time. And so, so say we had just under a year really to roll it out. But at the same time collection trucks take generally about 18 months to get. So we basically are explaining where we're at and, and showing that we're doing everything we, we physically are able to and taking it seriously. And, uh, calorie cycle has been very receptive and responsive to our, our, our situation and, and what, we're, what we're doing. Speaker 1: 08:48 Speaking with Ken Pru. He's the city of San Diego's recycling program manager. Ken, thank you. Thank you so much.