AnonymousBy Pedro Nava
January 1 wasn’t just the beginning of a new year. It was also the start of California’s ambitious new effort to combat climate change by reducing or recycling organic waste.
A new state law now requires that residents and businesses separate food scraps and yard waste – otherwise known as organic materials – from the rest of their garbage.
Some cities, like San Francisco and my hometown of Santa Barbara, have been doing this for years. Santa Barbara businesses have been sorting food scraps from their trash since 2009, and a recently opened recycling facility is already transforming organic waste from cities throughout Santa Barbara County into energy that powers up to 3,000 homes per year.
Other cities are scrambling to get on board.
In addition to collecting this organic waste from each household and business, the new law requires cities to strengthen their efforts to recover edible food, conduct community outreach about organics recycling, and procure the products made from this recycled material, whether it be electricity, mulch, or compost for soil.
Bananas and methane. Throwing a banana peel in a different trash bin may not seem like much, but such a change is absolutely crucial to help mitigate the devastating effects of climate change.
For decades, organic waste has been dumped in landfills, where it releases harmful methane gas as it decomposes. A climate super pollutant, this gas is far more potent than carbon dioxide – 84 times more, in fact. It traps heat into the atmosphere and contributes to the hotter summers, drier droughts, and extreme fire seasons that have alarmingly become the new normal in California.
According to CalRecycle, reducing organic waste in landfills will have the fastest impact on this climate crisis.
That’s why state leaders have set aggressive targets to accomplish this goal. By 2025, the state aims to reduce organic waste by 75% and rescue at least 20% of edible food that is thrown out.
As California’s independent government watchdog, the Little Hoover Commission knows that issues of climate change and adaptation are critical. Back in 2014, we examined the impacts of a changing climate in our report Governing California Through Climate Change.
From rising sea levels to more frequent heat waves, wildfires, and droughts, we found that California faces a governing challenge like never before, and it’s going to take unprecedented action to respond to these threats.
California’s new organics recycling law is certainly a step in the right direction. Of course, such an ambitious change doesn’t come without a few problems – namely, building the infrastructure to actually recycle this waste.
In October 2020, CalRecycle reported that the state does not have the organics processing infrastructure necessary to fully support compliance with the new law. Los Angeles County projects it may need a dozen new facilities to process the millions of tons of organic waste it will now be receiving.
Measuring results. How California will rise to meet this challenge remains to be seen.
Over the coming year, we plan to take a closer look at this issue. With rigorous, fact-based research that is the hallmark of Commission reports, we will assess how these new rules are implemented and examine what impact they have on the state’s environmental goals.
We hope to issue a report outlining our findings and make recommendations for any changes. Follow along with this work by signing up to receive periodic emails from us about our study.
California is no stranger to ambitious efforts to combat the effects of climate change. Recycling organics may be its most ambitious one yet – and the Little Hoover Commission is ready to help make this law as efficient and effective as possible.
Pedro Nava is the Chair of the Little Hoover Commission, Pedro.Nava@lhc.ca.gov
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This is a great effort . But it would be helpful if Nava had told us when Santa Barbara City will participate. But this seems just to be a puff piece (what a photo!). And I can’t wait for his “plan to take a closer look at this issue”. And act? He has always been one to find the safe spot for his comfortable career.
I hope and pray the state is more successful fighting the climate than it was fighting a virus.
You rock, Pedro. Thank you for always working hard to keep Santa Barbara green/enviro.
The goals are laudable but probably not achievable in my lifetime for any number of reasons.
Also, I am now interested in the make-up of the ‘Little Hoover Commission.’ This from its website:
“There is in the state government the Milton Marks “Little Hoover” Commission on California State Government Organization and Economy, hereafter in this chapter referred to as the “commission.” The commission shall be composed of thirteen members as follows:
(a) Nine members of the public, appointed for terms of four years pursuant to this section. Not more than five of these members shall be registered as members of the same political party, and none shall hold public office in the executive branch of the state government.”
The site shows ten current commissioners of which seven appear as Democrats (one “declines to state” but from background it infers democrat.)
Let the discussion begin…
Clarification: When I say “not achievable in my lifetime” I refer to combating climate change, not the organic waste recycling initiative.
Why this pessimistic view? Because several billion Chinese and citizens of other nations do not heartily embrace the desire to change.
It is a good thing, and most people in CA will participate, I think, but to call it ‘crucial’ is hyperbole while most of the rest of the world continues wasteful and polluting practices. Still building coal plants in China, still burning the Amazon basin and large swaths of Asia and Africa, still landfilling virtually everywhere. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do what we can, but also we need to grasp the real extent of the problem and do what we can to bring other nations along.
100 million Republicans in this country get triggered when asked to toss a coke can in a recycle bin and whine that their human rights are being violated.
There was no window… why do you think (in a world of 8 billion people) there was? What could trump or Hillary or Biden or McConnell or Pelosi have actually done differently? They all failed… but there was no window or opportunity to contain it. Thoughts otherwise just don’t account for the actual tangible global situation we’re facing.
With the piss poor Fed respond of denial and delay, the small window of opportunity for containment had already passed. Known about in December and just sat on it, then politicized it. Heath officials had to quit over harassment and death threats.
Look at the vaccination rate by area and guess how the voted
https://data.news-leader.com/covid-19-vaccine-tracker/california/06/
Too bad almost all cardboard now is impregnated with industrial masking fragrances and industrial perfumes. This has been a growing problem for several years and I have been investigating it. Almost all plastic used for packaging for shipping is also impregnated with this toxic fragrance. It becomes abundantly clear one is not hallucinating this (though I am known for my good nose) when one receives a shipment from Europe, where plastics and shipping papers are not yet infected with this hideous chemical scent that has now become nearly ubiquitous. This is the petroleum industry at work peddling toxic chemicals no one wants or needs and inserting themselves in nearly every aspect of our lives. It disgusts me, literally and intellectually.
There was obviously no window for containment… how anyone can think there was is beyond me. You do realize there are 8 billion people in the world… right?
Come get your Soylent Green “food”.
Organic waste indeed is the urgent issue and low hanging fruit (!) for helping with the Climate Crisis. Great article, Pedro Nava!
Here was my article on our tour of the Tajiquas Landfill that covers some of the same issues.
https://www.edhat.com/news/tajiguas-landfill-as-an-environmental-leader