Organics compost progress in San Diego green waste recycling - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Organics compost progress in San Diego green waste recycling - The San Diego Union-Tribune

As San Diego rolls out its green waste recycling, one composting challenge is ‘the yuck factor’

City officials cite ‘inspiring’ progress and minor hurdles — including maps that don’t reflect recent housing developments and getting residents to embrace composting their food scraps in kitchen pails.

San Diego officials say they’re halfway done with the daunting task of creating a citywide organics recycling program from scratch, with weekly pickups underway and 130,000 of an eventual 275,000 green bins already delivered to customers.

Since cans first started getting delivered in January, new trucks and drivers hired for the program have picked up more than 5,500 tons of yard trimmings and food scraps — materials that wouldn’t have been recycled without the new program.

“We’re seeing San Diegans embrace this program and participate at levels that are actually inspiring for us,” said Renee Robertson, director of the city’s Environmental Services Department.

The only notable hurdle, the city says, has been that maps don’t reflect some recent housing projects and developments. Sometimes delivery teams have been left without enough green cans and composting kitchen pails for all the homes on a particular block.

“There’s definitely been bumps along the way,” Robertson said. “We may show the property as a single-family home and have one bin slated, but there may be four units that have been recently developed.”

Because San Diego has been required to provide no-fee trash pickup to single-family homes under a century-old law called the People’s Ordinance, city officials have less accurate records of their customer base than they might have if they had been billing them.

City voters in November approved amendments to the People’s Ordinance that will allow the city to start charging, probably in 2026, for pickup of trash and recycling.

New study will analyze how much San Diego should charge single-family homes for trash pickup

Prompted by a successful ballot measure, the $1.1 million analysis will also explore subsidies for low-income residents and a ‘pay-as-you-throw’ incentive program.

Robertson said city officials have solved the mapping problems relatively smoothly.

Deliveries of cans and kitchen pails are complete for customers who get their trash picked up on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Robertson said deliveries to Friday customers should be complete in early June.

San Diego’s new organics recycling kicks into high gear this week with green waste bin deliveries, outreach

The phased approach will send bins to neighborhoods based on what day their trash is picked up, starting with Wednesday homes

Deliveries to customers who get trash picked up on Monday will begin then, followed by customers with Tuesday trash pickup. The entire rollout is expected to be complete by early August, as initially planned.

The new program, which is required by state law, aims to fight climate change by reducing how much methane gas gets emitted by landfills from decaying organic material like food and yard waste that could have been composted for reuse.

Get ready to compost: San Diego’s new green recycling kicks into high gear with bin deliveries and outreach

The city is also delivering kitchen pails to help residents comply with a new state law requiring food and yard waste recycling.

The kitchen pails allow people to separate out food waste and food-soiled products from their trash.

Green recycling is also coming to the city’s businesses, apartment buildings and condominiums. But that rollout is being handled by eight private haulers contracted by the city for such work.

Some residents of apartment buildings and condominiums say the private haulers have been slow to provide green cans — or have provided only one or two cans to serve dozens of units.

But Robertson said she is confident the private haulers will do a good job on organics recycling. Each hauler signed new city contracts recently that require such recycling, and the haulers compete against each other for business.

“They anticipate substantial completion of their rollout by June, so they may be slightly ahead of us,” she said. “We don’t have any haulers saying they’re not going to do this.”

Private haulers are expected to pass the cost of the new green recycling service on to their customers in the form of higher monthly fees.

While city officials have already sent out multiple fliers and are putting instruction sheets inside every can and kitchen pail they deliver, the city is planning an advertising blitz this summer when full rollout of the program is complete.

“We know we have to change hearts and minds,” said Andrea Deleon, interim program manager for city collection services. “A lot of this is daily behavior change.”

The campaign is slated to include billboards, ads on bus stops and social media. The ads will be translated into Spanish, Vietnamese and Tagalog.

The city is also sending out staff members from the Environmental Service Department with the crews delivering the bins and pails to answer questions and explain the big changes.

“This gives a face and a name to the department that is providing the service,” Deleon said. “Some folks are physically seeing the differences on the street, but they want to know more.”

Robertson said another key city goal is encouraging people to use kitchen pails, which let residents keep food scraps under their sinks or elsewhere until they’re ready to take that waste outside to their green recycling bin.

“We want people to start slow and feel comfortable,” she said. “What we’ve seen — and what other jurisdictions have seen — is that there is a yuck factor, but we don’t want that to deter people from participating at all.”

Robertson suggested starting with yard clippings if available and then adding coffee grounds and vegetable peelings. The next steps after that are meat scraps, eggshells and dairy waste, which some people choose to keep in their freezers to reduce odors.

For residents with their own green bins, she also recommended residents place yard clippings at the bottom of the green bin, food in the middle and then more yard clippings on top. She urged residents not to place bags in green bins, but instead to dump the recyclable organic material out of any bags used to collect it.

The city is scheduled to begin levying fines in January for non-compliance, but Robertson said that’s a long way off.

“We will eventually get there, but we’re really focused on getting part levels high and connecting people with why this program is so important,” she said. “For people concerned about climate change, this is the single fastest and most convenient thing you can do.”

For details, visit https://organicwasterecyclesd.org/

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