City Council
Report
City Council Meeting: October 26, 2021
Agenda Item: 7.B
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To: Mayor and City Council
From: Rick Valte, Acting Public Works Director, Public Works, Resource Recovery & Recycling
Subject: Introduction and First Reading of an Ordinance to Comply with Senate Bill 1383 Mandate on Recycling of Organic Materials
Recommended Action
Staff recommends the City Council introduce for first reading the attached new Mandatory Recycling Ordinance, SMMC 5.46, that would require all Santa Monica properties to recycle organic materials to comply with the State of California’s new organics recycling mandate, Senate Bill 1383.
Executive Summary
Santa Monica has a long-standing commitment to the environment, which includes a goal to achieve zero waste through landfill diversion and recycling by 2030. California’s Short-Lived Climate Pollutant Reduction Act of 2016, Senate Bill 1383 (SB 1383), requires jurisdictions to adopt and enforce an ordinance to implement regulations to divert organics disposal (green waste and food waste) from landfills for sustainable applications.
SB 1383 – considered to be the most significant waste reduction mandate to be adopted in California in the last 30 years – established the following organics disposal reduction targets for the State of California, based upon 2014 baseline tonnage:
• 50% reduction in organic waste disposal to landfills by 2020; • 75% reduction in organic waste disposal to landfills by 2025; and • 20% recovery of edible food for human consumption by 2025.
All jurisdictions and their organics generators shall recycle organics for beneficial and sustainable end-uses, such as:
• Compost;
• Vehicular renewable energy production to replace fossil fuel; • Renewable electricity production to replace fossil fuel; and 2 of 13
• Edible food recovery for human consumption.
By approving the proposed ordinance (Attachment A), the City would implement the requirements of and be in compliance with SB 1383 and would dramatically increase recycling rates of food and green waste materials normally destined for the landfill. Additionally, the proposed ordinance would also help the City reach its 2030 zero waste goal of reducing the per capita landfill disposal rate to 1.1 pounds of landfilled waste per person per day. The City’s Resource Recovery and Recycling (RRR) Division has been providing green containers to organics generators during 2021 and is already conducting extensive outreach to prepare account holders for the new requirements.
Background
The City of Santa Monica has adopted core policies to protect and preserve the health of the natural environment, of the economy, and of its community. Specifically, the City promotes and supports its adopted sustainability agenda through solid waste management practices, which includes reduction, reuse, recycling, and renewable energy production from unwanted and discardable items.
Assembly Bill 1826 – The Original Organic Waste Diversion Bill Before the passage of Senate Bill 1383, which expanded organics recycling, the state enacted an initial law to implement organics recycling. In October 2014, Governor Brown signed Assembly Bill 1826 (AB 1826), a mandatory commercial organics recycling law, requiring that, on and after January 1, 2016, local jurisdictions across the State implement an organics recycling program to divert organics generated by businesses and multi-family residential dwellings of five or more units which generate more than four cubic yards of total solid waste. (Solid waste is the combined total of trash, recycling, and organics.) For the purposes of AB 1826, organics, or organic waste, or organic material, means food waste, food-soiled paper waste that is mixed in with food waste, green waste (e.g., landscape and yard waste), and non-hazardous wood waste. This law required that businesses recycle their organics as of April 1, 2016, depending on the amount of waste they generate per week.
Additionally, the law contained a 2020 trigger that further increased the scope of affected businesses. As such, in September of 2020, California's Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle), reduced the threshold from four cubic yards of solid waste in 2016 3 of 13
to two cubic yards. Under AB 1826, all businesses and multi-family residential dwellings of five or more units that produce two cubic yards or more of solid waste must recycle their organics.
Why Focus on Organics?
Climate Change
Mandatory recycling of organic waste is the next step toward achieving California’s ambitious recycling and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction goals. Californians disposed of 27 million tons of organics in 2019, and the State’s 2014 Waste Characterization Study estimated that 30% could have been used for compost, mulch, and renewable energy production.
Organics is the largest waste stream in California (67%), with food waste alone being the State’s single largest waste material (18%). Californians throw away more than six million tons of food waste annually despite one in eight of all Californians (and one in five children) being food insecure as depicted in Figure 1.
The decomposition of organics in landfills has been identified as a significant source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, specifically methane, contributing to global climate change.
Landfills and their organic waste streams are the third largest source of methane (after oil/gas and dairy), producing 21% of California’s total methane emissions. However, organics diverted from landfills can be processed into beneficial and sustainable products thereby reducing GHG.
Examples of alternate uses for organics include compost, mulch, paper, and renewable energy. 4 of 13
SB 1383: The Need to Go Beyond AB 1826
Following the implementation of AB 1826, the State was not achieving satisfactory results in its reduction of greenhouse gases, called short-lived climate pollutants. Short-lived climate pollutants (SLCP), including methane, hydrofluorocarbons, and anthropogenic black carbon, have a significant impact on climate change in a short timeframe. Legislators recognized the need to take additional steps to ensure the State furthered its efforts in reducing greenhouse gases. In September 2016, Governor Brown signed into law the Short-Lived Climate Pollutant Reduction Act, setting organic waste and edible food reduction targets for California in another statewide effort to reduce emissions of SLCP.
While AB 1826 does not require food waste collection in all residential sectors – but only larger multi-family dwellings, SB 1383 requires food waste collection for all sectors, including all residential customers. Other notable stipulations of SB 1383 include these components:
• Requires procurement of organics-based products;
• Adds an edible food recovery program for large food-generating businesses; • Sets a goal to decrease landfilled organics by 50% (from a baseline of 23 million tons disposal to 11.5 million tons annually) by 2020; and
• Aims to both decrease landfilled organics by 75% (to 5.7 million tons annually) and increase edible food recovery by 20% by 2025.
Requirements comprising Santa Monica’s proposed organics recycling ordinance are consistent with other adopted policies that advance sustainability and the City’s commitment to environmental stewardship, including prohibiting single-use plastic carry out bags; requiring the use of marine-degradable disposable food service ware; mandating recycling of construction and demolition materials; and providing recycling containers for each parcel containing a building or structure. More importantly, the proposed ordinance also consistently aligns with goals in the City Council adopted 2014 Zero Waste Plan, 2019 Zero Waste Plan Update, Sustainable City Plan, and Climate Action and Adaptation Plan.
Discussion
SB 1383 mandates that by 2025 all jurisdictions in California reduce their contribution of organics to landfills by 75% and edible food to landfills by 20%. The State hopes the 5 of 13
dramatic diversion and beneficial reuse of organic wastes will reduce GHG emissions.
To achieve this, SB 1383 requires each jurisdiction to implement a mandatory organics recycling law by January 1, 2022 and begin enforcement (i.e., issue a citation for failure to comply) by January 1, 2024. The City can begin enforcement prior to this date if it so chooses.
To aid the City with achieving SB 1383 regulatory compliance and to avoid non-compliance penalties from the State, RRR would request additional staffing as part of the FY 2022-23 budget process to support various mandated requirements under the law, including collection, route reviews, field audits, community outreach, public education, recordkeeping, reporting, inspections, and enforcement activities. Staff intends to focus primarily on outreach, education, and on the ground field support to residents and businesses, with enforcement being a last resort for repeat and chronic violators.
To assist jurisdictions in implementing a mandatory organics recycling law, CalRecycle, the department responsible for developing, implementing, and enforcing SB 1383, created a model ordinance tool for each jurisdiction to customize. By using the model ordinance tool, City staff is confident the proposed ordinance includes all legal requirements to comply with SB 1383.
Highlights of the Mandatory Organics Recycling Ordinance The proposed mandatory organics recycling ordinance contains five major components:
1. Provide Organics Collection Services to All Residents and Businesses The proposed ordinance contains general requirements for all property owners, residents, and commercial businesses in Santa Monica. Generators of organics (generators) shall:
a. Subscribe or have access to and maintain a three-container solid waste collection system consisting of black (refuse), blue (non-organics recycling), and green (organics recycling) containers;
b. Separate materials into the correct containers and shall not place prohibited contaminants in any container;
c. Provide adequate onsite parcel space for a three-container solid materials system, including additional space needed for access by persons and collection vehicles, unless otherwise authorized by the City;
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d. Maintain a materials collection area, including refuse enclosures, that is clean and free of litter, debris, and unsanitary conditions and is accessible to users and City staff and vehicles; and
e. Ensure container lids always remain closed when not in use.
2. Establish Edible Food Recovery Program: Tiers 1 and 2 SB 1383 requires that certain food-related businesses recover edible food leftovers, package them for reuse, and donate to a food recovery organization (FRO) to provide to people in need. Qualifying businesses are categorized as Tier 1 or Tier 2.
Tier 1 commercial edible food generators (supermarkets with gross annual revenues of $2 million or more, grocery stores of 10,000 square feet or larger, wholesale food markets, and food service distributors) must comply with ordinance requirements commencing January 1, 2022. Tier 2 commercial edible food generators (large restaurants of 5,000 square feet or larger or have a minimum seating capacity of 250, and hotels with minimum 200 rooms and onsite food facility, health facilities with minimum 100 beds and onsite food services, and large event venues) must comply by January 1, 2024. Commercial edible food generators shall:
a. Arrange to recover the maximum amount of edible food that otherwise would be disposed;
b. Contract with food recovery organizations or services for the collection of edible food for recovery;
c. Allow the City's enforcement entity to access the premises and review records; and d. Maintain specific records and make them available to the City for annual reporting purposes.
Food recovery organizations or services that enter into agreements with generators would be required to report annual edible food collection data to the City and participate in capacity planning. The City would review and verify edible food recovery legal agreements between generators and recovery organizations on an annual basis.
3. Education and Outreach Requirements for Generators
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The ordinance would require generators to:
a. Annually provide information to employees, contractors, tenants, and customers about organics recovery requirements and proper sorting of organics and recyclable materials;
b. Provide educational information to new tenants that describes requirements related to sorting and disposing of materials in the correct containers, the location of containers, and the rules governing their use at each property; and c. Allow City representatives access to perform inspections and confirm compliance with the ordinance.
4. Conduct Monitoring, Inspections, and Enforcement
Commercial generators and property owners of multi-family dwellings of five units or more shall periodically inspect blue, green, and black containers for contamination. If containers are contaminated, generators must correct the issue and educate their employees on the importance of proper waste sorting to prevent contamination.
The proposed ordinance would require the City to: 1) conduct annual compliance review to verify commercial businesses are subscribed to the City’s three-container collection service or a private organics service; 2) review collection routes to verify service to all generators; and 3) perform visual inspections for contamination during collection.
Generators may request an exemption from organics recycling for the following two reasons:
a. De Minimis Waiver
i. The commercial business' total solid waste collection service is two cubic yards or more per week and organics subject to collection in a green container comprises less than 20 gallons per week per applicable container; or,
ii. The commercial business' total solid waste collection service is less than two cubic yards per week and organics subject to collection in a green container comprises less than 10 gallons per week per applicable container.
b. Physical Space Waiver
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If the City has evidence that the building lacks adequate space for the collection containers required for compliance with the organics collection requirements of this ordinance.
5. Conduct Recycling and Edible Food Recovery Capacity Planning Los Angeles County is required to undertake capacity planning to ensure the region has adequate capacity to process recovered edible food. Jurisdictions are required to support the County’s effort in this regard, and the City would need to provide data on edible food recovery capacity in its jurisdiction upon request. To support edible food recovery capacity planning assessments or other studies, food recovery services and organizations operating in the city would be required to provide information and consultation to the City, upon request, regarding existing, proposed, or expanded food recovery capacity that could be accessed by the City and its generators.
SB 1383 City Procurement Requirements
The City’s proposed organics ordinance does not contain any language about procurement requirements of products made from recovered organics for the City because that is not a requirement upon residents and businesses. The City is committed to complying with the procurement requirements of SB 1383, which includes the purchase of compost, mulch, renewable energy, and paper made from recycled organic materials. RRR staff have been working with and would continue to support colleagues from Procurement, Public Landscape, and the Office of Sustainability and the Environment to ensure the City’s compliance with SB 1383’s procurement requirement of 0.08 tons per capita of procured organic product(s) annually. When applied to Santa Monica’s estimated 2020 population of 90,024 the City needs to procure approximately 7,200 tons of recycled organics products per year.
How a local jurisdiction decides to meet its procurement requirement is entirely up to the municipality. A city may mix the amounts of each procurement category (compost, mulch, renewable energy, paper) to best suit its organic product demand needs. For example, Santa Monica uses a small amount of compost and mulch annually (126 and 327 tons, respectively), 9 of 13
which does not come close to its annual procurement requirement of 4,164 and 7,169 tons, respectively. On the other hand, the City already meets SB 1383’s recycled paper requirement, which is based on the post-consumer paper content of 30 percent.
Santa Monica would best meet its procurement goal through the purchase of renewable energy.
The City has an existing program to utilize renewable energy, though not from organics. The City’s annual procurement requirement could be fully met if it were to purchase 4.7 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity from biomass conversion. This amount of energy is 0.6% of total City-wide energy demand, or 11% of the electricity usage for City-only buildings. Currently, the region lacks enough producers of such energy, and SB 1383 prohibits the use of organicsbased renewable energy from outside the state. However, Office of Sustainability and the Environment staff has already begun working with its energy vendors to secure renewable organic-based energy when it becomes available. It is estimated that the City would incorporate organics-based renewable energy procurements over the next three to five years as this renewable energy resource becomes available in Southern California. Regional cost data from the organics-based renewable energy industry is limited at this time, so the financial impact to the City’s electricity costs is unknown and would need to be analyzed when such data becomes available.
Community Engagement for the Proposed Mandatory Organics Recycling Requirements To inform the community about SB 1383 and the proposed mandatory organics recycling ordinance, RRR staff, with support from the Office of Communications and the Office of Sustainability and the Environment, is developing and implementing a broad-reaching public outreach and education campaign strategy with the following objectives:
• Explain the state’s new mandatory organics recycling mandate, what it means for the City and Santa Monica residents and businesses, and how it is being incorporated into the City’s municipal code;
• Increase public awareness and understanding of the City’s organic recycling goals of 2022 and beyond, and how the goals support the City’s overall zero waste objective of 95% recycling of refuse, or 1.1 pounds per capita per day by 2030; and • Promote the benefits of recycling organics.
The City’s outreach program began in December 2020 with the mailing of approximately 1,500 postcards to businesses and multi-family property owners without green organics containers, 10 of 13
explaining the SB 1383’s organics recycling mandate and forthcoming City ordinance requirements, and the timetable to request a green container. Since the mailing of the postcards to present, approximately 160 properties (11%) have added green containers.
Follow-up letters would be mailed soon to the utility account holders of addresses that do not yet have green organics containers. One letter would be tailored for businesses, which includes the edible food recovery requirement for larger establishments that are identified as Tiers 1 and 2 food generators, and one tailored for multi-family residential owners, with more specific details on compliance requirements and how to sign up for a green container.
In addition to postcards and letters to homeowners and business owners (utility account holders) that are without green organics containers at their locations, RRR staff engaged in extensive community engagement and education efforts in 2021 to maximize awareness of this new law among the approximately 1,500 locations that are not yet in compliance. Outreach was conducted virtually and in-person to more than 30 businesses, multifamily buildings, and community groups, including neighborhood organizations, Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce, and Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District.
Tiers 1 and 2 Food-Related Businesses Outreach
RRR partnered with Climate Action Santa Monica to train volunteers of its Climate Corps to assist the City in contacting Tiers 1 and 2 food-related businesses. Volunteers virtually met with these businesses to inform them of the SB 1383 mandate and the edible food recovery requirement. Businesses that fell in neither of the Tiers were informed of the need to ensure they have a green bin for mandatory organics recycling. Approximately 54 businesses were on the initial list, focused primarily on hotels and supermarkets. It is anticipated only a few dozen businesses in the City, including hotels, supermarkets, and large restaurants (a minimum of 250 seats or 5,000 sq. ft.), are subject to the edible food recovery requirement under SB 1383.
Outreach to Major Multi-Family and Business Stakeholders At the time of this report, RRR staff has met many community stakeholders from different neighborhood and civic/business groups to discuss the mandatory organics recycling ordinance. All groups acknowledged the importance of organics recycling in meeting the City’s zero waste goal and to environmental health and climate change. Most agreed public 11 of 13
education and on-the-ground technical assistance are critical and necessary in a successful organics recycling program.
RRR staff reached out in March 2021 to Community Corp of Santa Monica and Living at Santa Monica-Greystar multi-family/mixed use building corporations to bring these 110 buildings into compliance. They are in the process of phasing in compliance.
Community outreach efforts are ongoing. Future education efforts include virtual community recycling workshops, information flyers and videos, blog posts, Seascape articles, print and digital advertisements, social media, and more.
Educational Materials and the City’s RRR Webpage
RRR staff would make available many resources for the public to facilitate compliance with SB 1383 and improve recycling of non-organics, including, but not limited to:
▪ Updated recycling (non-organics and organics) flyers that visually describe what recyclables belong in the blue and green containers and what should be disposed of in black containers;
▪ Quick reference guide for residents and businesses on basic SB 1383 compliance; ▪ Detailed guidance for residents and businesses on SB 1383 requirements; ▪ Updated City webpage with links to state and county guidance resources on SB 1383; and
▪ Updated organics stickers, decals, and laminated flyers would be made available to the public.
While not in the proposed organics ordinance, the City is required to annually educate all generators, including commercial edible food generators, about organics recycling requirements and would continue updating and distributing outreach materials as needed.
Task Force on the Environment
RRR staff presented a first ordinance draft to the Task Force on the Environment at its March 15, 2021 meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to present the state’s case for the need for SB 1383, the initial requirements of mandatory organics recycling, and RRR’s strategy to implement the organics ordinance. RRR staff also sought ideas, suggestions, and 12 of 13
early feedback from the Task Force for the development of such an ordinance. RRR staff returned to the Task Force on July 19, 2021, to present the second draft, at which time the Task Force unanimously approved a motion to recommend the City Council adopt the 2021 mandatory organics recycling ordinance in its current form.
Financial Impacts and Budget Actions
There is no immediate financial impact or budget action necessary as a result of SB 1383 and the proposed mandatory organics ordinance, but it is fully anticipated that an increase in staffing, programmatic, and contractual costs in the RRR enterprise fund would occur in the future in order for the City to achieve regulatory compliance.
As indicated earlier in this report, RRR would request additional staffing during the FY 2022-23 budget cycle to provide ongoing, year-round support for various requirements of the mandate.
Moreover, additional costs are anticipated in procuring and distributing organics containers to solid waste customers who do not yet have green containers. Such costs have been budgeted and are available in the FY 2021-22 Capital Improvement Program in the Resource Recovery and Recycling Fund. Furthermore, processing and recycling organics into renewable products costs more than double the cost of landfilling them, increasing RRR’s expenditure in contractual spending on organics processing facilities. As a result, it is anticipated solid waste rates would need to be adjusted to absorb the higher costs associated with meeting SB 1383’s regulatory compliance requirements. RRR is currently conducting a rate study and anticipates returning to Council in fall of 2022 to discuss possible rate increases.
Finally, there may be future cost impact to the General Fund associated with purchasing renewable energy or other recycled organics products to meet the City’s per capita procurement requirement under SB 1383. Such costs would be analyzed once industry data becomes available.
Future year funding is contingent upon Council budget approval. 13 of 13
Prepared By: Neal Shapiro, Senior Sustainability Analyst Approved Forwarded to Council
Attachments:
A. Mandatory Recycling Ordinance
B. Written Comments
C. PowerPoint Presentation