California Set to Launch Largest Food Waste Recycling Program in the U.S.
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This article originally appeared in Presence Marketing’s January 2022 Industry Newsletter
By Steve Hoffman
Beginning January 1, Californians are now required to separate organic material such as unused food, coffee grounds, egg shells, fruit and vegetable scraps, and other food waste into compost bins used for green waste including lawn and garden clippings, leaves and other organic debris, Yale Environment 360 reported in December.
Under California’s Senate Bill 1383, now in effect, the state’s waste disposal services will now divert the organic material away from traditional landfills to facilities that will manufacture compost, mulch and other products, reported the Los Angeles Times in December. According to the Times, individuals and business that don’t adequately separate their organic waste can face fines of up to $500 per day. Cities that are found in noncompliance could pay up to $10,000 per violation.
According to CalRecycle, the state agency overseeing the transition, over 50% of all trash produced by Californians is organic materials, such as kitchen scraps and garden waste. “The goal of the new state law is to reprocess 75% of the green waste by 2025. That means redirecting 17.7 million tons of organic material away from disposal, equivalent to the weight of more than 9.5 million cars,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
The new recycling law was originally passed in 2016 under former Governor Jerry Brown’s administration, with the goal of reducing waste in landfills and returning organics to the land to improve soil quality, increase drought resistance and reduce production of methane and other greenhouse gases. “This is the biggest change to trash since recycling started in the 1980s,” Rachel Wagoner, Director of the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, told the Associated Press. It…“is the single easiest and fastest thing that every single person can do to affect climate change,” she said.