In an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the state Legislature has approved a number of laws requiring compliance locally that will mean education outreach by trash haulers to municipal clients while Nevada City renegotiates a contract with its trash service provider.
Last week, the Nevada City’s council heard a presentation by Shavati Kirki-Pearl, public sector manager for Waste Management during contract negotiation that must begin no later than July 2023. The current contract was signed in September 2011 and expires at end of June 2025.
But Nevada City needs to prepare for changes sure to come in contract dealings to make a smooth transition to meet changes in California law, explained Karki-Pearl.
“Businesses (and government institutions) have to know the law and make sure business is a positive partner helping them recycle properly, getting them training and make sure businesses are not fined for contamination and build up healthy habits,” she said. “We have a diversion rate (ratio of averting trash from landfills) of 43%. Can we improve? Yes, Waste Management is making lots of upgrades to recycling infrastructure impact compliance.”
AB 793, signed into law in 2020, requires all packaging to have at least 50% recycled material by 2030. Also, packages must have the Mobius (chasing arrows) that can be recycled even if it was not made from recycled components.
HARD TO CARRY OUT
There are challenges for Waste Management to meet the goals, including labor shortages due to driver and frontline turnover, partly because of COVID, as well as supply chain delays and inflated prices.
The company’s transfer stations and recycling center has seen an uptick in business, yet capacity improvements are ongoing to accommodate increased traffic.
The city hopes to implement AB 1826 successfully, noted Karki-Pearl. The law requires statewide disposal of organic waste that includes food, landscape and pruning, and food-soiled waste, as well as fats, oils and grease to be reduced by 50% of the level of disposal that occurred in 2014, for any business that generates two cubic yards of waste or more per week to be picked up by a trash hauling contractor.
“Waste Management hopes to successfully implement 1826,” she said. “But we were impacted by excessive fire and snow mitigation efforts in 2021. Also, staff shortages. Yet improved compensation and streamlined hiring will help. And during COVID, training was suspended, but now they’re reopened and we’ll focus on retention of drivers and other employees.”
Multifamily dwellings of five units or more that generate the required threshold of organic material will not be required to arrange for organic recycling service for food waste, according to the CalRecyle website. However, a local jurisdiction can be more stringent and then that locale will be required to comply.
Meanwhile, SB 1383 requires the reduction of emissions of short-lived climate pollutants that includes black carbon, methane, troposhperic ozone and hydrofluorocarbons. Short-lived climate pollutants remain in the atmosphere a shorter time than carbon dioxide, but can potentially cause more damage.
The law was supposed to be implemented at the start of the year. But because the transfer stations don’t have the infrastructure to handle organics, implementation of the law may be delayed until edible food-recovery programs can be established. Transfer Station upgrades are expected to be completed in the spring of 2023, at which time the city can kick off programs.
In 2024 the city can start issuing fines for noncompliance, Karki-Pearl said.
LOTS TO DO
“California has the goal of diverting 20% of food waste and diverting 75% of organic materials from land fills by 2025,” she said. “So Waste Management has to provide organic collection services to all residences and businesses. And we would provide education and outreach.”
Establishment of edible food recovery programs through a contract or written agreement and also maintain records and inspect and enforce compliance or give out waivers, where eligible will be the city’s responsibility.
A valuable tool to help compliance are “smart” trucks that can automatically pick up organic waste bins at curbside and audit contaminants (items not properly sorted) by using a videocamera that records the bin contents as the truck dumps contents into the truck’s hopper, which limits contaminants.
“We found the biggest contaminants are plastic bags and plastic films (from cardboard roll),” said Karki-Peral. “So that’s the red alert from Waste Management. During education outreach our focus is on people to not put plastics in recycled bins.”
The Nevada City Council supported the measures by a unanimous consent approval.
William Roller is a staff writer with The Union. He can be reached at [email protected]
