It’s a rule that small composters love, trash haulers dread, and the city can live with.
On December 7, the City of San Diego’s Environment Committee voted in favor of a code change that will reduce food waste and increase food-waste sharing. On the road to the landfill, city trash trucks will lose some of their contents, and composters are cheering like dumpster divers. For the first time, both types of businesses can become certified to haul food waste.
“By recognizing these revisions you not only recognize San Diego as a place for craft beer but for craft compost,” said Sarah Boltwala-Mesina, executive director of Food2Soil, one of a few small composters that will apply for a license to collect recyclable materials. The business has had to operate in a gray area in the city code when collecting food scraps, and a fee, from restaurants. Now, they can emerge from the shadows, Boltwala-Mesina told the committee.
“Stepping out of this gray area and into the spotlight with us are broccoli stalks, citrus fields, wilted salad greens, coffee grounds, and juice pulp from all over the city.”
While meat, bones, and dairy will have to be sent to a permitted facility, vegetable scraps can go straight to community gardens or farms. Under the city’s reporting requirements, collectors must provide a letter from property owners where composting occurs, acknowledging the work in case odor or nuisance issues arise.
Earlier this year, the city sent warning letters to soil business Closing the Loop after neighbors complained about odors from compost piles. Months later, another city code change threatened to shut down such small enterprises in San Diego. That code, effective in July, helped fund the city’s zero-waste plan through fees paid by certified haulers, but it barred the composters from charging fees to collect the small amounts of scraps that restaurants are allowed to discard. Food waste was left out of the materials the city’s certified recyclable material collectors were allowed to haul.
Ken Prue, the city’s program manager of waste reduction, explained that haulers could take up to 1000 tons per year of “exempted materials,” but food waste wasn’t included since none of the certified haulers was taking food waste. Also, there were concerns about public health and odors. As July 1 approached, “we had concerns from the newly formed Healthy Soils Coalition,” Prue said, mainly on the prohibition on certified collectors picking up food waste.
So, the city is amending the amendment, which now goes to the city council for final approval. The revision allows food waste and adds two new exclusions that renew scraps. One is for juice pulp or spent brewery grains, which could be self-hauled, say, by a brewer or farmer taking it to a farm to feed livestock. The other is for liquid byproducts from beverage processing, mainly used cooking oil and juice-pulp trappings.
Facing the new competition, franchise haulers spoke out at the meeting.
“Our concern really is with the potential impacts to the city’s revenues,” said Jeremy Obel, spokesman for the San Diego County Disposal Association, which represents the city’s three largest franchise haulers. “Every ton of food material excluded from the franchise is not subject to the $27 in fees” that pay into the city’s refuse disposal and recycling funds. That money supports waste-reduction programs, as well as the climate action plan and zero-waste plan.
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