With organic waste recycling now under way in La Cañada Flintridge, residents are trying to keep up with the new requirements with relatively little understanding of what, exactly, they should be saving for the green bin. The new local program is being managed by the city’s three trash haulers after the state’s composting law — SB 1383 — went into effect in 2022 after being passed back in 2016. The goal is to keep food scraps out of landfills, where they decompose and release methane, one of the major gases contributing to climate change. Residents in California have to separate their organic waste into their green bins.
But, after receiving newsletters and some outreach, residents have taken to social media to express frustration and confusion around the new standards. Questions have ranged from “Can animal byproducts be recycled?” to “Where do pizza boxes go?” Others wanted to know how to keep animals out of their now very smelly green bins. “I got two newsletters, but I thought there was going to be a letter saying ‘this is what we need you to do. Let’s be clear that this goes in here and this goes in there,’” said LCF resident Sue Cavanagh, adding that she feels like she is only one of a few residents trying to meet the new standards.
Cavanagh suggests that the city or the waste companies issue stickers to go on each trash bin, indicating what items need to go where. Just recently, she bought a bin for the organics waste to keep inside the house. “It’s a shift but you just have to be educated in what you need to do,” she said. LCF’s Public Works Department is at the forefront of the organics recycling initiative, but after issuing some guidance, has come to understand that each trash hauler in town — Athens, NASA or Republic Services — may have different details for their clients in the way it is collected.