A follow-up law gives local governments until next year to put alternative disposal programs in place. Studies have shown that material that decomposes more gradually can reduce emissions, particularly when it is applied to farmland, where plants and trees sink carbon back into the soil. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 1383 in 2016 to force cities and counties to launch programs to get methane-producing food waste out of landfills. Is reducing your carbon footprint or food waste a New Year’s resolution? Here’s an easy kitchen compost guide to help you get started. Lifestyle Comic: A kitchen composting guide for beginners While much less prevalent than carbon dioxide, regulators have focused on methane because its global warming potential is more than 80 times greater. Point sources are single-location producers of pollution, contrasted with multipoint generators such as cars and trucks. Many of the farms grow almonds and table grapes.įood waste became a preoccupation of environmentalists, lawmakers and state regulators after studies showed that landfills are the biggest “point source” of methane. Most of the nutrient-rich end product will be sold as a soil amendment to small- and medium-sized farms in Kern County. The facility, run by waste management company Recology, is a 113-mile drive from downtown Los Angeles. The trucks deliver the organics to Blossom Valley Organics South, a 485-acre composting facility in Lamont, just east of the junction of Interstate 5 and State Route 99. Sanitation & Environment trucks deliver the contents of green bins to transfer stations, where the yard clippings and kitchen leftovers get loaded onto 18-wheelers that can carry as much as 20 tons of green waste. If you look at the total, we have to deal with significantly more material.”Īll this material means that Los Angeles will have to build additional processing facilities to make compost or use alternative technologies, like anaerobic digestion, to create biogas.įor now, L.A. “They don’t have yard waste in the volume we do. is in a league of its own as a city of 4 million people,” said Alex Helou, assistant director of L.A. And largely because of its bigger yards, its 3,000-ton-a-day estimated green waste production is six times greater than its northern neighbor. With 4 million residents, L.A.'s population is more than four times larger than San Francisco. sanitation officials said the city has taken longer to start the program because it simply has much more green waste to process than other cities. 1, local government will need to start composting them, in part to reduce greenhouse gases. Those banana peels, pizza boxes and coffee grounds you throw away? Starting Jan. “I question why the city of L.A., being a climate leader in the region, is lagging behind conservative coastal Orange County cities,” said Hoiyin Ip, co-chair of Sierra Club California’s Zero Waste Committee.Ĭalifornia California goes to war with food waste. So do Newport Beach, San Clemente and Dana Point in Orange County. “Especially given how important it is to quickly reduce methane emissions to protect us from the most dire impacts of climate change.”īurbank, South Pasadena and Glendale are among the cities in Los Angeles County that have curbside food scrap pickup already in place. “I would be lying if I told you I wasn’t a bit disappointed to see a city that has always positioned itself as an environmental champion being a laggard in terms of rolling out this program,” said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for Californians Against Waste. San Francisco offered green bin disposal of kitchen scraps starting more than a decade ago. lags behind other cities in accommodating an at-home option for residents to divert food waste. “I’d rather do something for the environment. Until recently, she had seen composting as an “inaccessible” goal, requiring a big yard and her own equipment. “I’m really excited,” said Frankie McLafferty, a freelance web producer, accepting a toaster-sized composting pail at her front door. If all goes as planned, the expansion of this program will allow every Angeleno to conveniently recycle kitchen scraps, thereby reducing the burden on landfills and helping stem the production of Earth-warming greenhouse gases. Sanitation & Environment employees were delivering composting pails to every home and apartment in the Sunset Junction neighborhood west of Dodger Stadium. But on this hot Saturday near downtown, the people of Los Angeles were showering their love not on the ice cream man, but the trash man. For all the smiles and goodwill they attracted on a recent morning, the workers in the big green truck might have been hawking Popsicles and Choco Tacos.
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