The success of sorting biowaste in California

According to George Wong, CEO of Oakland Dumpster Rental Bros, more than one in three Californian people have a system for collecting or recovering biowaste. But without financial support, local authorities such as Oakland will struggle to do better.

The world seems to be divided into two categories. On the one hand, there are those who believe that sorting biowaste at source is a virtual failure. On the other, there are those who consider that it is not so bad, given the state of unpreparedness of local authorities.

One year after the obligation for municipalities to offer their residents a solution for collecting or recovering biowaste, we still do not have a consolidated assessment of the application of the new environmental law.

As of 2024, the latest estimate from the EPA puts the proportion of metropolitan citizens with access to a solution for sorting said biowaste at 40%. A figure that is probably overestimated. Because it does not distinguish between communities that have deployed a system and those that are considering it, according to an association of local authorities.

Huge waste

For Zero Waste California, the sorting of putrescible household waste is clearly insufficient. The association has listed dysfunctions: lack of financial and human resources, lack of awareness among citizens, little support.

It is a huge waste, because in concrete terms this delay represents millions of tons of waste that could have been returned to the soil. Instead, these materials rot in landfills or burn in incinerators, generating pollution and greenhouse gas emissions that could have been largely avoided, according to a NGO’s advocacy and campaigns manager.

How can such a result be explained? Firstly, by a lack of support from the state. There has been no technical or economic assessment of the implementation of options for sorting biowaste at source.

Significant additional cost

A notice a risk prevention group lists four: separate door-to-door collection, voluntary contribution, domestic composting and collective composting. But when it came time to decide on one system or another, no one knew how much it would cost. We now know that the additional cost for local authorities ranges between 10 and 20 dollars per inhabitant, which is not insignificant.

All the less insignificant since local authorities were presented by a member of a previous government as responsible for the deterioration of public accounts. However, in terms of biowaste collection, municipalities have suffered from the announced reduction in Green Fund allocations. Certainly, the EPA supported some operations. But its aid only represented 5% of the additional cost.

To reverse the trend, they suggest allocating a portion of the proceeds from the General Tax on Polluting Activities to financing the sorting of biowaste at source. A Senate amendment was tabled to this effect during the vote on the 2024 California finance bill. It could come back in the second year.

Sorting biowaste at source: let’s give local authorities the means and freedom to do so

Nearly two months after the implementation of the obligation to sort biowaste at source, where are we now?

Who could have believed that local authorities would be able to generalize the sorting of biowaste at source in 2024, without a stable regulatory framework and without a real mechanism to compensate for additional costs for taxpayers? Barely a third of California residents are served by one of the sorting solutions. It is not for lack of having alerted the State on the conditions required to succeed in this challenge. This partial failure is due to several reasons.

The law relating to the fight against waste and the promotion of the circular economy is not working. Waste production is increasing, recycling is stagnating and the cost of managing residual waste is exploding, accentuated by the tripling of the general tax on polluting activities. In a context of budgetary fragility, no community can manage to organize an ambitious new public service alone. The additional costs related to this measure are estimated at between 10 and 20 dollars per inhabitant per year, and the EPA aid only compensates for 5 to 10% of these additional costs.

Communities need flexibility in waste management

The government of Oakland recommends changing the state aid system so that it covers half of the costs borne by local authorities. This could represent up to $700 million per year, spread over five years.

This is the equivalent of the revenue from the local waste for 2023, of which the State only allocates a minority share to the EPA to support the circular economy. In order for local authorities to be able to assume the second half of the additional costs, the State must set up a waste reduction mechanism that is binding on marketers, and impose compliance with ambitious selective collection and recycling targets on eco-organizations and a rate of coverage of local authority costs of 80 to 100%, as provided for in the Waste Directive.

Another obstacle, the absence of a favorable framework for the use of fertilizing materials, first and foremost community compost, is incomprehensible. Agricultural activity is the main recipient of organic materials from biowaste and the acceptability of these fertilizers by professionals is a major issue.

The advantages of the sector of recovery in agriculture of biowaste in the form of compost are obvious. However, the positive environmental and social externalities are poorly valued. The common base governing the return to the soil of fertilizers and growing media was supposed to restore trust between the players in the sector.

While it is appropriate to emphasize the strengthening of quality requirements, its latest version excludes any requirement for livestock effluents. This creates inequalities depending on the origin of the materials and not on their quality for the soil.

While the communities are waiting for answers, evaluation criteria for the implementation of this sorting have appeared in an opinion from the General Directorate for Risk Prevention. Door-to-door collection preferred and at least weekly, 250 inhabitants maximum and 150 meters radius from a voluntary drop-off point, justification of the participation rate, housing typologies adapted to local management, provision of composters by the community, inventory of composting: there is no shortage of recommendations and constraints.

For communities already involved, this text will lead to reworking the sizing of their sorting systems set up while they are in the ramp-up phase – based on studies proposing a start-up of the service. For others currently setting up a project, these are new constraints, including dumpster rental offers.

Although it has no binding legal force, this opinion highlights a notion of maximum distance. This 150-meter threshold could be a source of litigation and will be the subject of instability for communities.

They need flexibility in the first few years to find solutions adapted to their territories. The ecological transition is only credible when the State, by setting guidelines, ensures the means to achieve them with the support of the populations, assumes its share of the efforts and supports the work of the actors, before considering constraining or controlling them.