{Why Bother}
This Is No
Time to Waste
Small and large ways to ease the load on landfills It’s easy to not think about our trash. What we discard is conveniently carted away from our curbs each week. In our homes, we keep our trash cans out of sight, covered with lids or tucked behind cabinet doors. Then there’s what we put into them without a second thought: plastic food packaging, empty takeout containers, those old leftovers we forgot about in the back of the fridge, scraps from tonight’s dinner. But trash ends up in landfills, and landfills swell to capacity. Waste in our landfills leaches chemicals into our waterways and methane into our air. This is especially true of organic material: food and yard waste. “[Methane] off-gassing is 30 times more potent when we landfill organics instead of composting,” says Jessica Toth, managing director of the Solana Center, a nonprofit recycling and sustainable lifestyle education organization whose mission is to encourage environmental stewardship. “It’s a huge hit to the environment.” The good news is there’s a solution: changing our relationship to our trash. Rather than thoughtlessly shipping off our waste to the landfill, we can consider the landfill to be the last resort. What are our alternatives? Refusing, reducing, reusing, repairing, recycling and composting. The 42
edible San Diego
September-October 2015
concept is called “zero waste to landfill”— zero waste, for short—and its benefits are many: to make the most of landfill capacity, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce reliance on transportation and fuel, reduce dependence on virgin resources and overall improve our environmental footprint. The fundamental principle of zero waste is the life cycle: We can choose carefully, use only what we need and, once we are done with something, release it to serve another purpose. The concept is timely. As we realize that our resources aren’t finite and that our trash is leaving a legacy of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions for future generations, more and more municipalities are committing to the goal of zero waste. In California, San Francisco has led the way and San Diego is joining their ranks. At press time, the San Diego City Council had adopted a draft zero waste plan that would commit the City to diverting 75% of its waste from landfills by 2020 and 90% by 2035. Is this achievable? Yes and no. In 2006, 55% of the waste generated by the City of San Diego was diverted from a landfill, primarily by being composted or recycled. In 2014, that rate was 67%. And right
By Lauren Lastowka now, 76% of the waste sent to the Miramar landfill could be diverted: 39% is organic material that could be composted, 17% is paper that could be recycled or composted and 15% is a mix of glass, metal and plastic that could be recycled. The challenge in getting to 90% is establishing the infrastructure and systems that actually will divert that waste from the landfill—and then changing our habits so that we use these new systems. Quite a few changes need to come about to meet the City’s proposed zero waste plan. For one, San Diego needs a dedicated facility for composting food waste. “The issue right now is that we don’t have any large scale commercial facilities to handle food waste, says Toth. “Miramar doesn’t have the capacity to accept [food waste for composting] from everyone. The nearest other place is in Victorville, 120 miles away. Everyone is in a bind right now [about what to do with food waste], which is exciting for us [at the Solana Center], because we don’t feel compost belongs in a landfill.” For another, the City needs to establish and fund the infrastructure for collecting food waste from residences and small businesses. Pauline Martinson, executive