Soggy French fries, wilted lettuce and other restaurant food waste in Malibu is no longer destined to end up in the dump.
The City of Malibu hosted a demonstration of an advanced food waste-hauling truck from Universal Waste Systems (UWS) this past Monday at City Hall, kicking off its planned Month of Earth Day activities from March 25 through April 30. UWS then accepted the Earth Month proclamation from City Council and announced the expansion of its food waste recycling service in Malibu.
The new waste truck is specially designed to pick up food waste from small food waste carts, then automatically power wash them from a water tank atop the truck.
The truck demonstration was of special significance to local restaurant owners, due to California’s AB 1826, which was signed into law in October 2014 by Governor Brown. The law, which took effect April 1, 2016, requires businesses to start recycling their organic waste (particularly food and green waste) if they generate at least eight cubic yards of organic waste per week. On Jan. 1, 2017, smaller businesses — that generate four cubic yards of organic waste per week — had to start complying.
Businesses that must comply include schools, hospitals, stores, restaurants, industrial businesses and residential dwellings with more than five units.
The reason for the stricter laws is to keep more materials out of landfills — organic waste makes up almost 35 percent of all waste collected in the state. In addition, the decomposition of food and green waste in the landfills contributes to global warming, because it gives off methane gas.
The law gives these businesses three ways of complying: They can start separating organic waste from other waste and hire a service that will collect and recycle it (this is where UWS comes in). Or, they have the options of recycling organic waste on-site, hauling their own organic waste to an off-site location for recycling, or hiring a service that does mixed waste processing with recycling of organics.
The 2014 law also requires cities put together programs that will help businesses comply with the stricter recycling laws and offer “outreach, education and monitoring,” as well as report their activities to the state.
The City’s Environmental Programs Department has been working with UWS, which conducted a successful pilot program in Malibu over the past year for the collection and recycling of food waste from restaurants. The participants in the voluntary program included 12 restaurants, such as Duke’s, Andy’s, Café Habana and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf; more than 200 tons of food waste have been collected so far.
Casey Zweig, the City’s environmental programs specialist, introduced the program. The spokesperson for UWS, Gabriel Chavez, said the pilot program was a learning process.
“We learned we had to put the restaurant’s name on each bin to make sure they weren’t contaminating the food waste (with other kinds of waste), like foil packages or rubber gloves,” Chavez explained. They also realized they had to collect the food waste six days per week, and wash out the bin containers each time.
The food waste was recycled in a special processing plant into compost or mulch. Some of it was put through an anaerobic digestion process that turned the methane off-gases into an alternative fuel.
UWS is considering various “upcycling” programs — recycling before the food even becomes waste. In other words, they’re considering having restaurants take unused foods like day-old bagels and donate them to local food banks. He said the state is making it easier for restaurants to avoid liability issues in this regard.
Chavez said the pilot program also taught them the amount of waste is decreased substantially once food is separated out, and that the non-food waste is much cleaner and more sanitary. Since rodents are unable to chew through the kinds of bins UWS uses, and since the whole process is more sanitary, restaurants no longer have to use rodenticides and pesticides.
He ended with a compliment for the city: “No one has taken this [law] by the horns like Malibu has, and letting restaurants know they need to have a program because of AB 1826.”
