California law SB 1383 requires hundreds of jurisdictions to make deep cuts in how much organic waste ends up in landfills. But progress on procuring products made from that material has been slow.

 Starting this year, jurisdictions must meet 100% of those procurement targets. Though after one round of pandemic-era reprieves from the ambitious initial rollout, jurisdictions have received another. In late September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 2346 to help put procurement targets closer within reach.

StopWaste, a joint powers authority in Alameda County that serves 14 Bay Area jurisdictions, sponsored the bill and it passed without opposition. The measure grew out of a working group that StopWaste convened in 2022 composed of jurisdictions, composters and other stakeholders. The group discussed strategies for achieving the state’s procurement targets.

The need for such work was highlighted last summer, when the JPA conducted a statewide survey that showed slow progress toward meeting procurement targets. Only roughly half of the 100 respondents said they had met their targets in 2023.

Plus, composters and brokers had gone from serving the needs of farmers and landscapers to also helping jurisdictions reach procurement targets and “ were worried about not having enough compost to meet both of these demands,” said Kelly Schoonmaker, a senior program manager with StopWaste.

Impact on jurisdictions

After SB 1383’s passage, CalRecycle created a formula for jurisdictions to determine how much product made from diverted organics they would need to procure for the state to meet its goal of diverting 75% of all organics from disposal.

The formula was based on statewide waste characterization data. But, said Schoonmaker, “you can't do one size fits all in California” because “it's a very diverse state.” The blanket formula meant that jurisdictions with high organics diversion rates were compensating for those with lower ones. For example, Berkeley and others in Alameda County were early adopters of organics recycling, and therefore they already send less methane-producing materials to landfill than other jurisdictions.

Now, under AB 2346, jurisdictions can set per capita targets based on a local waste characterization study. Jurisdictions that have the highest diversion rates will see the biggest drop in their procurement requirements, in terms of percentage. Because the formula still will be based on population, larger cities would see bigger reductions in the amount of tons they’re required to divert relative to small cities with similar diversion rates.

“Our hope is that this change — allowing the use of local waste data to calculate a potentially lower target — will provide a tangible incentive to increase diversion, and help us reach our statewide methane reduction goals faster,” Schoonmaker said via email.

The measure also lets jurisdictions put the following categories toward their waste product procurement totals:

• Investments into equipment or infrastructure development
• Compost produced from community gardens
• Compost from vermicomposting, also known as worm composting, and mushroom composting
• Mulch from tree trimming and recovered edible food (up to 10% of procurement totals)

The law also allows jurisdictions to set five-year procurement targets, rather than annual targets, in order to account for fluctuating product availability.

Because the bill is moving through rulemaking, Schoonmaker said it’s too soon to say how much a jurisdiction’s procurement target might shift based on these changes. But she said it will lower the targets for jurisdictions with mature organics infrastructure. 

In a letter advocating for the bill, San Francisco Environment Department Director Tyrone Jue wrote that including community composting programs offers numerous benefits. Those include getting residents engaged and excited about composting as well as ensuring more compost will be made and used locally, which reduces transportation emissions. Jue and other AB 2346 supporters also hope to see community composting programs expand and teach more residents how to keep contaminants out of organics streams. 

In addition to boosting organics recycling, SB 1383 also set a statewide goal of cutting edible food waste 20% by 2030. Jurisdictions have to use their operating budgets, grant programs or other pathways to fund edible food recovery efforts. 

AB 2346 allows jurisdictions to put spending on edible food recovery programs, generally run by nonprofits, toward their procurement requirements.

Monica White, sustainability manager at Edgar and Associates, said that the language in the final bill may fail to move the needle in terms of supporting food recovery programs because of the value it assigns recovered edible food. 

”We were hoping that the equivalencies would be based off of a greenhouse gas comparison,” said White. Determining that value was untenably difficult, she said, so the final AB 2346 text includes a one-for-one conversion factor between organic waste product and edible food.  

”If we look at the finances behind that, it totally devalues food. It is so much cheaper to buy a ton of mulch than it is to fund a ton of food going from a generator to the nonprofit,” she said.

White hopes that this disparity might be addressed in AB 2346 rulemaking or through future legislative efforts. Schoonmaker agreed more needs to be done, but this change has at least started conversations with CalRecycle about the need to better support food recovery.

Effects on composters

SB 1383 is intended to create new opportunities for compost, but local factors in California make that complicated.

Agriculture is the largest market for compost in California, and demand from farmers peaks in the fall. This means some composters run out of product late in the year. Farmers can now get compost for far less than they used to pay, thanks to the procurement requirements subsidizing the cost, yet Schoonmaker noted that’s “not moving new compost.”

Being able to put compost from community gardens toward procurement totals may not make a huge difference in total available supply — at least not right away.

Martin Bourque, executive director of Berkeley’s Ecology Center, said allowing sourcing from vermicomposting operations “could help worm composting to get a foothold and take off.” He said this offers a more biologically active and nutrient-dense product, compared to conventional compost.

Agromin, which processes more than a million tons of organics each year and services more than 200 communities in California, has a program to help jurisdictions meet SB 1383 requirements. 

CEO Bill Camarillo thinks AB 2346 grew out of cities’ inability to figure out how to pay for procurement and improve outreach. He worries that it dilutes the intent of SB 1383. Camarillo pointed to allowing jurisdictions to put tree trimming toward up to 10% of procurement totals. Cities generally mulch the material, he said, rather than send it to landfills.

Schoonmaker said the stakeholder group wanted to include this option in the bill because “it’s still a great practice with climate benefits that can be expanded.” 

Despite his concern about tree-trimming mulch, Camarillo said he’s excited about other parts of the bill. This includes more opportunities to work with community-scale composting programs, which he believes often fail because they’re not financially sustainable.

He said Agromin is piloting a program with community gardens through which the company is providing compost processing specifications and guidelines on factors such as what types of materials should be accepted.

The goal, he said, is to “create a program to help community-scale composters to learn how to do what we do at large scale.” And Agromin would be a ready buyer and reseller of the resulting compost products.