Senate Bill 1383 Mandates Composting in California

Erin Levine / 6 minute read

Beginning January 1, 2022 California residents and businesses are now required to compost their food scraps. The new law, passed in 2016, requires that jurisdictions provide collection services for organic materials such as egg shells, banana peels and coffee grounds.

Key Takeaways:

All organic waste is required to be composted by residents and businesses
Food waste currently comprises 20% of solid waste
Food waste creates methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas

The intention of the new legislation is to keep discarded food scraps from entering landfills, where they do not break down, but instead contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. The fact is that landfills are a major source of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 40x more potent and damaging to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. By recovering organic waste, like food scraps and sending these valuable resources to a compost site or to produce energy or biofuel, it greatly reduces the unnecessary methane produced when food is sent to rot in landfills.

Sanitary landfills lack the oxygen needed to allow the organic components in food scraps to break down into a soil amendment or get converted into biofuel or energy. Alternatively, when food scraps are provided with plenty of oxygen (aerobic conditions) and ample water and time, the material will decompose with minimal off-gassing. See Project Drawdown for more details on how tackling food waste can lower carbon emissions.

SB 1383 aims to reduce the short lived greenhouse gases by recovering food scraps and ensuring that the materials are processed into “recovered organic waste.” The goal is that by 2025 the state must cut organic waste from landfills by 75% from 2014 levels or from 23 million tons to 5.7 tons. Food waste currently comprises approximately one fifth of the waste that ends up in landfills.

The new bill also aims to reduce food waste from the start. There will be food recovery options available for edible leftovers before they’re considered “waste.” This could entail grocery stores donating edible food to local food banks or conference centers donating their leftover prepared meals to homeless shelters.

Further, there is another portion of the bill directed at jurisdictions to procure the recovered organic waste once it’s processed, in the form of finished compost, mulch, energy or biofuel. Depending on the jurisdiction’s population, they will be required to use a certain volume of recovered organic waste in their communities or through an allocated end user (i.e. agricultural operations). This is great news for communities that are still using synthetic fertilizers as they will now be encouraged to use nature’s fertilizer, compost!

Since California residents and businesses will become more savvy on properly sorting their food scraps into their organic collection bins (typically the “green bin”), we can anticipate that compostable foodservice ware will be a natural way for many to participate in their compost program. If a jurisdiction allows certified compostable food service ware and it contains food waste, it is a win win for all parties. Here’s why: If food scraps remain in a recyclable package, it contaminates the recycling stream. Alternatively, when food scraps are in a compostable fiber container and it ends up at a commercial compost facility, it has both carbon and nitrogen - the right balance for making high quality compost.

World Centric’s products are designed with end of life in mind and our fully compostable product line is designed to ensure that food scraps will be diverted from a landfill and properly processed into a reusable product.

What a wonderful way for California to kick off 2022. Vermont led the charge by launching a similar program in 2021. We hope other communities enact mandatory composting programs soon. World Centric is excited to see the new regulations take place as they are servicing both people and the planet.