San Francisco Bay Area: Inspiration for California's Organic Waste Regulations, with Both Recycling Experience and Limitations

Editor's Note: This article is part of a series exploring the market effects of California's SB 1383 regulations.Series ReportPart Five.

California's most significant waste policy shift in recent years offers multiple compliance pathways, but its primary blueprint comes from one region—the San Francisco Bay Area. While some jurisdictions in the southern part of the state are relatively new to offering full organic waste collection services, many in the north have been doing so for years, even decades. Except for certain programs in cities like San Jose, jurisdictions in the region primarily use a source-separated collection model.

The maximum diversion potential of this approach has been questioned, prompting at least one city to explore additional sorting of its residual waste, but program operators say it is the best path. Unlike many of their counterparts elsewhere in California who are busy launching comprehensive collection programs, these operators are more focused on enhancing edible food recovery and waste reduction efforts to further optimize existing systems. Local officials from four regions shared how their programs have evolved over time and their experiences preparing for SB 1383 over the past year.

San Francisco

The Bay Area is known for having the oldest curbside organic waste programs in the state, with San Francisco's program often held up as a model. "When (state regulators) wrote the regulations, they used San Francisco as the model, so basically they are requiring the whole state to do what we are doing," said Jack Macy, Senior Zero Waste Coordinator for the San Francisco Department of the Environment, during a webinar hosted by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition.

The city first piloted curbside organic waste collection in the late 1990s, rolled it out citywide in 2000, and made it mandatory in 2009. Residents are provided with kitchen pails and compostable liner bags for convenience; the city's standard collection configuration now offers larger bins for recyclables and organics than for landfill trash. Recology, the city's sole franchised collector, transports approximately 550 tons of organics daily to the Blossom Valley Organics North facility in Vernalis, outside the city, for composting. The company estimates that San Francisco's program has kept about 2.5 million tons of organic material out of landfills over its operation.

Recology began using cameras in 2019 to monitor contamination from certain large waste generators, as part of an ordinance update that year, allowing the city to assess fees as needed. But ensuring high-quality participation remains an ongoing challenge. Although SB 1383 regulations stipulate that the average organic content in gray bins must not exceed 25% (when using a performance-based collection model), the state's star city does not always meet this standard. Macy said some communities perform better than others. He confirmed San Francisco will seek compliance through the standard collection model, but he also believes the city could potentially meet the performance-based threshold.

"Over 99% of our properties are compliant and have adequate service for organic collection, which includes some exceptions we allow, such as very small businesses that demonstrate they don't generate organics or have arranged to share organic service with other entities," Macy wrote in an email. "We don't track ongoing set-out participation rates, nor do we measure citywide total recovery rates because it's very complex and expensive to do so. We estimate, based on some characterization work done recently, that we recover over 75% of the organics citywide."

Recology spokesperson Robert Reed declined to answer whether the company believes a 75% organic diversion rate is achievable, nor did he respond to questions about whether the company believes additional sorting of gray bins is needed to meet SB 1383 goals. Macy said he believes sorting the residual mixed waste stream to capture more materials is valuable—San Francisco has considered it too—but only if it occurs after the source-separated collection process.

"I think we can continue to do better, and there's never enough outreach," he said. Macy cited population turnover, multi-family buildings, a diverse multilingual population, and a large and varied commercial sector as particular challenges. "We have a long track record, but we don't necessarily have all the answers."

As a sign of the complexity of SB 1383 compliance, even for jurisdictions that have been operating for years, Macy said the city has been working hard to prepare for other elements of the regulations, such as organic waste product procurement requirements, edible food recovery, and record-keeping. Last month, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a law requiring certain commercial generators, such as restaurants and grocery stores, to recover edible food. The goal is to build on existing efforts, aided by state grants, to provide an estimated 7 million pounds of edible food annually to hungry people.

Oakland

Neighboring Oakland is also a frequently cited jurisdiction with years of organic waste collection, but its approach differs from San Francisco's. The city has offered residential yard waste collection since the mid-1990s and began allowing food scraps to be mixed in starting in 2005. On the commercial side, source-separated organics collection also became available in the late 1990s. Residential materials are composted at the WM Altamont Hill landfill in eastern Alameda County using an aerated static pile composting system, while commercial materials go to a new WM facility in San Leandro, often cited as one of the most expensive of its kind in the state.

Before SB 1383 was passed, after decades of source-separated collection of food and yard waste, the city decided in a 2014 contract renewal to build a mixed waste processing facility to further sort landfill-bound trash. This decision sparked controversy, including litigation, partly because opponents argued such a backstop would undermine educational efforts for source separation. WM ultimately won the contract and built an expensive new MRF in San Leandro to sort landfill trash for material recovery. The facility is part of the Davis Street Resource Recovery Complex, which also houses a fully enclosed composting facility that processes Oakland's commercial organics.

Peter Slote, Oakland's Solid Waste and Recycling Program Manager, said the contract was designed to cover municipal solid waste and organics. A separate recycling contract, now managed by California Waste Solutions, aims to ensure the winners of the MSW and organics contracts don't compete with themselves on diversion tonnage. The facility is still in its early stages, having only initially opened last year, but according to the company and the city, it is capturing more materials. Slote said he does not expect the facility to seek "high diversion" status under SB 1383 regulations, nor will Oakland seek a performance-based compliance program for certain types of mixed waste collection. WM said it is too early to share specific results from the Davis Street facility regarding compost quality or other factors, but multiple company representatives described the facility as unique.

"If your public policy goal is to maximize diversion rates, then using this technology is great," said Alex Oseguera, the company's California Director of Government Affairs. "But in most cases, if you're far from major urban centers and densely populated areas, can a facility like this utilize this technology? It would be more difficult to pay for such a facility."

When asked whether Oakland resorted to sorting residual waste because its source-separated collection program had reached a performance ceiling, the city did not provide specific participation data. Instead, Slote pointed to the declining landfill disposal trend as a key indicator of whether the approach is working long-term, and reiterated the city's strategy. "Our three main strategies are source separation, source separation, and source separation," he said.

Alameda County

Other Bay Area jurisdictions that consider their collection programs more mature are also looking for ways to keep moving forward. StopWaste—a joint powers authority representing 17 agencies in Alameda County, including Oakland—has adjusted its approach in recent years to support this mission. "If you're focusing on it after you've used things up, it's going to be difficult no matter what," said Jeff Becerra, then-Communications Manager for StopWaste, who recently retired. "We've consciously shifted more toward waste prevention, so that basically you have less waste to deal with at the end of its life."

StopWaste works with residents, businesses, and schools on initiatives like reuse and repair through a series of grants, technical assistance programs, and other efforts, rather than just recycling. Like other jurisdictions with existing organics programs, StopWaste says its members are more focused on building edible food recovery, procurement, and record-keeping systems. As of this spring, all StopWaste jurisdictions have adopted SB 1383 ordinances, and the agency has also completed a food donation capacity study. Alameda County has banned landfilling plant debris since 2010; in 2020, organics collection became mandatory for commercial and multi-family buildings, with source-separated collection provided for other residents of StopWaste member agencies. According to the agency, while members are not particularly concerned about whether their collection programs comply with SB 1383, StopWaste has no data on its performance. Like Oakland, it monitors landfill disposal trends as a metric.

"Reducing organics going to landfill has been our goal for years, and we really want to find an accurate and manageable way to measure it," Becerra said. "Hopefully within 1383 there will be mechanisms for us to have these conversations with CalRecycle over time."

San Mateo County

For the neighboring South Bayside Waste Management Authority (known as RethinkWaste), how to measure the success of California's ambitious law is a top question. The agency provides operational support to 11 jurisdictions in San Mateo County on the peninsula between San Francisco and San Jose. Since 2010, residents and businesses have had curbside organics collection through a three-bin system serviced by Recology. Until recently, all mixed collected organic material was sent to Republic Services' Newby Island organics facility and Recology's Blossom Valley site to the north for composting. However, even with 12 years of history, the program has not received full endorsement.

"There isn't a lot of food waste in residents' yard waste," said Hilary Gans, Senior Operations and Engineering Manager at RethinkWaste. "Participation in household food waste diversion is very low." As a result, Gans said the gray carts in his area might average more than 25% organics. Recently, the agency installed an OREX press (manufactured by Anaergia) at its facility and sends the pulped material from commercial streams to a nearby wastewater treatment plant for digestion. Gans said this makes sense because the commercial system has almost no green waste and a higher proportion of garbage, which can be difficult for composters.

Given these operational realities, Gans is interested in the concept of high-diversion organic waste processing facilities (which could open possibilities for sorting gray bins), but he is concerned that the way the regulations are written might make it "unachievable" because distinct categories like paper, textiles, and wood are included in the definition of organic waste. Gans said he believes a better strategy would be to designate paper as a recyclable material for blue bin collection, as this is causing confusion in collection and processing planning.

While the regulations technically allow for different approaches, it's clear that three-bin collection is seen as the default option. In Gans's view, modeling the entire state program on San Francisco's organics collection approach may not necessarily yield the desired results for all jurisdictions, because San Francisco is not a typical California city, and he considers it "basically an outlier." Since the primary compliance mechanism of SB 1383 focuses on whether jurisdictions have established collection programs, and the regulations do not require direct measurement of how much organic material ends up in landfills, Gans believes there could be challenges ahead depending on how officials handle the task before them.

"1383 doesn't mandate any quantitative diversion; it just says you need to establish programs, and CalRecycle will monitor whether you have them. If you have them, you're fine," he said. "If cities don't make a good-faith effort, we won't see the diversion we expect, and so organics will continue to go to landfill."

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the timing of events related to Oakland's waste contract awards. The description of the Davis Street Resource Recovery Complex serving the city has also been clarified.

Stay tuned for Part Six, which will conclude this series by exploring what SB 1383 might mean for business models in waste and recycling operations in California and beyond.