CSAC Bulletin Article

CalRecycle Rulemaking Impacts Local Government

April 19, 2018

As part of its SB 1383 Organic Waste Diversion Rulemaking, CALRecycle is proposing to include regulations for city and county procurement targets of compost and/or renewable natural gas developed from diverted organic waste. CalRecycle has developed a methodology to develop targets per jurisdiction. Targets for local governments would be based on total organics disposal per employee. The total city and county share would equate to roughly 10 percent of the total statewide organics diversion target for 2025. CalRecycle held a stakeholder meeting on April 16, to share its initial concepts for these proposed regulations with various stakeholders including advocates for local government and waste haulers.

Under the proposed regulations, each city and county in the state would receive an annual Recovered Organic Waste Product Target from CalRecycle. This target number would be generated by multiplying the annual disposal of organic waste per employee (which CalRecycle has determined to be 1.29 tons per employee based on a 2014 waste characterization study) times the number of local government employees in that city or county to determine the amount of compost or renewable biogas transportation fuel that each city or county must procure.

Cities and Counties would be limited only to the procurement of organic compost and/or renewable natural gas generated for use as transportation fuel in order to meet these procurement targets. The proposed regulations would allow for local governments to procure the compost and/or renewable gas directly or require service providers and haulers to acquire or use these organically derived materials through the use of contracts or franchise agreements. Targets will be developed and enacted in 2022 and assessed every five years.

After the first cycle, targets per jurisdiction will reflect and take into account previous procurement levels achieved. There is no specific enforcement component related to this provision, but will be captured under the broader enforcement of the 1383 regulations. In addition, the regulations would require cities and counties to have a recycled paper product procurement rate of 75 percent of all paper products purchased containing 30 percent postconsumer recycled content. This rate is identical to the State Agency Buy Recycled Campaign program which applies to state agencies.

CalRecycle is holdings two workshops on the new proposed regulations. Please see the story below for more information about them.

If you have any questions or would like to send feedback on these proposed regulations please email Nick Cronenwett at NCRonenwett@counties.org or Cara Martinson at Cmartinson@counties.org.

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