The Anaerobic Digestion Update: Using Operational Efficiency & Better Policy to Solve Current Challenges

EPISODE SLIDESHOW

 

Main picture by Peter O’Connor. Some rights reserved.

 

Transcript: 

State of Biogas Today – Operational Efficiency and the Volume-Driven Approach

 

THE ORGANIC STREAM: So today we’re going to be talking about the state of the anaerobic digestion sector today, and what we need to do in order for the sector to expand and improve, and you both have many great things to say on this matter. But when we were discussing the content of the show together, the key point you both brought up was that the A.D. industry is not focusing enough on optimising operational efficiency in biogas plants. So for our audience, we should start with a simple introductory question. So Jing, can you tell us what operational efficiency is, and what does it look like for A.D. or biogas plants?

 

JING LIU: Well first of all we need to understand the difference between the efficiency and the performance of the operation. Also, I think the efficiency and performance should match the goal of the process – the goal of the operation needs to be clarified. In fact, the goal of the operation might vary. For instance, in the traditional operation for waste and wastewater handling, the goal is to match the discharge standard. However, for renewable energy production, the goal is to maximise the energy production and to insure the profitability by improving the utilisation of the process unit, and increasing the mass and the energy throughput. And there might be conflicts between those two operational goals. So finding a balance is the key. We need to know that it’s seldom the case that plants are designed for optimum performance.

 

TOS: Right, so they’re not always designed with this in mind. And Mario, can you share your thoughts on this as well?

 

MARIO ROSATO: Yes, I have more field experience in this sense, and I can say that an anaerobic digestion plant can be considered optimal if it has been designed to be optimal by producing the maximum amount of methane per cubic meter of digester, and producing the maximum amount of methane per tonne of feedstock fed to the digester. These are usually opposite criterions, because one excludes the other. And at the same time, the plant must be stable enough in its operation – and I mean stable in the sense of maintaining a constant gas production with varying quality and quantity of feedstock, which is quite a tough goal to reach. So this is why a plant, to be optimal, must reach a compromise between these opposite constraints in the management.

 

TOS: Okay so it’s all about compromising, which can be quite tricky. So Mario, if there isn’t a focus on operational efficiency, what is the focus? Can you maybe give us a brief overview of the AD sector today in terms of the trends?

 

MR: Yes. In the European Union and the United States, the trend is to build plants as big as possible. The reason for that is a kind of economic scale. Usually the plant builders say that plants must be very big in order to be stable in operation, which is not completely true. A plant is not more stable or efficient because of its size; the plant is efficient because of its management. The other extreme is India or China, where the policies have lead people to build very small plants, usually at household level. In this case, the plants are poorly managed but nevertheless they are efficient for the scope they have, which is just to produce a bit of energy for household use.

It must be noted that regardless of the different national policies towards big or small-scale plants, there is very little political drive to make the plants efficient. It’s a pity, because a plant, which is not efficient in its operation, regardless of the size, produces a digestate, which is usually used as fertiliser, but if the plant is not efficient enough that digestate is not completely digested. This means it still has a residual methane potential and this residual methane potential means that greenhouse gasses will be emitted to the atmosphere. So the main environmental benefit of anaerobic digestion is being lost because of inefficient management. And on the other side, if you see the management of the plant from the economical point of view, an inefficient process is not extracting all the methane possible from that feedstock, so the result is that the economic performance of an inefficient biogas plant is also poor.

 

TOS: Okay so inefficient management is impacting the profitability of biogas plants – whether they are big or small, as well as the environment and there is very little political drive to change this at the moment. Jing would you agree here?

 

JL: Yes I fully agree, but maybe I should add some additional comments. In my point of view, a big plant does not necessarily have high efficiency, although big biogas plants should have a much higher interest in achieving high efficiency because the economic and performance impact is so big. But unfortunately this is not always the case. The businesses are focused on the plant construction and really little has been done to ensure a better understanding of the process, the process dynamic – basically, how to improve the operation.

So as a consequence, in many cases we treat the biogas digestor or plant as a “black box” machine. People receive unknown substrates and just dump them in, without knowing what they’re putting into the plant – and how can you expect to get an efficient and stable performance without knowing what you’re dealing with? In fact, the A.D. plant should be considered as, for example, a bacterial farm, or living organism – just like an animal farm that requires care and follow up. So we need to really care for the healthy level and growth of the bacteria, make sure they’re in the best condition to be able to convert biomass to bioenergy. So this is the situation. Even though the European biogas industry is considered more advanced in general, I think this also applies to European counties as well. So the situation really applies to the whole biogas sector, which urgently needs to improve.

 

Energy Crops & Other Current Challenges For Anaerobic Digestion Industry

 

TOS: So right now we’re operating without much knowledge of the process itself – and there are a lot of areas that the sector needs to improve on. Mario, you’re quite aware of the issue on the ground, can you share an example of the environmental and economic consequences of our current situation?

 

MR: Yes, I know the Italian biogas market well, and in the Italian reality, the industry does not earn money on making efficient plants or on the engineering of the plants, what actually gives money to the plant builders is the size. That is – the amount of concrete casted, or the amount of steel employed for building the plant. So this means that such gigantism can only be reached for plants which are in the range of a hundred kilowatts to one thousand kilowatts. And these plants are mainly designed for running on corn silage. Corn silage is not necessarily the most sustainable feedstock for making biogas, but it is very stable in its production, and so since said plants are owned by banks and capital groups, this substrate somehow ensures the owner of the plant that he will be able to recover the investment in a certain amount of time and have a certain profitability.

But if we analyse some statistics that have been conducted by an agricultural association in Italy, in this moment ninety percent of the energy produced in such biogas plants comes from the corn silage, and not from the manure. And on the other side, only a small amount of the manure (let’s say about ten percent) is actually being digested. The ninety percent remaining manure is just being thrown to the field without being digested, so the ecological potential of anaerobic digestion is being lost, which is actually polluting the manure before sending it to the field as a fertiliser.

 

TOS: Right, so instead of using the available manure, they’re growing energy crops, which goes against the notion of sustainable distributed energy and closed loop systems.

 

MR: Sure. Another aspect is that growing corn requires a lot of fossil fuel input for pumping water, etc. So producing electricity with biogas means that about sixty percent of the total potential energy of the biogas itself is being lost as heat. This energy lost as heat must be added to the energy put to the cultivation of the corn. That means that altogether, the amount of Co2 emissions to the atmosphere is higher compared to other renewable energies.

Finally, these plants that are owned by banks and capital groups were built with the purpose of benefitting state subsidies. So it’s actually the Italian citizen who is paying for the subsidies for renewable energies, and this means an increase in the cost of the electric bill; and a kind of unfair social treatment of the resources, because that excess money being paid by the citizen is going to banks and capital groups which sometimes are foreign and they then take the money out of the country. So the volume driven approach has brought, at least in Italy, an increase in greenhouse gas emissions, a decrease in biodiversity, and to the rise of citizen committees who are protesting against biogas plants – even those plants that are run correctly.

 

Designing the Anaerobic Digestion Plants of the Future

 

TOS: So this approach is really doing damage to the whole industry, the environment and the local citizens in Italy. So clearly something has to change, and we’ll be focusing on this change now. Jing – can you tell me your thoughts on what we should be doing – where should our focus be, what are the challenges we face, and how should we approach planning and designing A.D. plants in the future?

 

JL: Well this is rather a big question! Although I mentioned that the A.D. industry has focused on plant construction and not on improving the operation, I want to emphasis that this doesn’t mean construction isn’t important. It is super important to make sure that design, construction and operation are tightly connected to each other. I consider the following challenges or aspects that are important to address:

The right technical knowledge and facility that’s well able to increase the efficiency of the plant and consequently lead to a more profitable operation. The right feedstock is super important. Feedstock is the fuel for the A.D. plant. Without knowing the feedstock or how to properly select and manage feedstock, it’s hardly possible to enough good quality fuel to power the A.D. plant. I mean, this is the number one priority in many cases.

The second aspect is having the right plant design and construction. In reality, this is not always the case. Imagine that the steering wheel is locked when you drive a car – how can you turn your car? If there’s an object in front of you, you will hit the object. That’s sometimes the situation in the A.D. plant. So the future biogas plant and design should meet the new operational demand.

The third challenge, or aspect, that I’d like to bring up is that we really need to have the right instrument, process optimations, and supervision control. Nowadays, many A.D. plants lack basic instrumentation needed to understand the status of the operation. In the control world we say, “If you don’t understand the process, you are never able to control the process”. With too little process information it’s impossible to steer the process towards optimum conditions. So there is an urgent need and we need to get more information and analyse more.

The last aspect that I’m thinking about is having sufficient process knowledge and competence of the operator. Again, even if you get all the infrastructure – the right fuel, the right plant, the right instrument – somebody still has to manage, or drive, it. And this requires knowledge and competence of the operator. Only in this case can the industry move forward.

Quite often I use two examples. In one I refer to the A.D. plant as a bacterial farm, and in the other I refer to it as a car. A car is like the biogas plant itself, and you need a good car. The fuel is like the feedstock, and you really need the right feedstock to feed into the plant. And the driver…even if you have the best car and the best fuel, the car doesn’t move without a skilled driver. It’s the same for the biogas plant. You need to have experienced, knowledgeable operator and process engineer to steer the operations.

 

TOS: So with the right technology, knowledge and training, AD plants can greatly improve their operation. I’d like to discuss an example of how exactly this can work on the ground, and the benefits it can have. Now, Mario, you were involved in rescuing an AD plant in Italy – where the owner had invested millions in trying to figure out what was going wrong with their plant. The plant was rated as 1 mega watt, but only reached 60% in its of its capacity even though they were feeding it with more than 50 tons/day of corn and triticale silage. So Mario you were brought in to help figure out what the problem was, and – tell us what you did to find the answer?

 

MR: So most of the time, the plant is being fed with fifty tonnes per day of corn silage, which is a lot of money if you consider the fact that corn silage is a valuable feedstock. And the problem was easily solved with just eighteen thousand euros. This amount was used to install a small laboratory in the facility. I trained the workers of the plant – who are not engineers or biologists, they are just manual workers. And this plant, I must say, was under-dimensioned, so I focused the strategy on producing the maximum amount of methane given the size of the plant. So I trained the workers to check the potential of the corn silage with the laboratory. We did some experiments with different mixtures of silage, cow dung, chicken dung, and some minerals that tend to activate the biological activity of the bacteria.

So after a couple of months of tests with the instruments, we identified where the problem was. It was a lack in minerals, which was caused by using corn and triticale as feedstock. By adding these minerals – which are just mineral fertilisers that can be bought in any agricultural shop – the owner of the plant was able to bring the electrical production from a hundred and ten kilowatts to nine hundred and ninety-nine kilowatts, which is the legal limit allowed for that category of plant in Italy. So since then it’s been more than one year and the plant has been running stably. And I noticed a secondary situation as well, that the people working in that plant were highly motivated. You can imagine that going around with a dumper or bulldozer, loading silage from the trench and loading that in the digester is not a very interesting or amusing job – it’s quite a dead-end job. These people are now motivated because they’re not manual workers anymore, they are laboratorists. They are in charge of a very sophisticated instrument. Now any time they do something, they know why they are doing it, which is quite important because they are ready to assume risk and responsibility. So that is a side-effect that was quite positive for the operation of the plant and demonstrates that professionalisation of the operators is of utmost important to bring the plant to an optimum working condition.

 

Policies & Government Action Needed to Support Biogas & Renewable Energy

 

TOS: So it’s really a shift in perspective – that the AD plant is a biological organism, or farm, and the workers are laboratorists/biologists rather than just operators. So that’s a great example of how this can work…

So we’ve covered a lot of the challenges and what needs to be addressed for the sector to be successful. But let’s talk about the bigger picture. For example – when we talk about increasing efficiency, it’s hard to justify increasing the quality and quantity of the output if there is no support or market for them. So Jing, I’ll put this to you: what key steps do we need to take for the sector to move forward in terms of policy and political support?

 

JL: If you look at nowadays, biogas has been generating quote an interest in the last decade, in particular we see the transition from using A.D. technology for only waste handling towards combined waste handling and renewable energy production. Even though right now the price of the energy is low, in the long we all know that the basing our economy on fossil fuels is not sustainable – not only because of the cost, which will increase as there’s less and less fossil fuel and will create the greenhouse gas effect – but it will also have a negative impact on national security. Fossil fuels are not always equally distributed, so there are national security issues as well. So that’s also the reason why we’re coming out with renewable energy, and so on. But just in recent years the renewable energy is not as developed as it should be because of the return of investment – maybe it takes too long, and so on.

In my point of view, moving from fossil fuel to renewable is a decision of the politicians, because we are in the transition based on the energy sources of one of very few big players towards renewable – which should be operated and managed by many ´, many local players. Locally produced, locally utilised, and spreading out the risk and so on. And this is actually a political decision – it’s not only marketing, it is a decision. And that’s one aspect.

In my point of view, the market competition is also a bit unfair. Indeed, renewable energy is still in the relatively early stage and the market maturity and business model maturity is not as well established as it should be, compared to fossil fuel. And people say that there is too much support or too many subsidies for renewable energy, but in fact actually, the fossil fuel, I think, is getting much more support from the government or from the big players.

So my message is: we know the current energy system is not sustainable. We need to move from the fossil fuel economy to renewable – there’s no doubt about that. It’s for our future generations. And that’s actually a decision for the government, and government need to provide infrastructure and policy support to facilitate, grow and mature the business and help renewable companies move in that direction. It is also important to make sure there will be many, many local players involved in renewable energy production – it’s not one or a few big players. And that’s very important because that’s a great way to create jobs, which is another big benefit. So I think, once again, that this is a political decision and without the right political support, this industry will find it hard to move forward.

 

TOS: Great answer, Jing, really interesting points. Mario, what are your thoughts on this?

 

MR: In my personal opinion, the policies should incentivise the use of anaerobic digestion mainly for waste management. In that case the subsidies should go to those who demonstrate the lower greenhouse gas emissions. The biggest value of anaerobic digestion is the ecological value, apart of producing energy. It’s a way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, and to produce a fertiliser that means saving fossil fuel energy for the production of chemical fertilisers. So these repercussions have an enormous value from the political point of view. Compared to other energies, anaerobic digestion is probably the best technology that allows a complete circular economy.

On the other side, the education is also very important. In order to drive a truck, you need to have a special license and undergo a lot of exams, which is absolutely logical because if you don’t know how to drive a truck, you can cause a lot of accidents. How can you explain, then, that nobody has ever thought about imposing the need of having a license for managing a biogas plant? An average Italian biogas plant has the power of ten trucks, and the damage it can cause to the environment if not correctly managed is enormous – it’s really a big environmental threat. So education of the operators of the plants is of utmost importance in my opinion. And this is an aspect that the policy makers have not considered until now.

The other aspect is that a biogas plant, if correctly and rationally managed and run with adequate instruments that can measure the methane potential of the feedstock, can be run on any feedstock – that means many residual feedstocks. And this is the most sustainable way to obtain energy, rather than cultivating energy crops. So this is another aspect that in many countries in the European Union is missing. Many policies are still pushing the cultivation of energy crops instead of the production of energy with waste through anaerobic digestion.

 

JL: I was thinking about adding one thing. I fully agree that the education and knowledge transfer is critical on the professional level, but I think also it’s very important to increase the public awareness – not just for the people but also politicians. There has been an increasing scare, you can say, about A.D. People say, “Oh, A.D. and biogas process is too complex”. It is a complex process, but it can be well managed. It is a naturally, existing biochemical process, and what we need is just to intensify it and make it more efficient. And with the right education and increased public awareness, I think we can utilise this gift from nature and get the most out of it.

 

Seldom can you find technology that can handle all kinds of biodegradable waste and stabilise it (which we need to do anyhow because waste is always there), and at the same time generate renewable energy. There’s no other technology that I can think of that’s comparable. So what we need is education and knowledge transfer to make sure that we see the benefit, we know how to operate it, and we create a good policy to support the development. Then, with this all in place, the right technology and good technology will naturally move to the sectors and be utilised, and consequently we will have much more profitable, economic, feasible and efficient process – and we can gain the benefits from the A.D. process.

 

Interview End.

 

TOS: That was Jing Liu and Mario Rosato sharing their insights and experiences on the state of the AD sector today – and giving us some very interesting points to think about.

 

From the discussion, we learned that first of all, we are not prioritising efficiency in plant operation today and this is having a negative impact both for the plant and for the environment. We need to build plants with efficiency in mind, invest in the right technology and in education and knowledge transfer systems so that plants can be run stably and efficiently, and feedstock can be managed properly. Education and understanding seemed to be key for both our guests. As Jing described – if the A.D. plant is a car, without a skilled driver in the front seat, the car will go nowhere.

In terms of impacts on the environment – policy played a huge role in our discussion today as well. We heard from both Jing and Mario that policy which favours large-scale plants and the use of energy crops – as opposed to using locally abundant feedstocks and closed-loop systems – has lead to higher greenhouse gas emissions, a reduction of biodiversity and even a bad public image in the case of Italy, for example. A political decision needs to be made to support renewable energy and more small and local players, in order to build a truly sustainable AD sector, and plants should be rewarded for low greenhouse gas emissions.

So, we have a lot of work to do, it seems, to get where we want to be. Let’s make it happen!

 

Briefing from Event: Ecomondo November 2015, Rimini Italy

 

TOS: The Organic Stream team were at Ecomondo last month to take part and report on the event. For those who don’t know, Ecomondo is the largest showcase in the Euro-Mediterranean area for advanced and sustainable technology for processing and recycling all kinds of waste. The event takes place in Rimni, Italy and was four days of conferences with over a thousand international speakers, and an expo with 1,200 companies taking part.

This year the focus was on the green economy and how Italy is currently focusing on boosting the green economy in the country. The key message seemed to be that building a green and circular economy is possible today, and that they will play a central role in all industry sectors. Of course, there are challenges to face, however the companies and enterprises attending the expo were eager to find and demonstrate solutions – showing that there is an appetite for change.

This year saw the introduction of new areas to focus in the circular economy context areas – particularly food, biorefineries, and integrated water cycle management.

 

The generation of waste in the food system was a popular topic – as was the conference “Towards a zero-waste food chain: enabling technologies for the sustainability of the food industry and waste management in a perspective of circular economy”. Many different topics were discussed: the importance of separate collection schemes for organic materials, charges for pay as you throw systems, improving process efficiency in the food-chain, and strategies to reduce raw material losses. During this conference, we caught up with a few key figures to discuss the main points of interest at the event, and get more of a sense of the Italian situation.

We caught Marco Ricci – Chairman of the Working Group on Biological Treatment of Waste at the International Solid Waste Association, and former guest of our talk show – and he filled us in on the importance of biowaste recycling for Italy, and the challenges they’re currently facing.

 

MARCO RICCI: Italy source separates roughly fourty-two percent of all municipal solid waste, and biowaste is the key element to reach this result. One of the challenges is to expand the separate collection scheme of biowaste to the southern region where there is a lack of composting and anaerobic digesition infrastructure and where the separate collection schemes are realised spot-wise and not on a general area. The other point is that we had a recent report by the Italian environmental agency, which shows that intensive recycling schemes for municipal solid waste, including biowaste and especially food waste, are highly cost competitive to traditional solutions, which just rely on low recycling rates and high rates of landfilling and disposal.

 

TOS: Exciting news from the report that helps to support separate collection, which many municipalities in Italy have been having great success with as well.

Now, how to manage and the resources in rural areas was another key theme, and something that we sometimes tend to neglect when we discuss sustainability. Here is Fabio Fava, coordinator of the scientific committee for Ecomondo, sharing his thoughts on the matter:

 

FABIO FAVA: There are for sure new areas on which, in my view, we should work more in the future. Over sixty percent of the lands that we have in Europe are rural areas in which the environment is different from more populated ones. Often we are not exploiting the potential of this area in an efficient manner. So we need strategies and research and innovation tailored for promoting small industrial activities in this area – industrial means agricultural companies also – that are exploiting in the proper way the biodiversity that are specific for those areas.

 

TOS: There was much to cover over the course of the event, but particularly interesting was our chat with Andrea Miorandi – Ex-Mayor of Rovereto City, who implemented a separate collection scheme there. Mr. Miorandi was keen to stress the importance of citizen engagement in implementing organics recycling schemes, and shared some inspiring words that really summed-up the feeling at Ecomondo – that we’re ready to change.

 

ANDREA MIORANDI: The biggest challenge is to make citizens be participants in a good project. Citizen awareness and participation are the biggest challenges for these projects. Citizens must become protagonists even before the local administration or local authority. And we started a communication program that is both precise and locally-based. Well-informed citizens are enabled to participate in separate collection recycling. Citizens also need to be rewarded and local authorities need to thank citizens once expected results are reached.

Citizens must understand that their power in sorting waste end up a good result in recycling for a better future and as an investment for the future of their children. I do suggest that other mayors not fear to introduce revolution in the scheme and demand for changing its habits regarding waste collection. Citizens are ready. New generations fully understand how important it is to preserve the environment.

 

TOS: So that’s it for our round-up of the Ecomondo 2015 highlights, and for our episode today. I hope you enjoyed the show! For a longer briefing from Economdo, head over to our Events page where you will find resources, pictures and video briefings from the key figures we spoke to.

 

End.

Going Zero Waste: Implementing Organics Diversion at Stadiums, Venues & Events

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode we explore the work involved in organising, planning and putting in place an organics diversion program for events with our guest, Leslie Lukacs. As founder and principal of L2 Environmental (California, USA), Leslie has spent many years organising zero waste policies at various types of events and venues. She tells us about her experiences, how to work with local composters and source the right serviceware, how to approach educating staff and the public, how to deal with common challenges, and much more.

 

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EPISODE SLIDESHOW

 

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TRANSCRIPT

 

Making an Event Zero Waste

 

Q: Can you tell me what goes into making an event zero waste – what it’s about and what you do to make this happen?

Leslie Lukacs: Yeah, we usually get involved with the event right at the beginning so that we’re part of the planning team. We create a plan to get to zero waste and we work with all the different groups that are organising the event – from the event promoter, to sponsorship, to volunteers…And then we also order equipment, like the type of recycling and composting bins the event will need. We do any training for exhibitors or food vendors. Then we set up systems to collect the materials for either recycling, composting or reuse. And one of the big items that is reused is the food at the end of the event, so we make sure that we partner with local non-profits or some time of food bank for homeless shelters to make sure that any leftover food goes back out to the community instead of the landfill.

Q: What are you usually aiming for, in terms of diversion rates?

LL: So for us when we plan a zero waste event, our goal is to get a ninety percent or better, and so the main thing that goes into that is designing the event to go for zero waste, you can’t just go to an event and just recycling and collect materials on the backend, you really have to plan for your event to be zero waste.

Q: What happens generally with the rest of the food waste?

LL: Yeah, so in designing a zero waste event, you have to design for zero waste. So you have to make sure that the materials that you use, or the items that are being used and sold at the event are compostable and recyclable. So when we go to zero waste, we typically have a two-bin system – one bin for the recyclables and one bin for the organics – because we make sure all the vendors are using maybe compostable products and we’re really minimizing the waste that’s in the event in the first place. So for the organics, vendors might have used compostable plates and cups and utensils – and all that gets mixed in with the organic material, like the food. And yes, that material goes to a composting site.

 

Compostable Plastics and Reusable Servceware: Challenges & Solutions

 

Q: And you mention compostable plastics here. We did an episode on the show not too long about the standards in compostable plastics, and the challenges we face at the moment, as standards do not always represent what composters are dealing with on the ground.

You make sure to use BPI certified plastics when you’re using compostable plastics – but not all composting sites will accept the plastics as the rate they decompose can be at odds with their composting rate, so you have to check with your composting facility and be careful what plastics you go for.  So you face challenges here for using compostable plastics…

LL: Yeah, and it’s confusing for the public because it’s a new product out on the market in terms of what they’re used to seeing. And it looks and feels like plastic to them as well, and it’s easy for event attendees to put that material into a recycling bin thinking it’s just regular plastic. And then there’s also a challenge on the back-end if those recyclables are going to a material recovery facility; sorters at a material recovery facility also get confused if it’s plastic or compostable. So if we have to use that material then marketing and messaging is very important. One thing we do is have a green bar around the compostable product that says “composting” so that it’s more clear to the public and to the waste sorters that this material should be composted instead of recycled.

Q: If you were setting up an event, and the local facilities won’t accept the compostable plastics you’re looking to use – what do you do then?

LL: You know, we would actually love to see reuse. The compostable are just another single-use, disposable product at the end of the day, and there are some possible benefits to that, but the reality is that it’s just another disposable product. And we have demonstrated at large-scale events – maybe ten or twenty thousand people – where actually we have a reuse system with plates and cups and utensils. It’s a deposit-based system, where when they go to a food vendor, they’re actually given a reusable plate and cup and fork for deposit. And we’ve done deposits anywhere from one US dollar to five US dollars.

And when they’re done eating, we have these buckets and stations all around the food service area, and they can just put their plates and cups in the buckets there, and we have an attendant who will give them the refund back. And if, for some reason, they don’t put the item back or they take the item, at least we’re left with some funding to go replenish the supply of plates and cups and forks. And for some events, like some on-site, multiple-day music festivals, we’ll do washing stations as well where there’s a crew, and that’s part of the service or what the event is paying for – that we’ll be washing the dishes right on-site.

 

Preparing A Zero Waste Strategy for Different Types of Events

 

Q: When we talk about events, we’re talking about festivals, music festivals, arenas, fairs and so on, and as someone who has worked with all these different types of events – would the approach be different for each type of event, or is there a basic blueprint that you follow for all of them?

LL: Your approach changes event-to-event, and it can even change from the same type of an event, because each facility is unique and each area is unique, and so I’ve set-up zero waste programs for major stadiums for sixty, seventy or eighty thousand people, down to small community festivals, like music festivals or cultural festivals, and multiple-day festivals – so they’re all vary unique. If you can control what’s being purchased for the event, then it’s a lot easier.

So let’s take a stadium for example, where people have to buy a ticket to get in and they can only buy the products that are sold in that stadium. And then it’s much easier to control how to recycle and compost if you can control the products they’re buying. But if it’s like a street festival where it’s open to the public, then that’s a lot more difficult because they can bring in their coffee cup, or something that you haven’t really planned for that is just destined for the landfill because of the type of product it is – like baby diapers. So sometimes there are various challenges within each type of event, so we really have to understand the event to design the correct type of program.

Q: And would you say street festivals would be the most challenging out of all the ones you’ve worked on?

LL: Yeah, I think parades are…actually, I’ve never done a zero waste parade, and I’ve worked with one community who has a famous parade called the Rose Parade in Pasadena on New Years every year. And I just don’t know the way to work with the parade, because in a parade like that, people spend the night on the streets the night before and it’s a big deal for the community. So yeah, those are harder ones – you know, street festivals where it’s open to the public provide a little bit more challenges.

And there’s just different behaviour at different types of events: like I’ve also worked with performing art centres, and the behaviour is that you might have your drink, or you might bring something into the theatre, but you carry it back out with you. Whereas a stadium at a football game, the behaviour is that you just leave whatever you used or consumed right there on the ground. So you have to be aware of different behaviour so you can, again, design the right type of program.

Q: I’d like you to share how exactly you go about making an event zero waste. Can you talk me through the first steps?

LL: Sure. First we work with the event organiser, and we ask for a list of the types of food vendors that he’s going to have, so we can understand the number of booths and the type of food being served, and if exhibitors are going to be generating single use products – like, for example, a bag of chips, in which the material the chips come in isn’t recyclable or compostable. So we try and identify problematic products first, and if the event does want to go to zero waste, they have to take it very seriously, because we need everybody’s help. And so sometimes what we do is we have the vendors sign an agreement that they are going to use products that are compostable and recyclable, and that they’re going to help us with this zero waste program.

With some events they’ve even gone so far as putting in the contract language that if you don’t support the zero waste program then you can get fined or warned, and if they are a repeat offender then they won’t be invited to come back to the event the following year. So, sometimes when we start talking about zero waste, costs are a concern to the event organiser, and one thing that we’ve done to address costs is to look for sponsorship funding. And we’ve created a whole new type of sponsorship package, and we call it a green sponsorship package, or a sustainability sponsorship package. So on recycling bins or on the marketing material, we’re able to say, “This company is bringing you the sustainability program”, or “we thank this particular company for their financial support in making zero waste a reality”. So we’re able to identify new funds that can help offset these costs for an event to invest in either recycling bins or compost bins, or anything else that may be an additional cost.

 

Education is the Key

 

Q: And education I’m sure features a great deal in your work. Can you tell me more about that, and whom exactly you work with?

LL: There is education on all levels for all the different people involved in an event, from working in the event to attending the event. So with education prior to the event, I mentioned contracts that we do and vendor agreements, we also attend pre-event meetings and we do presentations. We’re part of the team, so we’re educating all the different groups that organise events at the same time. And then, if we’re going to solicit for volunteers, we do a training the day before with those volunteers and those volunteers may help collect the material. We recruit volunteers to save costs for the event, and we try and identify something of value to them to keep the volunteers – for example if it’s a music festival they would get a day for free, or if it’s a community festival we would provide them meals or a ticket to get in. And we do make sure all the volunteers have a t-shirt or something that identifies them as working at the event and being part of the green team.

So we do the training a day before, and then we also make sure they’re trained the day of, because even though it might seem easy just to clean out recycling bins or sort material, we need it to happen in a systematic way so that the event flows properly and we’re not in anybody’s way. So we make sure they’re trained.

And then on the public side, we look for any way to educate the public. We’ve done anything from stage announcements, at stadiums we might do an announcement on the jumbotron, to trying to get inside the program – so if it’s a musical or concert venue we’re in the program itself that talks about the recycling program. We’ve done banners, signage; even the bins themselves serve as a form of marketing. So yeah, we just do anything we can possible to make sure the public is aware of the recycling procedures.

Another thing that we do in terms of marketing or education is we partner with a well-known person – if it’s a music festival or a sporting event we try and get maybe one of the acts to do some type of sound bite or some type of messaging for the recycling program, as well as within a stadium, using the local heroes to do some type of marketing for us.

 

Involving Local Composting and Anaerobic Digestion Sites

 

Q: Another important thing is establishing a connection with the local composting or AD site as well. Can you tell me a bit about how you involve the local composting sites?

LL: Yes, usually a part of designing a program is to identify which composting site can take the materials, and who is going to haul those materials. So, a lot of communities that contract a hauler for the city, they also do the hauling for organics collection, so we just have to make sure that whoever is hauling the material, takes it to the correct facility.

Sometimes there are locations where there is no commercial composting, and when that happens it’s actually a lot more difficult to get to zero waste. So some of the things that we have done is that we were in a more rural area for a music festival on private land and the owner allowed us to create a compost pile right there on his property. So we brought in a chipper and we were able to chip the compostable products, and we were able to create the right mixture with the biodegradable products and food, and create the compost pile right on site. Some other ideas would be contacting local pig farmers or other types of farmers to see if they would be interested in just the pure food waste.

So we’ve been able to manage it like that, but those are exceptions: the majority of projects that I work with, it goes to a commercial composting site.

 

Changes Needed For Successful Organics Diversion

 

Q: And typically how big are the changes needed to make an event zero waste? I’m thinking about the event organisers here, because as you said before, they might be worried about costs, but would they also be worried about structural changes for example?

LL: That’s really where I come in, you know, they have so many other things to worry about and I try to make it as easy for them and the event as possible. And in terms of budget – many events already have a cleaning budget and they’re used to hiring some type of group to do the cleaning, so that’s typically the budget that we draw from. This would be for more for a temporary event like a music event or something, but instead of putting the money towards a cleaning company, they would put their money into a zero waste company. And that company would make sure the event was as clean as possible, but also sort out the materials on the back-end and make sure that they go to recycling and composting.

But when I work with a venue, for example like a stand-alone facility that puts on events, I do the training internally. So I’m actually training how the employees collect and manage the material – I don’t bring in crew, I use their crew. It’s all training and getting that that company or that venue up to speed on how to go zero waste.

Sometimes it takes years. Sometimes if a sports venue, or a zoo or theme park wants to go zero waste, it doesn’t happen overnight, it can take months or years to get to zero waste because you are making changes and sometimes those changes take longer. Also, like, changing the products that you’re using. Or getting rid of other products and finding new products to take care of older products that were just destined for the landfill.

Q: I would imagine that depending on the size of the event, and the type of event, you would need a certain amount of people to work with, or a team, to implement the changes. Can you talk me through the difference in terms of the team needed, for a small, medium and large event?

LL: It always varies and depends on the event. It’s hard to just give a general number. But when I work with a stadium or a theme park, or some type of tourist attraction, that’s just me. It doesn’t really require much more. And so in that situation we might write a plan for their facility; I’ll look at their sponsorship and see what type of funding they can get through sponsorship, and then I’ll work with their event manager. Once the facility manager or facility director approves the program, I tend to work with more with the events manager, as well as the facilities manager – the person who’s in charge of making sure that facility is clean. So that’s how the changes happen.

But if it’s a festival and a one-time event in public space and they do want staff – the more staff the better. More staff is an increase in how much it’s going to cost, so we’d have to look at volunteers and if there’s a good market for volunteers. So it really just varies. One thing that I do want to say about volunteers is that if you have anybody who’s interested in volunteers: we’ve seen that about twenty-five to fifty percent of the volunteers that sign up do not show up. So if you are planning volunteers, make sure you plan for more volunteers than what you need, because some people have very good intentions but may not be able to actually take off the time.

 

Common Challenges For Organics Diversion

 

Q: What are the challenges you face for setting up the system?

LL: I think the biggest challenge is change. If it’s with a stand-alone facility or some type of venue, many people aren’t as open to change and so sometimes I find that when I’m talking about all these changes that they might not believe it would happen, or that they don’t think it can happen. Or if an employee somewhere along the way had already suggested this and they didn’t do it… So it’s just really about trying to work with the people within the venue and working through that change and making that transition as easy as possible for them.

What I find, when I go into these venues, is that about ten percent love the idea: they support zero waste, they want to be composting and recycling because they already do it at home, so they are fully supportive of this program. And probably about another eighty percent don’t mind, as long as it doesn’t infringe on their day, or take too much time out of their day – you know, they’ll support it and they’ll go along. And really, only about ten percent are the naysayers and talk about how this can’t happen – they’re the ones who have an issue with change. So what I try and do is identify the top ten percent that really support the initiative, and I make them leaders internally, and I provide them with whatever tools they need to make this succesfull. So it’s great when you see that ten percent, and then the eighty percent who will do it if it’s easy for them…And so that’s how we address change, by working with those who want it first, and then…

Q: …Bring the rest along with you….

LL: Correct, yes.

Q: And are there any other challenges, maybe logistically speaking?

LL: There’re always little logistic things that come up, and it’s just the nature of events when you’re dealing with so many people coming to an area at one time. So I would say just expect for things to happen, and to know that it probably won’t run smoothly, there probably will be things that come up. You just need to be able to think quick on your feet and find solutions that work. And maybe something you did didn’t work, but now you have a better start for next year.

One thing that I do is that I create a report after the event, and part of my report is pros and cons, challenges and solutions. So we identify things that we can do better – because there’s always something that you can do better – and then we identify solutions so that the next time this event happens it just gets better and better with time.

Q: For my final question: is there anything you’d like to see happen in the near future in relation to zero waste events or how they are organised?

LL: I would love to see more and more events be zero waste, and go zero waste, because it’s actually a lot easier than what they think. There are challenges and items that need to be identified when planning this, but it’s actually a lot easier than you think, and I think it’s just such a better sustainable way to manage your event. And you have lots of people coming to an event and you have this audience, so why not take that opportunity to also educate them on sustainability and provide them the tools so that they can be responsible event goers. I think it’s really important to educate the public that they can do this. Because, let’s face it, most people go to some type of community event every year, so if we’re educating these people, then we have a better change that they’ll do this at home as well.

Choosing Compostable Plastics for Your Program: Standards, Labelling & Testing Protocols

This episode corresponds to Lesson 5 and Lesson 6 of our online course.

In this episode we navigate the complex and sometimes confusing world of compostable plastics, addressing the current issues and main questions on this topic. What is compostable as opposed to biodegradable, and why does it matter? What standards and testing protocols exist for compostable plastics and are they in line with what composters are experiencing on the ground? What are the pressing issues that composters have in dealing with these plastics, and how can we improve compostable plastic labelling in order to safeguard against contamination of other plastics? We pose these questions to our two guests: Chair of the Working Group on Biological Treatment of Waste at the International Solid Waste Association and member of the Italian Compost Association (CIC), Marco Ricci (Italy), and waste diversion expert Hilary Near (California, USA).

Thanks to Biolice for making this episode possible.

The compostable resin from maize grain, made by Limagrain, a farmer cooperative. For more, visit their website.

 

Photo by Zane Selvans. Some rights reserved.

 

Link to the CIC website.

Link to USCC Plastics Task Force.

TRANSCRIPT

 

Understanding COMPOSTABLE PLASTICS

 

Q: There are a lot of different types of plastics out there all with slightly different names and properties and it can get quite confusing. Let’s help our audience understand the focus on compostable plastics here, as opposed to biodegradable. Marco, can you give us a definition and clarification on what compostable plastic is, compared to the other types?

Marco Ricci: A compostable plastic is a plastic that is in some way compatible with the composting process, while a biodegradable plastic may degrade under microorganism effect but is not compostable. Normally compostability has a set of requirements which is larger than the one of biodegradability. This is the basic definition. That’s why many experts in this field and also a lot of NGOs started to talk about compostable plastics since about ten, twelve years ago so to avoid any misunderstanding.

Q: So there’s a larger set of requirements needed to be passed for a plastic to be deemed compostable. Hillary Near, do you agree with this definition?

Hilary Near: Yes and I do a lot of communication around behaviour change and with businesses who are making these choices, and I try and simplify it and explain that compostable has a time frame and environment attached to the word, whereas biodegradable doesn’t have any criteria really, and so anything can be biodegradable, including your leather shoe.

 

Our current STANDARDS and ASTM REVISIONS

 

Q: Let’s talk about the requirements and standards that are in place at the moment for compostable plastics. Marco, can you tell us what principle standards exist in Europe right now?

MR: The main standard is the EN 13432 standard of the year 2000, and it’s a standard for certifying compostable plastic. The standard has four requirements, which are: biodegradation of plastic in a definite amount of time and to a specific amount of matter; disintegration, which means we must non-distinguishable fragments in a definite period of time; toxicity – the absence of eco- toxicity in finished compost; and safety requirements. So, the material or compost that is obtained by using these plastics that are in-line with the standard must sustain plant growth. So they are the four requirements.

Q: This European standard is currently known as the most demanding and we strongly recommend complying with this in Lesson 4 of our video course. In the US we have the ASTM standard – which lays out similar criteria for compostability, but there are differences between the two. The ASTM standards are now being revised to be more in line with the European Standard, and also to sync better with the reality on the ground for compost site operators. Hilary, can you give us more information on what is happening with the changes?

HN: Currently the guideline is the lab testing, so there are no field testing protocols, but to your point earlier, the ASTM is working to revise the disintegration test method with two time and temperature profiles that are hopefully going to better replicate the actual field composting conditions of the products that they’re exposed to.

The reality is that the composting process is a very unique and varied process, and it’s very diverse across the United States in all the composting facilities that are accepting this material. So in order to hopefully reflect that and also address any operational impacts of these products on commercial compost facilities, the ASTM is working to revise that and to reflect better the commercial composting facilities situation.

I’m not on that working group, but many of the members who are also on the US Composting Council Task Force on compostable plastics are represented in that ASTM working group. We’ve worked with at least four compost facilities who represent more of an open windrow and a longer with lower temperatures, and then the second time and temperature profile is a shorter process with higher temperatures. So those are hoping to replicate better an aerated static pile and an open windrow composting process. And then apply those eventually to the ASTM standard to give guidelines for which products to work in which facilities.

Q: So at the moment the standards and testing protocols aren’t really in line with what composters are experiencing on the ground?

HN: Well there are a lot of questions about that currently, and that’s what the US Composting Council Task Force is hoping to reconcile and harmonise the lab with the field experience, as it sounds like the Italians are doing as well, given their extensive distribution of some compostable plastic products. So, we are also addressing that concern by reworking the ASTM method, but other composters have had different experiences. Some composters see different products possible remaining after their process, and some don’t. So it’s really anecdotal right now and there are only several composters who are testing products individually in their processes.

Q: And apart from the field testing aspect, are there any other differences between the standards worth mentioning, and are they being revised as well? 

MR: Well, this is a good confrontation because as far as I remember, one main difference between the European standard and the ASTM standard is the requirement for biodegradability. If I remember correctly, the European standard requests a biodegradation – the conversion of the organic matter to CO2 – of ninety percent in about ninety days. While, if I’m not wrong, the ASTM standards has a lower requirement of about sixty percent. Maybe Hilary can confirm or correct me on that?

HN: I’m more familiar with the field testing situation, but that portion is not being revised. But I know that the time frame is one hundred and eighty days, and it does have less stringent sieve protocols for the resulting material that can be remaining after the lab testing.

 

Discussing Testing Protocols

 

Q: Marco, can you tell us what testing protocols are out there at the moment in Europe, and how effective they are?

MR: There are three main protocols for testing and assessing compostability in Europe. All of them refer to the European standard, obviously. The first one is the Vincotte standard – it’s probably the most well-known one. Then we have the German DIN standard. And the third standard is the one which was created in Italy, and it’s the compostable CIC standard. CIC is the Italian Composting and Biogas Association.

Obviously they have to satisfy the same criteria at the EU level, but there are some differences in the testing. For example, biodegradability and disintegration is tested by the Italian standard on a full-scale plant. So we’re running our tests in existing composting plants, while other standards normally rely on lab testing – so, on pilot scale plants. This was one of our decisions to be sure that the material  effectively biodegrades and  disintegrates when we are confronted with industrial plants.

Q: There is no call to make any revisions to them?

MR: Actually, our tests are strict enough, so we’re not demanding for stricter tests. Normally we verify that ninety percent biodegradation happens in about ninety days, which is a timeframe that complies with the standards we have in Italy for getting a mature compost – in an industrial plant, obviously. We’re talking about industrial plants, not about home or community composting.

Q: Can you tell me then what you hear from compost site operators in relation to the standards or any issues they might have in this area – what’s been their experience? 

MR: We have to first make a distinction: the most common

compostable plastic to be found in Europe are bio-bags – bags used on purpose for separate collection of biowaste, and especially for food waste. This is a long-standing tradition of about twenty years. The first bio-bags made of compostable plastics were put on the market in the mid-nineties I would say. So this is one kind of item, and then we have other kinds of items. In any case, in countries such as Italy, Spain or the UK where this kind of bioplastic is very well known, compostable plastics do not pose any problem to the industrial plants.

The complaints are that, first of all, consumers sometimes misuse traditional plastics, or so-called biodegradable plastics, and use then incorrectly for separating and delivering biowaste. The other complaint is that there are some fake bioplastics on the markets, and these are creating some problems. Even though normally where separate collection is done on the curbside – or door-to-door – theses kinds of effects are of minor problems because the total amount of non-compostables that reach a composting plant are well below five percent in weight.

It might be different if we have rigid compostable plastics – so, rigid packaging. In that case, some composting facilities need to somehow restructure their process chain, since they’ve been planned for treating biowaste, and suddenly other kinds of waste items arrive. So, maybe they need some kind of shredding or sorting, and so on.

 

GREENWASHING and CONTAMINATION – the Composter’s Experience

 

Q: If one of the biggest issues is that non-compostable plastics are entering the stream, I’m sure this makes it very difficult to identify and sort compostable plastics from other types of plastics at a site?

MR: Yes, it is challenging, especially because it’s challenging anyway to sort out a bag at a composting plant. There is actually in my opinion (and I would like to know what Hilary thinks about this – another player here that is important. The first player is the waste producer, or the consumer – the one who is doing separate collection. But the second player in this chain is the collection service.

Once the collection crews and companies are somehow advised or bound to the fact that they have to guarantee the highest quality of the biowaste they collect, these people can then help enormously in sorting out critical spots in cities and neighbourhoods. And door-to-door, or curbside, collection helps with this because the collection crew has the ability to not empty a bin where incorrect bags have been used for source-separating organics.

HN: Yeah, I agree and that is definitely an opportunity in the United States. Some of the concerns are around the fact that we often have automated curbside collection, so the drivers aren’t even flipping the lids or able to monitor the material in the containers. But there is a best practice among all the material stream – the recycling, and composting – to leave messages or communicate to the customer that it is a priority to source-separate appropriately. So many haulers will give that feedback to their customers.

I’ve heard from composters that we’ve interviewed that [it’s good] when they have integration: as in, when the composters or sometimes the hauler have relationships with their consumers and can give them guidance on even which products to buy. But then there’s other communities where they’re accepting waste from many different haulers and they just don’t have the capacity to give that kind of feedback. So they’re dealing with higher contamination a lot of times. But that is definitely an opportunity to address all sorts of contamination that composters are dealing with.

 

CONFUSION In The Marketplace – EDUCATING Consumers

 

Q: Marco, you mention the consumer’s role in sorting the plastics, but this can be tricky when there is so much confusion over what’s compostable and what’s not. How can we ensure that the different types of plastics are easily identifiable for consumers as well?

MR: We have a lot of experience with that in Italy and in other European countries. A lot of advertising and information activities have to be done to be sure that consumers can distinguish correctly compostable plastics from non-compostable ones, and the existence of certification labels helps enormously with in that way.

The Italian Composting Association (and also the Italian law) strongly advise consumers to look for the certification label – one of the three main ones existing in Europe – and make sure they are to be found on bioplastics and especially on shopping bags made of bioplastics. According to our experience and common understanding (also exchanging views with other European composting associations), these labels can help consumers enormously to identify the correct bags.

Q: Hilary, I presume there has also been problems in the US with people knowing what’s compostable and what’s not?

HN: Yes, there are definitely concerns. Although, the BPI logo is gaining recognition and was recently revised to include more specifics about what it means to be compostable, including some more caveats about checking with your local agency or waste management provider to determine whether they accept that material. It really is a regional issue right now and the best information is given to consumers by the local municipality or their local composter.

There’s still concerns and there’s still confusion, and one of the opportunities is that BPI has changed their logo and it’s been incorporated into the new printing of some of the products. And on one of the working groups on the US Composting Council recently helped to revise a labelling standard that many of the stakeholders who are manufacturers have all agreed to try and incorporate into their product distribution and labelling; so that includes things like labelling both the packaging and the product as clearly as possible with green or blue labelling and the word “compostable” – again reiterating that you should check with your local composting facility for further information about whether they accept them or not.

Q: To clarify for our audience, the BPI is the Biodegradable Products Institute, which is one of the entities in the US that regulates the use of the word compostable and maintains the best labelling program for compostable plastics in North America…

 

OPERATIONAL Impacts and Managing CONTAMINATION

 

…And Hilary, you’ve been working on a project in San Jose, developing a field testing protocol with the composters there, and you interviewed 15 different facilities who were testing these plastics. Can you share with us the other kinds of issues they had?

HN: The most common issue is just contamination in general. When we talk about compostable plastics, I think it’s important to address the fact that composters are being asked to accept a larger variety and more organic material; which is great because we’re diverting more of it from landfill, but in that case there’s still a need to continue education and address contamination issues with conventional plastic film and especially glass that effects the end product.

Q: So again it seems that contamination from other plastics (and glass too) are the main issues in the US. Marco, is this the same for composters in Europe, and how are we dealing with it?

MR: Yes, it is. Again it depends very much on where they receive the waste from. Obviously the most risky thing is to receive non-compostable plastics and to get them into a composting plant – especially because we have areas where composting plants do not have any sorting devices before mixing the biowaste together, because they expect the receive a very clean biowaste. So in that case they might be in trouble.

That’s why most composting associations in Europe regularly do sorting analysis on the biowaste and quality checks on the compost, so that they have an overview of what’s going on. CIC, the Italian Composting Association, runs about five to six hundred sorting analysis every year, and about two hundred and fifty to about three hundred compost analysis every year on the different composting plants located in Italy. So we know exactly what’s going around, and actually we can trace the type of different bags which are delivered into a single composting plant. We know if they are compostable, if they are shopping bags, and if they’ve been delivered by the municipality or not. So it’s a very robust monitoring and serving scheme that’s been running since 2004 or 2006.

Q: And for composters who want to understand the possible operational costs of accepting compostable plastics: in general, do composting sites need to alter their process or management practices in order to accommodate these plastics in any drastic way?

MR: If we’re talking about bags – no. If we’re talking about more sophisticated compostable plastic items like rigid packaging, it might be necessary to shred beforehand. Again, here it depends very much on what kind of composting plant we’re dealing with. Many composting sites in Italy which accept food waste on one line and garden waste on the other one, do not shred the food waste; they just mix it up with the garden waste.

If we move to the UK or other experiences where there is a mixed collection of food and garden waste, this material i normally shredded as a standard procedure. So the bags are opened and also rigid packaging is likely to be shredded already. So this answer is very plant-specific. Obviously keep in mind that, at least in our experience, composting plants have been designed to treat biowaste, so everything that is different – like packaging – the plant must adapt to this condition.

Q: Hilary, perhaps you have something to add here, because I’m sure in the US you’ve had more experience with rigid plastics like service wear and so on?

HN: We do have some experience with that, because I think we mentioned earlier that there’s fewer compostable plastic shopping bags, but also, to Marco’s point, it’s a very regional or composter based decision. There are a couple situations I can point out: for example, one of the composters I work with is accepting mixed solid waste. They sort a preliminary on the front-end for some recyclable and hazardous material, and then compost the process for twelve to fourteen weeks, and sort on the back-end. They remove any residuals and landfill it, and then sort to produce a compost product. That means they’re not concerned about separating rigid compostable plastics from non-rigid compostable plastics, because they’re composting everything –

MR: Sorry Hilary, but in that case, if I understood correctly, we’re talking about accepting mixed municipal solid waste, and at least in Europe this wouldn’t be allowed to be called compost when it comes out, since we need to produce compost starting from source-separated organics – separated at source at the household or restaurant, at the canteen…

HN: Right. So then another example of compost facilities that are accepting source-separated organics – and some other compostable plastics that meet BPI standards and are labelled for compostability – they are most able to identify compostable plastic bags that are green and labelled with BPI, and also some of the PLA cups with the green stripe, per the USCC labelling guidelines. The rigid plastics are sometimes harder to label or code, so they will often do their best to sort those out in the field when they accept them, and then at the end they screen them, and some of the overs are often reintroduced – as Marco mentioned there’s a similar process in Italy and the rest of Europe.

Some facilities have too much on an issue with contamination, so that the conventional plastics will remain in the overs, in which case they’ll have to landfill that material and the compostable plastics that might remaining – especially the rigids and cutlery and things like that. Those won’t be given the chance to further decompose. So that’s one of the opportunities further with the labelling and getting control over the marketplace for these products so that they can be more consistently composted and identified at the composting facility.

 

A VISION For the FUTURE

 

Q: Finally: is there anything you would like to see change or to see happen with compostable plastics or how they’re regulated? Any pressing issues that have your attention?

MR: I personally would like to ban the use of the word biodegradable for the kinds of items that are not compostable. We probably need a clear definition, at least continent-wide (world-wide would be too much). But it’s the question where we started from: what does biodegradable mean? So it sometimes creates so much green-washing that the composting sector – which is the backbone of the recycling scheme in many countries, since it represents the largest amount of municipal solid waste. So somehow there must be more stringent requests on what items can all themselves biodegradable. Otherwise confusion will still be quite strong for consumers.

HN: I would say “Amen” and that even in California where we have those labelling standards, it’s very difficult to enforce. So we need more capacity on a national level, which I think is more appropriate, rather than state-wide, to educate consumers around the difference between biodegradable and compostable, and enforce legislation to basically level the marketplace and make it possible for compostable plastics to be given the same opportunity and so that some of the green-washing can’t further contaminate our composting process and confuse people.

Winning Hearts And Minds: Outreach Strategies for Curbside Organics Collection: NYC Case Study

This episode corresponds to Lesson 3 and Lesson 4 of our online course.

We join Director of Recycling Bridget Anderson to discuss the DSNY’s extensive outreach and education strategy for their curbside organics collection pilot program in New York City. We explore how they dealt with the different demographics in the city, how they used online social media and traditional media, the importance of face-to-face communication, the reasons why people don’t participate, and much more.

Thanks to If You Care for making this episode possible.

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Picture courtesy of DSNY.

 

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TRANSCRIPT

 

Breaking down the OUTREACH STRATEGY

 

Q: You touched on some of your strategies in the last episode, but I’d like to really understand the whole process. Can you tell me how the DSNY went about planning and implementing these strategies?

BA: Entering into a pilot program for New York City is a big challenge, because you have so many different types of communities and people with so many different experiences living in different types of housing structures. So we really approached this pilot from the perspective of what’s been successful in other cities? Most other cities have lower housing density – in New York City sixty percent of our population live in high-rise apartment buildings.

So we started focusing on the lower density areas of the city. In those low density areas, we reached out to the elected officials and the local community organisations to get feedback. Part of the strategy was to look within at sanitation and our sanitation workers know best what is happening on the ground – what neighbourhoods tend to be good recyclers already, and what neighbourhoods they think would be more amenable to doing a pilot program. Based on that, we chose a few committees; we reached out to elected officials; we talked to the local community organisations; and we tried to identify those “informal mayors” of neighbourhoods that might have their finger on the pulse of the community, to get feedback on if they think it would be successful in that neighbourhood and where the challenges might be.

Based on all of this information, we finalised our initial list of pilot areas, and then we sent a mailer to the households in the neighbourhoods about a month before the program was to start. Then we followed that up with a door-to-door door hanger that explained the program and that in a week they were to receive a brown organics bin, a kitchen container and information about the program. And then, when we do the bin deliveries – the organics bin, kitchen container and information packet – we have outreach people there during bin deliveries to talk to people on the ground; if somebody comes out and they have a question, we answer it. During those periods, we’ve encountered people who are just so excited about the program, and we’ve also encountered people who say “this really isn’t for me”. So we really try to change hearts and minds, and having people on the ground, and face-to-face communication, has been critical to getting people to even try the program.

We say that it’s a voluntary program, that you won’t get fined for not participating, but we encourage you to participate, and this is why: your going to help reduce the materials that we send to landfills that potentially could save taxpayer money, you could reduce incidences of rodents in the neighbourhood; it creates a cleaner waste stream for you, because you’re separating out the stinky stuff from the rest of your garbage. So, that on the ground, face-to-face, has been critical. It’s resource intensive, but it really has been extremely helpful to get the program off the ground in the beginning.

We also try to get articles in local newspapers – like the Daily News, New York Post, New York Times, if they’re interested – and then we have the local neighbourhood newspapers, and those have also been really helpful to explain that the scheme is coming to this neighbourhood, and that this is what it looks like, this is where you go for questions, this is our website… So they’ve been really helpful to get the message out.

Q: This strategy mirrors the strategy we lay out in Lesson 4 of our online course when we speak about outreach – that you need to let them know about the program initially around a month beforehand, and then have people going door-to-door to answer questions when the bins are delivered. And that’s exactly what you did, so it’s a very extensive campaign.

BA: Yeah, we’ve built email lists and newsletters, and any opportunity we can find the get the information to the local community, we use it.

 

 

Compost COMMUNICATION for different DEMOGRAPHICS

 

Q: Since there are so many different demographics in New York City, did you have different approaches that you used for the different groups of people?

BA: We had our standard approach, but in certain neighbourhoods, we had people on the ground who spoke the language. We had a Spanish speaker, a Chinese speaker, we also had a few neighbourhoods where Russian was an important language. So we had people on the ground so they’d have that specific face-to-face opportunity to speak with somebody in their own language. We also translated some of our materials – the most critical pieces of information – into multiple languages, and you can translate our website, so that’ been very useful as well.

One thing we have discovered is that, especially if you’re in an area that has a lot of retired people, we can’t rely on the web or social media as our only information portal. So, we have a hotline and utilise the city’s 311 program, and we have a lot of soft responses to the most common questions that we get. So we’re able to utilise phone calls as well as an opportunity.

 

 

Getting RESIDENTS started and using COMPOSTABLE plastic bags

 

Q: What were the most common questions that you got, or the most common issues that people had?

BA: We get a lot of questions like “is this mandatory, do I have to do it?” Because I think some people get the mailer and, even though it says it’s a voluntary program, they assume that because it’s a notification from the Sanitation Department, they have to participate. We encourage people by saying “it’s not mandatory, but we encourage you to try, because this is a new strategy and we’re trying to see if we can make it work in New York City”. One of the strategies that we’ve recommended to people that using certified compostable bags is one way to collect the material inside your home and get it out to the brown bin in a way that’s more similar to maybe what you used to do if you used plastic bags for garbage.

The availability of those compostable bags has been a problem. It’s taken us a while to get the bags into retail stores – there are also online outlets for the bags. The price of the bags has been a problem; some people say the bags are to expensive and they won’t use them, or that they would participate in the program if they could use the bags, but the bags are too expensive – that’s an example of something that’s been a challenge. We do say that you don’t have to use compostable bags: you can use paper bags, and you don’t even have to line your kitchen container at all if you don’t want to, it just means you have to rinse it out. And with the brown bin, you don’t have to line the bin if you have a way to rinse it out, or you can use paper bags or certified compostable bags. And this spring we’ve added that people can line their brown bin with a clear recycling bag. It’s not our preference to do this, but to encourage participation and because the compostable bags are not yet available everywhere, we are allowing people to do this to get people used to the program.

Our hope is that eventually the compostable bags will maybe become cheaper and be more available, and then we can switch out the regular plastic bags. One of the challenges with the plastic is that it doesn’t break down in the composting facility, so it adds to the contamination rate, but at this point we do think that it does encourage more participation because it’s more similar to our other recycling programs. In our recycling programs, you can use clear plastic bags, or you can put things directly in the bin, so it’s more parallel right now to those programs.

Q: So you’re thinking is that it’s more important to just get them on board and into the habit and then it’s easier to change…

BA: Right. There’s the challenge of the front end, which is participation, and then there’s the back end, which is trying to do something useful with the material. And we’re trying to balance those two things right now.

 

 

The most IMPORTANT aspects of an OUTREACH STRATEGY

 

Q: And in terms of strategy, would say that the face-to-face communication is the most important aspect?

BA: I don’t know if it’s the most important, but it’s a critical piece. I think getting articles in the media and generating a buzz…and we’ve been very lucky where the local television news media has picked up the program, the local neighbourhood newspapers have picked up the program; the city-wide newspapers have picked up the program and we’ve had radio shows pick up the program too. Having people hear repeatedly about the program has been absolutely critical.

Then, once an area becomes a pilot area where people are receiving the program itself, the on the ground outreach has been extremely useful. Not everybody reads the mailers: if you receive a mailing from the city, it might end up directly in your recycling bin – hopefully your recycling bin! And so, having people out there on the ground during bin deliveries to really make sure people understand the program is important. The elected officials and community boards have also often hosted meetings where people can come and ask questions.

I think what’s critical is that you try to hit every outreach opportunity that you can, because you never know who might be listening in which venue. And the bigger the program goes, the more difficult it will be, because of the more neighbourhoods we’ll have, and we’ll have to be really efficient in how we implement the process, because we won’t necessarily have an army to be in every neighbourhood all the time.

Q: And since you are planning to expand, is there anything you’re gearing up for, or planning, in terms of outreach campaigns for when the program does go city-wide?

BA: So this year, we’re working through the analysis to figure out if we are able to expand this program, and really think about it as a program that we’re going to expand city-wide – we’re working on this right now. So, we have plans to further expand in the spring to another, approximately, forty-thousand households. And this fall, we’re aggressively trying to recruit more multi-unit buildings to really understand the challenges to making this work in multi-unit buildings.

Then, next summer of 2015, we will start writing up our analysis and provide the city-wide expansion plan. In the end, when we expanded recycling, we started recycling in portions of the city and then expanded city-wide, we took a geographic strategy, where we said “now we know we’re going to go city-wide, let’s phase in each area of the city”. It is likely that that would be a useful tactic also for this type of a program once we expand it city-wide. But we haven’t yet crunched all the numbers to understand exactly how quickly it would happen and who would start first – those types of things.

 

 

The TROUBLE with high-rises

 

Q: Since you brought up high rises, I want to ask, what was your experience in dealing with the building owners and supers – were they on board right away, or was it hard to convince them to change?

BA: We’ve been lucky at this point because we’re recruiting buildings, and they are voluntarily saying to us that they would like to join this program. I would say one of the most interesting things to date is that it’s the co-ops and the condos – the buildings where people own their units – that tend to be much more interested in the program than the building management companies for rental buildings.

Where you have a co-op board, the co-op board president is perhaps the champion of the program, they’ve really been successful in getting buildings on board and participating, and committing to manage the program in their building. Where we have a resident of a rental building contact us, we then contact the building management company, and more often than not, the building management company says “I know this resident is interested in the program, but I don’t think I have the resources to manage it”. So we’re really working this fall to see if we can get more rental buildings on board to understand what the constraints are for a rental building as opposed to an owner building.

 

 

Residents reaction to the collection program

 

Q: In general now, how has the reaction been from the participants of the scheme so far, has it been mostly positive, or have there been any comments on it?

BA: It’s mixed. I would say you have the core group of residents that are really into the program; they’ve jumped on board and have given us feedback like, “I have no trash left!” and things like that. You do have, I would say, a significant set of residents who’ve chosen not to participate, and that’s the group that we’re really trying to recruit now. So we’re going back into the pilot areas and saying “you know, this really is beneficial and will make your trash management cleaner”, and things like that.

But we really have a mix. The people who participate are gung-ho about participating and enthusiastic, and then you have folks who are really choosing not to. It’s interesting when you look at the numbers; we have RFID tags attached to the brown bins, so when we go and collect, we’re able to see how many bins are placed out on each collection route and are able to get a sense of participation, which is really helpful for the pilot program. And what we’re finding is that there are some people who started in the program, and then they dropped out, or they dropped out in the winter and they came back again in the spring – and so you can see patterns there.

You also see, surprisingly, bins that had never been placed out for collection for three or four months, and then all of a sudden you see them being placed out for collection. So maybe that’s somebody who really wasn’t interested in the program and then saw their neighbours do it long enough that they said, “maybe I’ll five this a try”, or maybe they have a lot of yard waste and thought, “maybe I’ll use this for yard waste”.

So we’re trying to understand the patterns of behaviour. How do people behave with the program? Is there consistency with participation? It’s a pretty interesting analysis to understand people’s behaviour. And it’s a different thing from recycling – recycling is dry goods, so that “ick” factor doesn’t exist, whereas with organics it’s a little bit different. Yard waste is less scary than the food waste portion of course. But we have really great testimonials of people who say, “I really don’t have much garbage left, once I recycle and do the organics”.

Q: I often wonder about the people who start and drop out – what their reasons where. And it’s probably more difficult to get them back into the program again after that too.

BA: Yeah. And our feedback is that some people say “I had a free sample of compostable bags, and once those bags ran out, I tried to buy them and I couldn’t find them”, or, “they were too expensive.” So for those people, we tell them that they don’t have to use those bags, and list the other strategies we encourage them to try. There are some people then – it was a particularly tough winter last winter – and they said, “you know, I just didn’t want to do the program over the winter, but now that spring has arrived, I’m coming back.” It really is varying reasons.

 

Wise words of advice.

 

Q: And finally, do you have any advice on planning and implementing an outreach program, for those listening in who might be starting their own? Any pitfalls you want to warn against, or tips to share?

BA: If you have ideas of which communities you think you would like to start the program in, I would recommend having conversations with those local communities pretty early on. Give yourself at least a few months before the program starts to really start talking to that community, explain the “why” of the program: why are we doing this, and explaining how it would work. The more they feel a part of the development of the process, the better the response. I the very pilot area, we had a situation where certain people were told that this was going to be the pilot area before they were notified on a local level, and they felt a little bit slighted. So it was important for us, moving forward, to really get into those local communities. These are our candidate pilot areas: let’s get in there and talk to them and make sure they understand the program that’s coming. And then, when it comes, they’re not surprised. So having that up-front communication before the program starts would be an important piece.

I also think providing the tools – providing the bins and the kitchen containers – has been helpful. Giving them the tools so they didn’t have to go buy things right away was really helpful. In the initial pilot areas we had sample supplies of compostable bags so they could at least get themselves started, and that was also helpful.

END

Megacities Special #1: Rolling Out A Residential Organics Collection Program In NYC

This episode corresponds to Lesson 4 and Lesson 5 of our online course.

In this episode we take an in depth look into the expanding organics collection and composting program in New York City. We speak with Bridget Anderson, director of the Recycling Unit of the DSNY’s Bureau of Waste Prevention, in order to understand the unique situation that a megacity faces when rolling out such a program, the logistics and strategies for setting up the scheme, challenges in dealing with different building types, managing the collected organic material, and the vision they have for the future.

Thank you to IPL for making this episode possible

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Picture curtesy of DSNY.

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TRANSCRIPT

The Story So Far

 

Q: Can you tell me how the program got started?

BA: Organics collection was a pilot that actually started in the schools, in the 2012-2013 school year. We started on a select number of schools and focused on school cafeterias and school kitchens; and it was really an effort that was spearheaded by a number of parent-teacher organisations. They did a great job and Sanitation saw what they did and decided that we would try in on a slightly larger scale.

Then there was momentum to try this in residences also – in homes. And we’re in all five boroughs: we have pilot areas in the Bronx, in Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island – and then in Manhattan, which is a very dense area with lots of high-rise apartment buildings, we actually have selected apartment buildings that have volunteered to participate in the program. One of the challenges is to figure out how to do this in high rise buildings.

Q: How does the pilot program operate today? It is a voluntary program at the moment, correct?

BA: Yes, the pilot is voluntary. We chose the pilot areas in a combination of where, collection-wise, we thought it would work well operationally, and where there was interest among residents and among elected officials. We also looked for those low-density areas. So, it was voluntary and not everybody in the pilot areas chooses to participate, but everyone is given the opportunity.

We deliver a brown bin, which is what you set out curbside, and then in addition we deliver a kitchen container for each household, so that you have something you can use in the kitchen to collect the material. And then we provide a lot of education and outreach, and brochures…

What we do is we send a mailer to everyone in the pilot area, saying “this program is coming, this is what it is and you can expect to receive your brown bin”. Then about a week before the brown bin arrives, we do a door hanger. We go door-to-door and hang a door hanger and say “Your brown bag is arriving this week. As a reminder this is the program, it’s voluntary, we hope you participate, and this is how it works”. And then when the brown bin arrives, in that brown bin is the kitchen container and the brochure that gives details about what can and can’t be put in the bin – best practices for how to manage the material.

Q: I also saw just the other day that the Mayor of New York and his family made an ad using the brown bin…

BA: Yeah, it’s interesting, they approached us. One of the pilot areas is where the mayor’s home is – this is the mayor’s home before he moved to Gracie Mansion, which is the official Mayor home. He actually approached Sanitation and said “I would love to do a video. My daughter Chiara is very interested in this program”. And so, we developed a script for them, which they took and then tweaked, and they created the video. And the video turned out beautifully – I thought it was a great video. And now they’ve moved to Gracie Mansion, and we had the organics collection program in Gracie Mansion with Mayor Bloomberg, and now we’re continuing it with Mayor de Blasio, so we’re very excited about that.

 

 

LOGISTICS of COLLECTING organic waste in New York City

 

Q: I want to ask you about the expansion on the program to high-rise buildings, because as you said earlier they can be quite a challenge. How did the DSNY decide to deal with all the different types of buildings?

BA: There are other cities in the United States that already do this organics collection program – cities like Seattle, San Francisco, and Toronto in Canada – and we looked at what they were doing, where they found success. Most of those cities are lower density and don’t have as many high-rise buildings. Toronto is maybe the closest to New York City in comparison to a place that already does organics collection. And we thought, let’s try this program in the lower density areas of the city – because that’s where there’s been a precedence set to have a successful program in other cities. So, we looked for parts of the city where we would focus on single family homes and small apartment buildings that are up to nine units – little town houses, brownstones, and then small apartment buildings. The pilot areas are primarily that size of building.

Then we said, if we’re going to make this a viable program, we have to tackle high-rise apartment buildings, because a significant portion of New York City’s recycling, you have to come up with an internal recycling program that then allows the building to manage the waste and get it out on the curb for Sanitation to collect. We have to do the same thing for organic material. So, we actually work with the building management and the co-op board, if it’s a co-op building, and come up with a system for how they’ll manage the organic waste inside the building to then get it out on the curb for us to collect

Q: And how many high-rises are you working with at the moment?

BA: We have over a hundred high-rises at this point.

Q: That’s quite a few. And what has been the DSNY’s strategy in dealing with the various building types? Do you have separate systems, depending on the high rise, or is there a single system that works across the board?

BA: I would say we service a different range of types of buildings – we have old, old buildings, we have brand new Leed certified buildings…a lot of it depends on the infrastructure of the building, where there’s space to put the bins. It’s very similar to recycling – where is there space to place the bins, either on each floor or in some sort of centralised area, where people can then bring their material to drop it off. And then the building staff brings it out to the curb.

So we have a few different strategies that are the most common. One is, if our large buildings tend to have chute where people will take their trash, and it foes down to the basement. In a lot of buildings there’s a little chute room where the chute exists. And if there’s space on each floor, and the building management are willing to provide the service, we recommend that both the recycling and the organics containers are put in those shoot rooms on every floor. It’s the most convenient for the residents.

That doesn’t exist in all buildings, so what’s also quite common is a centrallsed location on the first floor, possibly the basement or in the area nearby where there’s parking, where the recycling and organics bins are placed. And that’s more of a centralised area. It’s less work for the Super to service, because it’s only location – but it’s potentially a little bit less convenient for the residents because they have to go downstairs. We find with both recycling and organics collection, convenience begets participation. So if it’s easy and convenient, people will participate. The people who want to do it are going to do it no matter where you place your collection location; the people who are saying “well I’ll do it if it’s convenient.” If it’s easy for me to just throw it down the chute on my floor that to bring the organic material or recycling downstairs, then you may lose a few people in participation.

So, we have a lot of signage – signage is absolutely key to let people know on every floor where the collection location is in the building. And keeping the collection well lit, safe, secure is also key to having people comfortable with using those locations in the building.

Q: Another crucial part in organics collection programs is the collection times. How did you decide on collection times and are they different from place to place?

BA: We have a few different strategies. About fifty-thousand of the households are being offered twice a week collection, and that’s the same frequency as refuse collection. The idea is you just set out your material on collection day, but you separate the organic material from the waste and recycling. In the other half of the homes, we’re testing once a week collection. Basically, the way things work is that here you have twice a week collection of trash, once a week collection of recycling in most parts of the city, and so we’re either offering twice a week collection on the same frequency as trash collection, and the other half od the pilot, we’re offering once a week collection on recycling day. So, it’s essentially just another recycling stream to set out on your recycling day.

Q: Do you know which one is more successful, or which you’re going to pick in the long-run?

BA: We have one area of Brooklyn, where we started them in the Fall with once a week collection and switched them to twice a week collection in May, so we’re going to be studying that one. We don’t have any results yet, but we’re hopeful that that little neighbourhood – it’s called Windsor Terrace – will actually help inform us what the effect is of twice a week versus once a week.

Q: Was it difficult, in a city the size of New York, to plan collection routes and to cooperate with the haulers?

BA: So in New York City, the city actually has a municipal hauling workforce and we collect material from residences, agencies and institutions. And so, it was simply a matter of making the case to add some to add trucks in the budget to service the same routes. And we chose the pilot areas so they were co-terminus: they were the same areas as the regular routes, so there was no issue there. People were very positive about piloting the program.

Q: The ultimate goal is to make this a mandatory, city-wise curbside composting program. How are you planning to get there?

BA: The city council passed a law for us to conduct this pilot program, and the our mandate is a two-year program. And in the October of 2015, we will have to present a report to city council and say, this is how the pilot went, these are our recommendations moving forward. And so far we feel pretty positive about the participation, about people’s understanding of the program. We’re working right now to evaluate the pilot to understand what the best practices, what are the best collection frequency, what are the other aspects of the program that we’d want to take and scale up.

Scaling up city-wide is going to take quite a while. It’s not going to happen overnight; it will have to be a phase-in process. And part of it too is that what happens is if you separate the organic material and recycling fully, you don’t have as much refuse left. So, one of the big pieces is understanding how we reconfigure our routine and our truck routes so that we manage the material differently. So, maybe we don’t need as many refuse routes because there’s not as much refuse being set out as we add the organics routes.

So there’s a lot of operation pieces that we have to put into play. There’s also the aspect of geography – do we roll out district by district, which is maybe what happens. So, we’re basically in the planning process right now as we roll out the pilot, to figure out how we would do this city-wise, and I would say that it’s going to take ten years to probably get to the entire city.

Q: We tackle this whole aspect of organics collection programs in Lesson 4 of our online course on Compostory.org, so those of you listening, can go straight to the course on our site and take a deeper look at.

 

 

COMMUNITY COMPOSTING – A Critical Piece to the Puzzle

 

And now, I’d like to touch on the topic of community composting, because in our last episode, we were taking a look at the community composting movement in New York and we know that the DSNY has been quite involved in supporting this as well. Can you tell me a little about how you work with community composters in the city?

BA: Yes, we have a longstanding relationship – over twenty years – working with community composters. The New York City Compost Project is a group that we run and fund, and we have non-profit partners throughout the city where we provide education services – helping people to understand how to compost in your backyard, if you want to take your yard waste or your food scraps and do it yourself. We work with community gardens, and we provide finished compost from the material that they city collects and manages, and we provide tools and equipment, and technical advice for how to set up composting in community gardens.

We also work to provide drop-off programs. We have food scrap drop off programs throughout the city – we’ve about seventy in operation right now. And those drop-off programs are critical, because they get people in the mindset of “oh! this is what this is…I take my food scraps and I can bring them somewhere else and recycle it – have it be composted.” So, we see the community composters as absolutely critical to helping people understand the concepts of organic separation, what happens to it, what are the benefits to it – it’s an absolutely critical piece to the puzzle.

Q: So you agree with David Buckle, who we interviewed last week, that community composting is an essential part of creating a successful organics recycling system?

BA: Both programs are very important, yes.

Q: When speaking to David, it was clear that he had concerns about a lack of vision from policy makers in the city, that might not understand the importance of local collection and composting and wouldn’t necessarily prioritize community composting over other collection systems. What’s your take on this statement – have you seen this yourself?

BA: I actually have not seen that. We’re trying to position the city, in terms of organics waste collection, to fulfill a number of goals, and community composting plays an extremely important role in terms of introducing the community to organics and composting and the concept that you can recycle this other part of the waste stream, and to showing what actually happens to your organic waste, how it turns into compost; and creating a valuable product for the local communities.

The capacity for local, small-scale community composting is too small to handle the vast hundred and thousands of tons of material that we’re looking to divert through organics recycling. So, we as a city also have a parallel mission to find how we bring composting to scale and actually move major tonnage of material to recycling, to composting and to renewable energy. So, for us we see both as extremely important, because the local community composting creates beneficial use for the city. They have been critical to introduce the concept that this is a useful strategy but it’s not going to help us divert all of the waste. There’s so much waste in New York City, that we don’t think we’d be able to handle it through community composting. You have to have large, permitted facilities to really handle that quantity of material.

But there’s plenty of material to go around, and absolutely – this is why we fund local community composting operations – we see it as a critical piece to the pie, a piece to the puzzle.

We’re really focusing on [understanding] how we create this as a cooperative program. But it’s really tough, I mean, you have people who’ve been in the trenches for two decades working on local community composting, and I understand that maybe there’s a fear that if the city takes over this program that there won’t be a place for local community composting, and we do not at all see that as the case. They are both critical to achieving the city’s overall goal, which is diverting major tonnage of material, and creating beneficial use for local communities.

 

 

Compost Use & Compost Markets

 

Q: If the program is rolled out city-wide, you will have a lot of compost on your hands. What are you planning to do with the compost and what are you currently doing with it?

BA: We take the material from the pilot to local and regional compost facilities. With the material that’s taken to the regional facilities, we don’t actually take back the compost at this point. There may be a situation moving forward where we develop a relationship where we would have a certain percentage of the compost come back. With the material that’s processed locally, we turn it into compost and use it in street trees, we use it in parks, we use it in gardens. We have give-back programs for non-profits, schools and community groups, to use the compost for their greening projects. We also create a mulch product in addition to compost. And most of the material that we’re currently compost locally is yard waste, and that creates a beautiful mulch product as well as the compost. We also sell the compost to landscapers, so we do have a small revenue stream there.

Q: Are you involved in creating markets for compost, or encouraging market growth for compost?

BA: For the material we compost locally, we’ve worked on this landscaper market, and it’s really a bulk purchase type of situation. We have not gotten into the business of creating a retail market for the material – it just hasn’t been necessary to date, because we’re handling and selling all the material with the landscapers and with our give-back programs. With the regional composting facilities that are taking the material during the pilot period, we have not been involved in how they’re marketing the material, although we are evaluating with them the quality of the material we’re giving them, and the quality of the material that comes out, so we understand better what it is we can create from the material that would come out of a New York City stream.

Q: What is the quality like, and what contamination rate are you experiencing?

BA: The quality is quite good. In the residential program, our contamination rate is very, very low. It’s well below five percent. So we feel very good about that. It is a voluntary program, so the people who participate want to participate and try to do it right. That may change obviously when you make it mandatory.

Q: Is creating a market for compost something you’re looking at doing in the future?

BA: It would definitely be part of our larger plan. We want to ensure that the material is going to beneficial use – and is not just composting; we’re also looking into anaerobic digestion so we can create energy from the material. But creating a viable program, if there’s a way to generate revenue from it, that’s obviously a huge benefit, so it’s definitely something we’ll be looking into.

Q: Yes indeed, and we just released a new lesson – Lesson 5 – of our course were we take a detailed look at market creation for compost as well. And in terms of your aims or objectives with the organic material – as you said, diverting materials from landfill and supporting communities are on your list. But what about the organic material itself and what it’s used for? Are you focused solely on creating revenue streams, with waste-to-energy for example, or are you more concerned with creating quality compost to help replenish the soil?

BA: One of our biggest objectives is to find ways to reduce the material going to landfill, and the parallel objective is to create beneficial use. And obviously as a city we are concerned about being cost-effective in what we do, so any opportunities we have to market material and gain revenue streams is important. We are focused primarily at this point on the composting, because that’s a proven technology; we know there are existing facilities, we know that a useful product can be created and marketed.

Anaerobic digestion is a little bit newer of a technology for us in the North-East. There are wastewater treatment plants that have been using anaerobic digestion for a long time, and the question is: how viable is it to utilise AD for a municipal organics program? What we’ve learned is that the challenges are when you co-mingle food waste and yard waste, and food soiled paper, that can cause problems with anaerobic digestion, and so we’re trying to figure out if those energy conversion technologies (such as anaerobic digestion), could be viable with our waste stream. We won’t be able to collect yard waste separately from food waste, we really need the efficiency of collection to collect it all together , and so the question is: is there an option to utilise anaerobic digestion with that type of material streams.

On the commercial side, with businesses, we expect it’ll be food waste. So we think that there’s quite a good opportunity there for turning food into renewable energy through anaerobic digestion. But on the residential side, we think it may be more difficult.

Q: So you’re going to stick with composting, which is probably the most ideal option on many fronts.

BA: Yes. The challenges there of course is that you need a lot of space for composting – there are siting issues. For New York City, siting any new facility is expensive and difficult. There’s permitting processes, and because we’re right the confluence of three different states, each state has their own permitting requirements and procedures.

 

 

Closing the Loop

 

Q: And for our listeners who are rolling out similar programs, we strongly recommend fully integrating the multiple benefits of compost use in the program vision. Keeping organics out of a landfill and managing the waste streams is important – and it’s usually the main argument to be had in large cities – but then programs need to take into account all the benefits of compost use as well when developing operations. We’re finding out that many programs need to put more focus on end-product quality. So there’s a whole ecosystem involved here and it goes beyond just the ‘waste management’ side of things, so it’s very important to include that in the program vision.

And so Bridget, in terms of closing the loop as much as possible do you travel far to the composting sites you use, or?

BA: We have one composting facility on Staten Island, and that’s a great system. So, all the material that we collect on Staten Island, stays on Staten Island, so that’s a very closed-loop and successful system. For the other material that we have, everything is within a hundred miles of the city, but we do have to truck it outside the city. And so, we basically say it’s regional capacity. And we’re hopeful that once we position ourselves to go to scale, that we will be able to work with companies who will local themselves closer to New York City.

 

 

Organic Waste COLLECTION in A MEGACITY: Successes and Advice

 

Q: The project has been a great success so far and it’ll be exciting to see how it progresses, but already you’ve gained a lot of experience and tackled a host of issues. I’d love to know more about the pitfalls and successes you’ve experienced on your journey so far. How has it been?

BA: Yeah, so one of the best things that has happened is that we found these local resident champions of the program, and they are the best sales people. Having peer-to-peer interactions where people are explaining to their neighbours how great the program is, how little trash they have left, and how easy it is, has been incredibly helpful. And we found that it takes a lot of work, but the in-person interactions that we have as a program with the residents is really the most effective way to get people who may be a little bit shy, nervous or intimidated on board.

We get a lot of questions and concerns about rodents and pests, and they say it’ll be more work. Well, we say it’s the same amount of waste that you’re throwing out now, you’re just putting it in a separate bin. And the bin that we have has a lid and a latch, and so we’re able to explain to people that it actually reduces the potential for pest issues because you’re containing that waste. Right now New York City has primarily a bag program, so material is placed out at the curb in bags, and when you have a plastic bag, it’s much easier for a rat to chomp into the back and access the food. If the food is in a container, it’s much more difficult for them to access that meal. So we’re working with the Department of Health to study how the rodent populations are affected by the program.

We’ve also had some people say there’s been fruit flies and maggots, and those sorts of things. And it’s amazing because we use social media a lot in the program, and we often have residents providing best practices and tips to the people who have concerns about fruit flies and maggots before we even get to them. So, we have a list of best practices and tips, but we really do rely also on that peer-to-peer education.

Q: And finally, for our audience who might be wondering how to start a similar program in other large cities around the world, what advice would you give for rolling out a system like this in a large city?

BA: I would say that you need to have a plan for where you’re going to take the material. Don’t set up the front-end without the back-end in place – that’s critical. I would say the best way to roll-out the program is to do it so it follows the existing collection schedules and the existing behaviour patterns of people – so we said “add this to the recycling bay, they’re already setting out recycling” or “have them set it out on the same days as trash”. That way the behaviour is sort of the same, it’s just that you’re separating out the material.

The stakeholder engagement has been critical, so speaking with the elected officials and getting them on board – they can be your best advocates in their districts. We found that not only the elected officials, but the local civic organisations have been critical. You have these informal mayors of neighbourhoods that really understand the neighbourhood and understand what messaging will work in that neighbourhood; is this a neighbourhood that will respond better to the fact that we’re trying to save taxpayer money? Is this a neighbourhood that will respond better to the environmental message? That’s been critical for us to target our education and our messaging.

Plastic Bags as Savior – Part 2

By Gerry Gillespie, Zero Waste Australia.

Following up on this blog post, Gerry Gillespie digs deeper on using the plastic bag as inexpensive collection infrastructure for local compost systems.

Marikina was not the first community to try a recycling program fueled by plastic bags. In a trial conducted in New Zealand in 1998,  called Tag Bag^tm, households were asked to use the standard plastic shopping bag to separate their domestic waste into four categories.

They were given a simple sheet of instructions and asked to separate their waste into paper, recyclables, organic and residual waste.  The bags were  sealed with blue, yellow, green or red tape, depending on its contents and placed together into a single collection bin.

The bin contents were collected by a single truck and separated into their categories at the recycling station. Contamination from one material stream to another was minimal.

This trial had proven that the worst characteristic of the plastic bag, its environmental permanence – had made it the perfect piece of infrastructure to source-separate waste.  Once the plastic bag is used to collect waste materials, the bag itself is also captured for recycling or reuse.

All human populations produce organic waste suitable for composting in the growing, processing and preparation of food and to some extent, in food scraps after meals.

This same organic waste, when it degrades and rots, presents health problems for local communities when it is dumped near communities. When waste is present in market places and in close proximity to populations, it attracts vermin and associated disease.

In Curitiba, Brazil, the problems caused by waste in slum areas were addressed by a program, where the poor exchanged plastic bags of waste for food at government drop-off points. The net effect was a dramatic fall in community health costs due to the removal of organic waste.

Could it be possible to expand this type of program into any area where organic waste is causing health issues and wasteful plastic bags are present? While it may not be possible to collect and sell recycled materials in some parts of the world,  it is always possible to compost at any scale.

While organic material makes up more than half of the waste stream in most ‘developed’ countries, regardless of its quantity, compost can be processed through simple composting or worm farming in a small, enclosed area.

If people were given the ability to collect organic waste and compost it at no cost other than their labour, the end product could be very beneficial to the community.   Compost could help grow food in local communities, especially in areas with limited space in pots, tires, broken buckets and small garden beds.

Compost bins don’t need to be fancy bins; they can be made from ‘puddled’ mud, cement or clay bricks, mattresses, rammed earth, straw bales, old mattresses held in place with wooden sticks or poles, bundles of newspapers, logs or stones. Composting can provide the opportunity and the empowerment to people to grow their own food at a most elementary level.

By focusing the compost process on food production as a community benefit rather than composting as a waste reduction tool, it becomes impeccably clear that all things on this planet are resources, even plastic bags.

Edited by: Rachel Chibidakis

Photo by: Flickr user Kables, used under a Creative Commons license.