10 Draft Integrated Waste Management Plan - City Council - City of ...

2012 Davis Integrated Waste Management Plan
be addressed, as it is difficult to pinpoint who is contaminating a shared bin. Frequent outreach and monitoring
of the food scrap collection bins may be required. Outreach for this program may need to include site visits by
City staff to help train employees on separating out all organics from the waste stream.
Potential problems with this billing method may arise, due to the requirements of Prop 218 and the fact that all
customers may not have access to food scrap collection: businesses without space for an additional cart or bin
for organics or multi-family communities with repeatedly high contamination rates.
Another potential problem with rolling the cost of commercial food scrap collection into commercial garbage
rate is the potential for the commercial rates to increase dramatically. There is a fundamental difference
between food scrap collection service and recycling service: DWR can sell the recyclables and receive revenue.
The revenue from the recycling subsidizes the cost of the collection of recyclables. This is not what happens
with food scraps. DWR pays a fee per ton of food scraps and other compostables that they deliver to the Zamora
Composting facility—the same as if they were disposing of garbage at the landfill. They cannot sell it and
receive any revenue from compostables. This would not make much of a difference in a residential collection
system—food scraps would likely make up such a small portion of the overall organic material collected that
the increase in tonnage would be minor. It may only a dollar difference for a single-family customer. However,
with commercial organics, the scale is significantly larger; a single household produces a very small amount of
food scraps compared to a restaurant. Food scraps are generally very wet, and therefore very heavy. Since
compost facilities charge by the ton, the tipping fee increase from adding the tons of food scraps generated by
restaurants, grocery stores, schools and hospitals would be a significant increase in cost. Further study may be
required, but initial findings indicate a large increase in commercial garbage rates would be required to cover
the increased compost facility tipping fees.
Another consideration for commercial collection would be the level and frequency of collection and the size of
the container used. In the pilot, several businesses expressed concern that the twice a week pick-up was not
sufficient for their business, given the lack of space they had for storage of a limited number of food scrap
collection carts. Instead of a 65 gallon cart for food scrap collection, maybe alternate size bins would be
possible and/or more frequent pick-ups.
Levels of service and space constraints go hand-in-hand. Many businesses, particularly those in the downtown
area, have a very limited space for refuse. Many have dumpsters that are emptied daily or nearly every day. For
these businesses to participate in the pilot, collection would have to be more frequent than once a week as they
do not have ample space for the number of carts needed to hold several days’ worth of food scraps.
DRAFT
If the City wishes to collect food scraps from all commercial customers, this is the recommended sequence of
events:
1. Determine the level of service to be provided.
2. Develop and implement a new rate structure—implement a 5-year rate structure.
3. Order bins—DWR cannot instantaneously begin this program. DWR needs a 12 month lead time to
order bins and trucks.
4. Update City Municipal Code to include new collection information and rules.
5. Amend contract with DWR to include new collection services.
6. Outreach.
7. Implementation:
a. Containerize yard materials and implement residential food scrap program
b. Containerize yard materials and implement commercial food scrap program
c. Reduce street sweeping—may either be done at the same time as the above or slightly after.
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