State law drives local interest in composting

Residents dive into food waste

 From coastal to inland areas, North County turns to compost

By Jacqueline Covey

REGION — These days, you might hear a common refrain from neighbors: “We barely have trash anymore.”

As subscribers of San Diego’s Food2Soil Composting Collective dropped off their kitchen scraps at Wendy Miller’s home dropoff on Monday in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego, each had similar observations — their trash cans are taking longer to fill.

Instead, residents are collecting food waste to be turned — once, twice, three times — in compost bins at their homes or third-party sites.

“I love doing it from my front yard,” Miller said. “I know I’ve got gardeners coming from all over.”

Subscribers can then choose to take finished compost for home gardens or landscape amendments at the drop off. Food2Soil is one program of many working to help North County residents recycle organic waste.

Statewide, the goal is to relieve landfills of organic waste on a far larger scale. Senate Bill 1383, which took effect in January, aims to reduce organic waste disposal by 75% and rescue at least 20% of disposed of surplus food by 2025.

SB 1383 requires cities to offer curbside pickup, i.e., the green bins and procurement levels for businesses and municipalities to use the organic recyclables.

“In the San Diego region, our soils are very low in organic material, there’s not much there,” said Michael Wonsidler, program manager for the county’s Solid Waste Planning and Recycling and Creative Services sections. “It’s mostly sandy material that needs that introduction of organic material.”

At home, residents all over the county are stepping up to recycle this material and feed their gardens.

Composting is a long-standing practice in many areas in North County, and it’s gaining more traction with the passage of new legislation.

Carol Graham has a hard time pinpointing when she began composting, but it was sometime after she moved to Encinitas in the 1970s but prior to joining the Solana Center for Environmental Innovation roughly 20 years later.

Composting is the natural heating and cooling of waste as it decomposes. Whether in an outdoor bucket or pile, a mixture of yard clippings, food scraps and air decomposes into material that resembles dirt.

The process transforms inedible food scraps and green waste that typically goes to the landfill to produce a natural soil amendment while preventing the production of methane.

“I notice that the compost I sift out of the finished product looks every bit as good — or better, I think — than the bagged stuff you get at the nursery,” Graham said, who is also a master composter and master gardener in San Diego County.

To Graham, a zoologist who grew up with a garden-enthusiastic mother, composting just makes sense — it’s an affordable alternative to store-bought soil amendments and is beneficial to the environment.

Currently, residents in places like Encinitas and Escondido already have access to haulers with organic and food waste collection sites. Other cities are still catching up.

For example, just this past week, Oceanside and Waste Management just approved a contract for curbside organic recycling services by 2024.

For residents in unincorporated areas, such as Fallbrook, Lakeside and Spring Valley, the County of San Diego ensure they have access to organic waste disposal.

“Sometimes food will go bad,” said Jessica Toth, executive director at the Solana Center for Environmental Innovation, which works with 19 cities in San Diego County to keep the diversion ball rolling. “But there’s a lot we can do to prevent what we’re wasting — it should be returned to [the Earth].”

Toth said that the region generates 1.6 million tons of organic waste, 500,000 tons of that from food.

Across the state, organic waste produces 20 percent of the state’s methane. (Methane is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide, both are considered significant greenhouse gasses.)

“It is very important that the minerals and nutrients we mine from the Earth,” Toth said.

Compost has the unique ability to put nutrients back in the ground after it’s been ripped into for farming and development. It also holds four times its weight in water, which strengthens soil during droughts, provides erosion control, and stabilizes the ground after a fire.

The county government is currently looking at ways to reach its procurement goals and help other cities do the same. While compost is not the only method to recycle waste, it is one-way residents can directly get involved.

WENDY MILLER, a volunteer at Food2Soil Composting Collective, digs through the dirt at her home in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego. Miller’s front yard is one of many compost drop-off stations for Food2Soil subscribers across the county. Photo by Jacqueline Covey

Jacqueline Covey is also a volunteer for the Solana Center for Environmental Innovation.

GHOST GUNS

CONTINUED FROM 3 in a hit-and-run while driving a stolen vehicle the following day and arrested, at which time deputies found a ghost gun in the vehicle.

Despite low levels of local incidents involving ghost guns, city councilmembers have historically supported strengthened local regulations.

In the past three years, the council adopted an ordinance requiring the safe residential storage of firearms in the city, passed a resolution calling on the 22nd District Agricultural Association to prevent the sale of unregulated firearm kits or parts at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, and passed two other resolutions supporting firearm safety legislation.

“While I recognize that there are regulations coming down from the federal level and the state level, activists in this area have noted that strategies have to occur at every single level,” said councilwoman Kelly Harless. “I’m really proud our city has taken such a proactive role in this.”

Under the new federal regulations, retailers selling firearm kits must run background checks on all prospective buyers, and firearms dealers and gunsmiths will be required to add a serial number to any 3D-printed or other unserialized firearm in their inventory.

Gun retailers and firearms licensees also must retain firearm licensing records for the full licensing term rather than the previous requirement of 20 years.

The goal is to prevent destruction of records that could assist law enforcement in tracing firearms used in violent crimes or homicides.

Mayor Lesa Heebner also referenced the widely-reported shooting of 10 people in a Brooklyn subway station on Monday, and reports that the gun left at the scene showed evidence of someone attempting to scratch off the serial number.

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