The program will work to be in compliance with Senate Bill 1383
By ALMA CULVERWELL — city@theaggie.org
The city of Davis recently announced an annual waste collection monitoring program in order to ensure that the city complies with state regulations under Senate Bill (SB) 1383.
SB 1383 went into effect in January 2022 and includes specific regulations surrounding waste management, requiring all cities in California to perform a yearly contamination monitoring to establish how well waste is being sorted.
Jennifer Gilbert, the conservation coordinator for the city of Davis, explained the involved process for monitoring the city’s waste.
“The law is very specific about how cities are to perform this contamination monitoring,” Gilbert said. “Route monitoring, or lid flipping, is when a number of containers on each hauler route are visually checked for proper waste sorting. If contamination is found, the city is required to provide additional education to customers on how to properly sort waste.”
The city hired APTIM, a private company that works to enhance the quality of the environment and create sustainable and resilient communities, to help with the process. Gilbert shared the city’s reaction to the end result of last year’s trash collection.
“We were very pleased,” Gilbert said. “Last year, 81% of trash, recycling and organic containers that were checked had waste sorted correctly. Since last year was our very first year, we didn’t know what to expect. 81% is very good compared to some other cities or jurisdictions in California.”
Gilbert explained that the only shift they had to make after last year was increasing the number of “Good Job” tags.
“Last year, we ran out of ‘Good Job’ tags, because customers were sorting waste better than we expected,” Gilbert said.
Mayor Josh Chapman discussed the results of last year’s process in a press release.
“There was great success during last year’s lid flipping, which further illustrates our community’s commitment to being stewards of the environment,” Chapman said.
The waste checks serve primarily as a method of ensuring that the city of Davis community members are in compliance with the SB 1383 regulations and are not in need of further outreach or education.
“City staff have done a great job increasing the amount of outreach and education on waste sorting this year,” Chapman said. “The city of Davis has consistently been at the forefront in providing recycling and organic services to customers, and now, it is more important than ever to understand how the actions we take to reduce our carbon footprint make an impact.”
Gilbert shared her hopes for the future of waste checking and collection.
“We hope that over time, we see even lower rates of contamination,” Gilbert said. “Specifically, we hope to see fewer trash containers get tagged for containing recyclable or compostable materials.”
Written by: Alma Culverwell — city@theaggie.org
