San Diego’s Organic Waste Recycling program shows progress after first full year

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – The amount of organic waste being delivered to the San Diego Miramar Greenery has nearly doubled in the two-years since SB 1383 went into effect.
The law requires everyone in California to recycle their organic waste. It was passed by the Legislature in 2016, but the state delayed implementation to let cities and counties plan the roll-out. Then the pandemic delayed it further.
ABC 10News has been covering the roll out across San Diego county
as
. In 2023, San Diego
to single-family homes. As part of that roll out, then Director of Environmental Services Renee Robertson invited ABC 10News Anchor Jared Aarons into her home
of house-hold organic waste recycling.
For the most part, the city’s efforts have been working. According to numbers from the City of San Diego, 90,400 tons of organic waste went to the Greenery in Fiscal Year 2022, the year before the roll-out. In 2023, that number increased to 108,115 tons. In 2024, it was 158,086 tons.
“It’s definitely a behavior change,” says City Recycling Program Manager Julie Sands. “it’s hard to create a behavior change, but we’re getting there. And we can see it from the numbers.”
The law was designed to fight climate change, by lowering the amount of methane gas released from landfills by organic waste as it breaks down. Instead, that waste is now turned into compost, which is free for the public to pick up.
As the amount of organic waste has risen, so has the amount of compost created. The city says the Greenery created 45,000 tons of compost in 2023. So far in 2024, they’ve churned out 70,000 tons.
Meanwhile, the amount of garbage going into the Miramar Landfill has dropped, from 838,921 tons in FY 2022 to 695,124 tons in FY24. The city points out that 2024 would have been much lower if not for the extra trash created by the January floods.
“This is the biggest solid waste change we’ve had in over 20 years,” says Sands. “It might not seem like a big deal, but putting your food scraps into your bin, or your excess plant material from when you’re gardening, putting all of those in your green bin, all of that helps.”
Still, the early years haven’t been perfect. Sands says they’re seeing a lot of contaminants in the green bins, which in turn makes its way to the Greenery. The five most common contaminants the city says they see are:
1. Plastic bags
2. Soft plastic
3. Rigid plastic
4. Cardboard
5. Treated wood (with paint, nails, screws, etc.)
Greenery workers do what they can to remove whatever they see. But they don’t have machines to sort the organic waste. Inevitably, some contaminants get mixed in, becoming part of the compost that people put in their yards or gardens.
“What goes in is going to come out,” says Burton Ewert, a City of San Diego Biologist who has worked at the greenery for nearly 30 years. “Ask yourself if that’s what I want to grow my tomatoes, cucumbers, my roses. If that’s the stuff you want to grow in, put it in here. But if it isn’t, don’t put it in the green bin.”
Widespread enforcement and fines for contamination or not separating organic waste hasn’t begun yet. The city still sees this as a learning process. They’re trying to help people develop the new habit of sorting out organic waste.
Sands says every little step of progress is a step towards a greener, cleaner world.
“People sometimes feel helpless. This is a way, this is working toward defeating climate change.”