By Arthur R. Boone, Center for Recycling Research (CRR)
On Wednesday December 18th, Cal Recycle formally ended its early regulation phase and is now drafting final regulations that must be approved by the state officer in charge before becoming final in 2022.
The Legislature has put a lot in play and the department is trying to step up its enforcement work. When you consider that CA has as much garbage now as it had when AB 939 was adopted 29 years ago, the legislature may have lost patience with the “talk-big, act small” results of AB 939 implementation.
In Europe, the EU voted about a year ago that starting in 2024, all organics shall be collected as a source-separated material and not delivered to landfills but to other beneficial end uses. This ruling came after 20 years of fooling around with various kinds of programs to keep methane out of landfills and bowing to the garbage-as-usual interests in used materials management. It’s easy to think that CA will now be repeating for ourselves what Europe has learned in the last 20 years as we try to make SB 1383 work.
Maybe we need to bring Enzo Favoino to Northern California and run him around with his stories; a wise man from Italy and ZW leader in Europe.