Newsletter – Page 24 – Northern California Recycling Association

Chou Hall – Greenbuilding It Up

By Nikhil Balachandran, Zabble Inc. and NCRA Board Member

When I signed up for the Chou Hall tour on a short notice, I wondered how many people would actually show up. I was surprised to see at least 15 people at the entrance of the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. The crowd was good mix of waste industry folks, consultants, non-profits, sustainability managers from private companies and curious individuals. Kudos to NCRA’s Memberships, Events and Activities Committee (MEAC) who quickly coordinated the tour with the UC team and Juliana Gerber for sending out the sign up emails to orchestrate a successful event within a couple weeks.

It wasn’t hard to spot the right group when every attendee had either a reusable coffee mug or water bottle. We were greeted by the Green Team – Danner-Doud Martin, Assistant Director of the Berkeley-Haas International Business Development Program, Jessica Heiges, a Master’s student in the College of Natural Resources and NCRA Member Lin King, Cal Zero Waste Manager and veteran at championing university recycling programs.

After a quick round of introductions, we were made aware of Haas’ guiding principles etched on the walls in front of us.

Question the Status Quo
Confidence Without Attitude
Student Always
Beyond Yourself

So it’s no surprise that Chou Hall is aiming to be the first academic building to achieve the trifecta in Green Building certifications: LEED Platinum, WELL and TRUE Zero Waste.

A fully donor funded building, the 6 story building has received $60m in funding for the construction of the 80,000 sq ft building. It consists of 8 tiered classrooms with a total of 858 classroom seats, a 300 person event space, numerous study rooms and a cafeteria.

From the moment you enter the building, you can feel the openness in design and a freshness in architectural style. Having opened only a year back, Chou Hall has been making steady progress towards diverting more than 90% of discards from landfill every month. This is a mandatory requirement by TRUE, among others that ensure contamination is kept under 10% and mandates the upper management to adopt a Zero Waste policy.

There is around 24,000 sq ft of exterior windows that provides ambient lighting, reducing the need for interior lighting, thus reducing electricity consumption by 38% compared to similar sized buildings. Not yet functional is a solar installation on the 6th floor balcony, with sweeping views of the Bay Area, that also provides shade. A greywater recycling system that harvests rainwater was installed to reduce water consumption by 40%.

Pack-in, Pack-out. Don’t Pout! – Everything in the cafeteria is served in reusable-ware, compostable, or recyclable containers. To top it all, Chou Hall does not have any landfill bins. You heard it right! According to Danner, their pack-in, pack-out policy for trash helps students and staff be aware of the waste they generate. The students are encouraged to find the landfill bins outside the building. To facilitate that, the Green team switched to a vendor that made compostable products that are 100% plant based and BPI and ASTM D6400 certified. All the paper has 100% post-consumer recycled content. There are also no chips or candy bags available in the cafeteria and that was an uphill battle that all departments eventually came to common ground on. Jessica Heiges made an interesting analogy to the no-indoor-landfill-bins policy likening it to the smoking ban on campus. That it takes a while for people to get used to and then becomes part of their routine. She also said that very little food waste is generated. Any leftovers are usually placed out on campus and is gone within minutes.

But what about all that contamination? – Oh yes! Of course. That’s where the frequent Zero Waste audits come in that are needed for the monthly reporting. The Zero Waste audits emphasize keeping track of specifics like the source of generation, category and amount. For example, the recycle bin in floor 3 had a lot of food scraps in clamshells. The Green Team meets as often as weekly to discuss their progress and make tweaks to their program. They also meet monthly with other departments and stakeholders like custodial or cafeteria staff to discuss solutions to roadblocks. Lin says contamination is also countered by consistent signage and color coding the bins and lids throughout the building. Using pop-off lids makes it easier for custodial staff to empty the bins on a regular basis to avoid overflow. Danner added that surveys were immensely helpful as an educational tool not just to measure feedback from people but to communicate how well they are doing and why they are doing it. With the mindset is to encourage research and innovation, rather than telling the staff and students what to do, Lin says the Green Team constantly comes up with innovative ideas to battle contamination issues.

With that our tour concluded and we went back to the cafe downstairs for lunch. We sat in the patio under the mighty redwoods impressed by the determination of the Green Team who were all there on a voluntary basis. We shared the latest information on the current economic condition and how they would shape the Zero Waste future.

Who’s next – With UC’s goal to achieve Zero Waste by 2020 and to reduce MSW per capita by 25% by 2025 and 50% by 2030, UC Berkeley’s Haas School has taken a strong step forward. They hope to apply their learnings from Chou Hall to other buildings on campus, share them with other campuses in the UC system and universities in the country. So, it isn’t unusual for UC Berkeley to embark on this journey, when they’ve made it a habit to ask, “Isn’t there a better way to do this?

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Bernie Meyerson, 1932 – 2018

The Bay Area Recycling Community Has Lost One Of Its Long Time Heroes
By Kevin Drew, Residential Zero Waste Senior Coordinator, San Francisco Department of the Environment

Bernie Meyerson slipped away in May, following his lifelong partner Marion by 7 years, an eternity after their over 60 years together, starting out as teenagers in the neighborhoods of Brooklyn just after the end of WWII.

Bernie was “present at the creation” of many aspects of what we now take for granted in Bay Area and California resource recovery, such as: curbside recycling in Fresno in the 1970’s, opposition to incinerators in the Berkeley and San Francisco, supporting reform of SF’s 1932 Refuse Ordinance and Norcal’s (now Recology) monopoly, supporting recycled content industries as the only real solution to sustainable materials management. Bernie not only advocated for, but got into the business of, recycling: putting his time and money where his mouth and brain were, helping to create Multi Material Management & Marketing in Oakland.

Bernie was a mentor to many of us in the recycling movement. Always willing to spend some time discussing the intricacies of recycling and materials management. “It’s all about the markets” was Bernie’s common refrain and he’d go on to explain what was happening in China, Viet Nam, India or Los Angeles, where ever material was moving or not moving. For good measure, Bernie could be counted on to add a dose of thoughtful exposition on the connection back to local, state and national policies and politics. He was a powerful intellect, able to hold forth persuasively and accurately on our industry, and many other topics.

Bernie could also be counted on to “be there” for the environment and fellow recyclers, even decades down the road on important matters and little issues. Most recently he helped protect San Francisco’s waterfront from over-development by helping to passing Prop B. He provided long hours of thoughtful consideration as a member of San Francisco’s Peak Oil Task Force. He saved my butt with wise counsel on handling the DOC Enforcement actions being levied at the HANC Recycling Center shortly after I started work there in 1988, and early in the AB2020 implementation.

I really never stopped listening to Bernie wax on, wax on about . . . whatever. I miss that repartee already.

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Boone/Stein v. Alameda County Waste Management Authority

What Happened and Why
By John D. Moore, NCRA Vice President and Legal Counsel, and Alameda County Source Reduction and Recycling Board Environmental Organization Member

Editors note: The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of NCRA or the Recycling Board.

In 2011, Waste Management (WM) obtained a permit from the City of San Leandro for expanded composting and anaerobic digestion at its Davis Street Transfer Station (DSTS). For California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) compliance in 2011, San Leandro issued a negative declaration. As part of the 2011 permitting process WM obtained an amendment to the County Integrated Waste Management Plan (CoIWMP) that describes its 2011 plans. In 2017, WM decided it wanted to perform mixed waste composting at DSTS instead of what was approved in 2011. WM needed another amendment to the CoIWMP that described its 2017 plans and needed the Alameda County Waste Management Authority (ACWMA and StopWaste) to approve that amendment. In conjunction with this proposed CoIWMP amendment, the ACWMA was required to consider CEQA again and decide whether or not to require environmental review resulting from the project changes since 2011 and whether these changes posed significant potential adverse environmental impact. Stopwaste found that there had been no changes to the project since 2011 so that no further CEQA review was required. Arthur Boone and Dr. Toni Stein objected to the CEQA determination before the ACWMA, hired private counsel at their own expense and filed suit under CEQA for the ACWMA’s refusal to perform further environmental review.

First, the Court tentatively ruled in favor of Boone and Stein although its tentative ruling did not read like much of an endorsement of their suit. After oral argument the Court changed its mind and ruled in favor of the County and WM. Then, Boone/Stein asked Judge Ronni McLaren to reconsider her ruling, which she did. In Judge McLaren’s reconsidered ruling she again tentatively ruled in favor of Boone/Stein; this time in a more committed fashion. But, after oral argument, Judge McLaren changed her mind yet again and ruled in favor of the County and WM.

Why did Judge McLaren change her mind so much? There is no way to know for sure. At the start of the first hearing Judge McLaren announced that this was the first CEQA case that she had ever decided. That said, it appeared that Judge McLaren spent a lot of time and effort reviewing and considering the law. CEQA has two competing underlying policies: one is for full public transparency and disclosure of potential significant environmental impacts of proposed projects; the other is finality of public agency decisions about the project. CEQA requires the Court to give a lot of deference to public agency fact finding concerning CEQA evaluations. Stopwaste found that there had been no change in the project since 2011. I think Judge McLaren realized that this was just untrue and that the current proposed project never had a full CEQA review, but could not see what potential environmental impacts would result from the project changes that had been raised before the ACWMA. Judge McLaren had to follow the law requiring deference to Stopwaste’s determination of no project changes. The Court’s review was also limited to objections actually made at the agency hearing which focused more on air emissions than zero waste issues. .

Boone and Stein could appeal and argue that Judge McLaren applied the wrong legal standard in her decision. Courts of Appeal likewise give much deference to a trial court’s factual finding, i.e. that the administrative record before the ACWMA did not show potential significant environmental impacts from the changes in the project. Statistically, I think that the odds are very high that Boone/Stein would lose in a court of appeal.

Any other ways to challenge the WM project? WM has a 2011 permit from the City of San Leandro. The DSTS is also bound by a master plan including the site, which was approved by the City of San Leandro in 1998. If the current project violates either of these approvals, a possible challenge exists but a very quick statute of limitations is running on such a challenge.

What sort of further environmental review should have occurred? Recognizing that the project did change from 2011 and that mixed waste composting had not yet been tried in the US, potential environmental impacts of poor quality of output compost and the possible negative impact on source separation are things I think should have been studied. After the ACWMA hearing there was media coverage of the dissatisfaction of several European countries with mixed waste composting because of claimed poor quality of the output. A press release in connection with these reports coined the phrase “Compost-like output” or CLOs when discussing compost made from mixed waste.

Would that have made any difference, if known by the ACWMA? To me that seems unlikely. The ACWMA is a joint powers agency made up of all of the cities within the county plus two sanitary districts that provide for solid waste and recyclables collection. As a political body, its decisions are sometimes made for political reasons and it is possible under CEQA for a public agency to approve a project no matter how bad the disclosed environmental impacts would be. That said, one member of the ACWMA, the City of Oakland, was heavily invested in the approval of the mixed waste composting facility at DSTS because it is part of its franchise agreement with WM. Do I think that a majority of the ACWMA members would have voted to deny approval of a project so important to the largest city within the County? I think that is unlikely. The realistic best outcome would have been to impose some quality requirements in the compost output. WM told the ACWMA that its compost would meet certification requirements of one of the NGOs that certify compost. But this promise is not stated in any of the permits.

In hindsight, NCRA should have appeared at the ACWMA CoIWMP amendment hearing and raised concerns about source separation and compost quality, if only to ask the ACWMA to impose permit conditions relating to these concerns. I feel like in hindsight I should have pushed more in that direction. These concerns might ultimately have convinced Judge McLaren to insist upon more environmental review of the mixed waste processing component. But in the end I think the ACWMA would have approved the project anyway.

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