Yesterday, Long Beach announced a pilot program that will divert food scraps from 115 local businesses and send them to a facility to be turned into renewable energy.
The Commercial Food Scraps Collection Program was meant to launch last year but was delayed due to the pandemic.
“We were kind of in process to begin in 2020. But then the world changed,” Waste Diversion and Recycling Program Manager Erin Rowland said. “And so we were not able to move forward at that point due to COVID, due to the impact to the restaurant industry, restaurants closing, et cetera.”
In the meantime, the City of Long Beach worked to identify businesses that qualified as “high generators of organic materials.” The selected businesses will receive a 95-gallon green cart to dispose of food scraps.
Public Works will pick up the carts weekly and deliver them to the Puente Hills Recovery Facility in Whittier, where the “milkshake-like substance or slurry” will be treated, pumped into tanks and shipped to a wastewater treatment plant, according to the department.
The slurry will be converted into renewable energy through anaerobic digestion, a process by which organic material is broken down in an oxygen-free environment. The end result: biogas and biofertilizer.
Rowland said the pilot program is a “big step” towards the City’s greenhouse gas goals, even in its fledgling pilot model.
“The launch of the Commercial Food Scraps Collection Program marks a major step towards reducing Long Beach’s overall greenhouse gas emissions,” Mayor Robert Garcia said in a statement. “We are proud to partner with our local businesses to help achieve the City’s sustainability goals.”
The pilot program aligns with goals set out in California Assembly Bill 1826, which mandates that all commercial businesses divert organic waste.
The City is working on implementing organic waste diversion from residential waste streams as well, Rowland said, but they’re still doing feasibility studies and cost analyses to pinpoint what that might look like.
The move also comes just six months before Long Beach must comply with California Senate Bill 1383, which requires that cities recover no less than 20% of edible food for human consumption by 2025.
Rowland said the department is looking at the City’s procurement of food for events and how excess food might be recovered and donated.
“The City is really committed to working towards our compliance with state legislation,” Rowland said. “We look forward to the successful implementation of these programs to help us reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, to generate more renewable energy sources and to just have more opportunities for our restaurants and businesses to reduce waste.”
