The Supermaze Of Regulations Preventing Community Composting

and how one city's Sustainability Officer is navigating through it.

Implementing community composting programs in cities can be more challenging that you would think.

​Food2Soil and its allies are diligently working to find creative solutions to bring universal access to food waste recycling programs and remove the barriers in the way of community composting.

For the past year we’ve been working with Clem Brown, Environmental Sustainability/Special Projects Manager with the City of Del Mar.​

SPOILER ALERT!

While Clem left no stone unturned in trying to bring Food2Soil’s community composting programs to Del Mar's residents, he was not successful in being able to do so at this time. 

​This certainly was a great learning experience for all of us involved. We realised how we’ve built a regulatory supermaze preventing community scale composting!

As part of our Change Makers campaign we spoke to Clem over Zoom on his personal and professional journey so far, what the future of community composting might look like, and what legacy he wants to leave behind.

Meet Clem Brown - The Person And The Professional

Clem’s studies in Forestry, Natural Resource Management, Public Administration, and International Sustainable Development reflect his passion for the environment. As Del Mar’s “Sustainability Manager”, he is fulfilling his goal of working for local government to make a tangible positive change. Clem explained how he is worried what the world will look like for his two little girls, and he wants to leave it better than how he found it. 
 
Clem and his family see composting as an important part of their lives. As residents of Encinitas, Clem and his family used to make the trek to the Solana Center for Environmental Innovation to drop off their food scraps for composting by paying a small fee. Now his family puts their food waste into their green waste cart as part of Encinitas’ new organics recycling program. Currently, Del Mar does not have similar options for food scrap composting. The City is a small bedroom community, and space is at a premium. Therefore, when Food2Soil reached out to Clem about offering their services in Del Mar, he was familiar with the concept and enthusiastic about the idea.​

Why Community Composting and Food2Soil Caught Clem’s Attention

Food2Soil proposed two programs for the city. The first was the Soil Farmer program, which would allow residents to provide composting service to their neighbors by charging a small fee. The second was a Dropoff program that would enable individuals to drop off their food scraps at a centralized collection point in the city. The food scraps would then be transported by Food2Soil to a community composting site outside Del Mar for processing.
 
As it turns out, Del Mar regulates business activities that can be conducted out of homes due to which Del Mar’s residents cannot participate in the Soil Farmer program at this time. With this option off the table, Clem started brainstorming locations that could work as dropoff hubs.

However, designating a dropoff hub at a commercial property in Del Mar like a restaurant or a city facility also ran into a roadblock in the form of the city’s exclusive solid waste franchise agreement with Waste Management.

Under an exclusive franchise agreement, the solid waste hauler owns the various waste streams of a city. Waste Management was not open to the idea of establishing a community dropoff hub at a Del Mar business because they are hoping to launch their own organics recycling program in the near future. With both residential and commercial properties out of the picture, the count of potential sites was back at zero.

“I was really interested in bringing [community composting] to Del Mar because our current solid waste hauler, Waste Management, does not yet provide organics collection service,” says Clem.

So Close To A Solution

Not willing to accept “no” as an answer, Clem was determined to find a work-around while adhering to these regulations. He closely read Del Mar’s municipal code, checked with the city’s planning department, discussed the details with the city’s code enforcement officer, and really tried to find a way forward.

​At one point, it looked like the most viable option would be to locate a dropoff hub at the City’s Civic Center during the weekly Del Mar Farmers Market. This seemed like a feasible location because the Farmers Market was not located on a residential property, and allowing residents to self-haul their own food waste to the Farmers Market would not violate the city’s franchise agreement. Furthermore, the Civic Center was centrally located in the middle of town to allow everyone to easily dropoff their food scraps. Leslie Robson, who is on the board of directors of the Del Mar Farmers Market, was excited at the idea. Leslie is an avid composter and a longtime supporter of Food2Soil.

​Clem and Leslie identified possible spaces to locate the dropoff hub in collaboration with the Del Mar Farmers Market. However, this also ran into yet another unexpected obstacle. As noted above, the Del Mar Farmers Market is held weekly on city property at the Civic Center. Under current policy, the Civic Center cannot be used for the benefit of a private business. While it would be okay to have a dropoff site at the Farmers Market during market hours (Saturdays from 1-4pm) it would be against the city’s current policy to create a permanent dropoff hub allowing residents to bring their food scraps to the Civic Center when the Farmers Market is not in operation.

LEAVING A LEGACY

Clem’s efforts to bring organics recycling to Del Mar have not worked out so far but he doesn’t plan to give up any time soon. He sees hope in new regulations passed by State and appreciates the pivotal role local governments can play to make communities more sustainable.

​In the coming years, cities will be required to update their municipal codes and franchise agreements to require all residents and businesses to recycle their organic waste, including food scraps. Del Mar is in the process of updating these documents and possibly choosing a new solid waste hauler. Clem is using this opportunity to include explicit language that supports community composting in the City’s next franchise agreement.

“We have many tools in the toolbox that are available to us, and we need to use all of them to meet these lofty goals,” remarks Clem.