 to another episode of In The Studio. I'm Lynn Weaver, and the topic, our topic today, is the collection, new organic collection program coming to Davis in July and August. And to talk a little more about this so that we understand what it is, is Jennifer Gilbert. She is the conservation coordinator for the town. And welcome. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for being on our show. And I'm looking forward to learning more about this program. Thank you very much. So the way I understand it, this new program will be a city-wide program that has already been tested and will be implemented city-wide. Yes, that's correct. OK, so let's try and attempt to describe how this program is different from the one we have now. For example, now, at least, I know that the branches and the leaves are collected once a week, and then I put out my recycling and my garbage once a week as well. So now we're going to add the organic waste to this collection. So can you tell me a little more how it's going to happen? Sure. So right now, all single-family homes in Davis have a garbage cart and a recycling cart. That's right. So once this program starts this summer, single-family homes will be giving a third cart, the organics cart. So that cart, you can place all of your yard material debris from your landscape clippings. And you can put food scraps, food soiled paper, tissues, Kleenex, paper products like paper plates, paper cups, corn cobs, bones, eggshells, all that kind of stuff can go in there. So food, leaves, branches, and paper, all right? So here, we have a picture of this. It's a very attractive picture. So you've already described what these are. So for example, can you talk a little bit about this picture? I'm sure you had something to do with that. Yeah. So this picture is showing the organic waste cart and what can be placed in the organic waste cart, and then what would still be placed in the yard material piles. So the yard material piles that you were describing earlier, they're not going away. Oh, all right. We still have yard material piles just instead of those piles being picked up every single week and material being placed out in the street every single day. Yes. The yard material piles will only be picked up once a month and then every week during the leaf drop season. So mid-October to mid-December, when we have the most leaf fall, every week those piles will still be picked up. But then for the rest of the year, it's just one week out of the year where they're doing pickup. In order to make sure that we don't have yard debris just sitting in the street for weeks and weeks before pickup, the yard material can only be placed out five days before a scheduled pickup. I see. So before we go a little further on this, I'd like to show the new cart. And apparently what differentiates it from the other cart is it has a brown top. Yes. And that's consistent with the rest of the county, too. So countywide in Yolo County, all the organic waste carts have brown lids. Woodland, West Sacramento, unincorporated. So we wanted to make sure that we're similar as the other jurisdictions around us. So brown lid means organic waste. So we can put our brown lid cart somewhere else and it will be picked up. And you can think about the compost is going to be the stuff that's placed in the brown lid cart is going to turn into compost, which is brown, so you kind of have an association with that. A very philosophical association here. So how do I know, as a resident, what do I still put out on the curb, branches, leaves, and everything, and what I can throw into this brown top lid? So anything that can fit into the brown top cart should go into the brown top cart. I mean, anything larger, like a large branch that's not going to fit, you would save that for putting it in the piles on the streets. We want to see all grass clippings and leaves placed in the cart unless the cart's already full. That material can easily be blown by the wind all over the street or down into a storm drain all the time. It is, because people generally leave it out for many days. So the idea of having a time limit five days before the pickup makes a lot of sense. And five days allows that even if you have a pickup, like on a Thursday, you still have the weekend prior to do the yard work at home. So that's why there's five days is so that everybody has a chance to utilize the weekend. Right. And then the recycling bin, the normal recycling paper and covers or whatever. Bottles and cans. Yes, bottles and cans still remains once a week. Once a week. And what about the actual trash? See, that's the fun part, because once this program starts, it is the fun part, because you get to come in. OK, I'm going to convince you. Once this program starts, there's going to be hardly anything that should be going in that cart. The only thing that can go that's not going to be recyclable or compostable is stuff like expanded polystyrene, like styrofoam, or plastic wrap and diapers. Pretty much everything else is either going to be accepted for compost or will be recycled. Even if you think out, if you go to get some takeout food and you've got your cup with its lid and the straw, the cup is going to be compostable, because it's a paper product that's compostable. The lid and the straw are recyclable. The bag is compostable. So there's so much that's going to be able to be composted that you're going to be able to change your garbage cart for a smaller size. So you're going to have less space being taken up. Yes. And then you can get a discount under Garbage Bill. All right. So it is better. It is exciting. It is exciting. And you've explained it very nicely. And I think I'm clear now about what's going to happen, what I should put out, and put in. But now let's talk about the reasons for doing this. Now I understand that at the moment, the landfill, the organic waste, if you like, the food product that we now put in the trash bin, are generally, they generally go into the landfill. And one of the problems with landfills is that organic waste in landfills is that they emanate a lot of methane, which of course is a very bad gas when we talk of climate change. Now I understand now these organic things will be going into a compost, like a gigantic compost pile. So explain to me, and I'm putting you on a spot here, explain to me how it is different. The compost pile, doesn't that also give off all this methane? No, it doesn't. So composting is an aerobic process. So as an aerobic process, it doesn't generate methane gas. Methane gas is produced as a byproduct of anaerobic decomposition, like what would happen in a landfill because there's no air. So in a composting facility, they're injecting lots of air into the piles so that it's aerobic. So there is no methane produced from that system. That's very interesting. So it's much better. And it has been proved, of course, because you've tested this with restaurants in time. Yes, we've been collecting food scraps from restaurants since, I want to say, 11 or 12. We've been doing this for a number of years. And they've been doing a fabulous job. We've been collecting about five tons of food scraps every week from restaurants. Five tons? Five tons, yeah. So we've been testing this for a number of years to work out any bugs, no pun intended, in the system that might be with collecting these. So we know what the issues are. We know how to address them. We've got a lot of data already about how the collection process works. So now we're just ready to roll this out. Well, it seems like you've done all your homework. You've tested it, which is very assuring. I just wanted to show maybe our last picture, which is a diagram. There it is. So this is the new collection types. Could you maybe describe this a little bit? Sure. So the card at the top is the organics carts. And you see there are different types of food scraps. And some of them are dweezed. And the brown lid on that cart, yeah. And you can even see things like takeout containers, milk cartons, chopsticks, pizza boxes that can go into that cart. Yes. Then in the middle is the recycling cart that we have right now, just showing the wide variety of materials that you can place into that recycling cart. And then the garbage cart, I'd really like to put a tiny, tiny picture of a garbage cart in there, because it should be so much smaller. Because you see the only thing that's left there really is some polystyrene, bag of chips, plastic, a diaper, and a broken ceramic plate. I mean, there's not much left. And rags, maybe. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. And some scraps of wood, I suppose. Compost. Yeah, you can compost. Oh, you can compost wood, of course. Of course. All right. Well, this gives us an idea of what we can look forward to, except that for the current trash bin, it should be tiny. Because otherwise, people will keep throwing a lot of the organic waste to continue to throw. And that brings us to my other question. How are you going to enforce this? So we're still working on a plan, the detailed plan of how we're going to do this. But it's mostly just going to be an educational process. We've already started with a number of community meetings, inviting the public to come and ask questions and learn about it. I'm reaching out to the homeowners associations and meeting with them and doing presentations to their boards and to their members. And I'm glad you mentioned that. Because you have here, you've given me a list of workshops that are coming. And one is on the 16th of February. And by the way, at some point, we can display the web link so that everyone can go and read a little more about this program. So there is a workshop on February 16. It's, say, Tuesday. And it's in the game room of the Veteran Memorial Center. And then there's another one on the 25th of February in the same location. And sorry, I didn't say the date. I'm in the time 6.30 and 6.30. And I'm sure that you'll have other workshops as we go into the spring and July, August. How difficult do you think this is going to be? Will you have a lot of resistance from the town? We will have some. We know that some people are very, very excited about this. And some people are not so excited. This entire program is a compromise. It's a hybrid program between there's a lot of people in town that love the yard waste piles. And they don't want to see those going away. That's right. And then there's another whole section of the population that really does not like them. They don't ever use them. They don't have large yards. And they don't have the need for these piles. So we've got two completely separate groups. And we had to find some meeting in the middle. And that's how we came up with this program. It's a very similar program to what Woodland and Sacramento has. We try to simplify it a little bit and make it Davis-specific. And that's how we got where we are. So is the goal now, assuming everybody is very conscientious and does and dutiful, how the goal is to be 75%, 80%? 75% waste diversion by 2020 is the state's goal and the city's goal, too. Right now we're at 64%. So we're really close. That last little bit is going to be the tough one. And the question comes to mind. What do you do with this compost? It's sent to a composting facility and turned into a soil amendment, which is then sold back to farmers. And we're working out a deal with them. So hoping to get some of the compost back to give to our residents as well. Free? That's the deal. That's the goal. Well, this is wonderful. Thank you so much for coming to talk to us about this new program. And I'm afraid we're out of time. It went very quickly. It was very interesting. So again, thank you so much for your time and for the great job that you do. And thank you all for watching. And if you'd like to watch this program again, you can go to our website at dctv.davismedia.org. And there you can stream this program. We're also on YouTube. So you can see some of the previous programs on YouTube. And on our website, when you're there, you can check out some of our other programs and topics. We have interesting topics and outstanding guests. So from all of us here at Davis Media Access, thank you for watching. And see you next time.