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HomeMy WebLinkAboutStaff Report 216-10TO: HONORABLE CITY COUNCIL (!) FROM: CITY MANAGER DEPARTMENT: PUBLIC WORKS DATE: APRIL 19,2010 ClVIR:216:10 REPORT TYPE: INFORMATION SUBJECT: Staff Update on Zero Waste Programs 2010 BACKGROUND This is an infonnation report on ongoing zero waste initiatives and projects. The following report updates infonnation brought to Council on April 27, 2009 (CMR:217:09). DISCUSSION NEW CONTRACT WITH GREENW ASTE OF PALO ALTO GreenWaste of Palo Alto (GreenWaste) successfully transitioned to become the City's new hauler starting on July 1, 2009. In the first seven months of service, Green W aste is on its way to fulfilling many of its first-year contract requirements. The following is a summary of GreenWaste's successes since July 2009: • Green Waste has implemented the zero waste diversion programs required in their agreement with the City and in the 2007 Council-approved Zero Waste Operational Plan, including the following new services: o Collection and processing of organic materials (food waste) from the commercial sector; o Expanding the single stream materials accepted in the curbside recycling programs; o Expanding Clean-up Day collection for reuse and recycling; o Increasing construction and demolition (C&D) recycling; o Enhancing commercial recycling, including increased container options to customers and increased collection frequency. As a result of implementing these services, GreenWaste is on track to meet the zero waste collection goals for this year, having collected neady two-thirds of the first-year recyclables and compostables tonnages required in its contract. The table below shows the tonnages collected so far this year. Compostables Recyclables C&D material CMR:216:1O Goal 9,000 tons 16,250 tons N/A Collected to Date 6,580 tons 11,363 tons 4,254 tons % of Goal 73% 70% N/A Page 1 of7 • Green Waste transitioned the community to curbside collection of garbage as the standard service. Residents were provided the option to subscribe to back yard/side yard collection for an additional monthly fee. Currently, there are approximately 1,114 subscriptions for back/side yard collection, which is equal to less than 6 percent of the residential customers. Residents with physical limitations that meet the terms and conditions of the physical limitations program are eligible to receive back/side yard collection service for garbage, recyclable materials and yard trimmings at no additional charge. Currently there are 144 residents receiving this service. • In the first six months of the agreement, the number of telephone calls to GreenWaste decreased from 6,191 in July 2009 to 1,979 per month in January 2010, with the on-hold time at the local office now averaging 38 seconds. This is almost one minute less than their contractual requirement of 90 seconds. • The Green Waste agreement emphasizes the continuance of high quality, consistent, reliable and courteous services and as a result, if performance standards are not met, specific liquidated damages can be assessed in the categories of collection reliability, collection quality, customer responsiveness, reporting, processing, and miscellaneous. GreenWaste has been able to continue to consistently provide the required service and meet the contractual requirements, and therefore no liquidated damages have been assessed. Ninety-nine percent of the previous PASCO drivers have continued emploYIntmt with Green Waste • As part of the agreement, Green Waste was required to integrate with the City's new SAP billing system by providing a data management system capable of supporting SAP. Green W aste successfully worked with the City to develop and implement an electronic synchronization interface that communicates between their customer service database and the City's billing system. ZERO WASTE A'h CITY FACILITIES City facilities are the fourth largest generator of waste in Palo Alto -over 4,000 tons per year. Public Works staff is in the process of rolling out compostables collection services to City facilities in order to increase waste diversion efforts of City operations. After the roll-out, all City facilities will have a three-sort recycling system, with separate containers for recyclables, compostables, and garbage. This will result in a new collection process, where janitors will collect only recyclables at each work station and employees will be responsible for taking compostables and garbage to centralized collection points. This system has been implemented at the Fire Stations, Cubberley Community Center and the Water Quality Control Plant. The three-sort recycling system began implementation at City Hall on March 29, 2010. After just two weeks, garbage services at City Hall have been reduced by 50 percent and recyclables collection has increased from two to three times per week. Staff will roll out the zero waste sort system at remaining City facilities over the next several months. CMR:216:00 Page 2 of7 PALO ALTO SCHOOL DISTRICT ZERO WASTE PROGRAMS The Palo Alto School District is one of the first districts in the region to adopt an integrated recycling, composting, and garbage collection program for all district schools. At this time, 12 of the 17 district schools have worked with the City's Zero Waste staff to roll out the new program. The District plans to roll out the new program to all of its schools by the end of spring semester 2010. Blue recycling and green composting cans are being grouped together with garbage cans and strategically placed around school campuses. Terman Middle School, E1 Carmelo Elementary School and Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School participated in a pilot program last fall to help work through the details of a district-wide roll out. Juana Briones Elementary School was the first school to launch the official roll-out of the new program on January 25,2010. The new three-sort collection program has been a community effort requiring coordination between the individual schools, the District, GreenWaste, Peninsula Sanitary Service (the hauler that services the two schools located on Stanford), the Sustainable Schools Committee and the City of Palo Alto. The individual schools, the District and the City split the cost for the new collection cans. School Green Teams, comprised of staff, students and parents, are leading the educational efforts, publishing information in their eNews and monthly newsletters, creating skits, setting up teams of bin monitors to help teach the school community how to sort their lunch waste, placing stickers on the new cans, and putting up posters around campus. CERTIFIED GREEN BUSINESSES Zero Waste staff, along with other City programs, continues to promote and provide support to the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) Green Business Program. The Green Business Program is a successful partnership of environmental agencies and utilities that assists, recognizes and promotes businesses that volunteer to operate in a more environmentally responsible way. To be certified "green," participants must be in compliance with all regulations and meet program standards for conserving resources, preventing pollution and minimizing waste. The program offers motivated businesses an easy-to-use framework for improving environmental performance. Since the county-wide roll out of this program three years ago, a total of 165 Palo Alto businesses have enrolled in the program, and 76 are currently certified as Green Businesses. 16 percent of all businesses certified in Santa Clara County are located in Palo Alto. In total numbers, the City of Palo Alto has two to three times more certified green businesses than any other city in the county, except for San Jose. In FY 2009-10, 24 businesses in Palo Alto enrolled in the program, and 20 businesses have achieved certification so far. Eleven of this fiscal year's certified green businesses are clients of the non-profit organization Wave One. Attachment A contains a list of the Palo Alto businesses that have achieved certification this year. ZERO WASTE WEBSITE Zero Waste's mission is to help the community reach its aggressive Zero Waste goal-virtually no waste to landfills -by 2021. Accomplishing this will require innovative, comprehensive and multi-dimensional measures to educate and motivate our residents and businesses. Zero Waste needs an interactive and engaging website to provide a forum for facilitating community connections and self-learning. CMR:216:00 Page 3 of7 Zero Waste is currently working to create such a website. The site structure has been drafted and is going through the review process. Next steps are to prioritize pages for development, create a time line and then start the actual build out. Appreciating the need for these tools as soon as possible, a number of them already have been created and are in use as the larger website restructuring is in process. These tools include the "How Do You Zero?" video blog series, the Zero Waste system diagram, the schools-focused "CAN-TASTIC" Sorting Game, and the launch page at www.zerowastepaloalto.org to help facilitate the use of these tools. CITYWIDE GARAGE SALE Over 370 garage sales were held as part of the 10th Citywide Garage Sale on Saturday, June 6, 2009, in partnership with the Palo Alto Weekly. The Garage Sale is designed to build community, serve residents and non-profit agencies, and divert materials from the landfill. Additionally, its goal is to increase awareness of reuse and the community's Zero Waste goals. In an effort to reduce waste and increase community engagement, this year's sale included several new features: • The Garage Sale Kit was offered electronically to participants to reduce paper waste. Hard copies were printed only for participants that requested them. • Participants registered online instead of by hard copy and the electronic information was transferred into the GIS mapping software, reducing the amount of paper generated for sign ups. • Surveys were electronic -reducing waste and increasing the response rate. • Included in the citywide event was a game for children 12 and under called "Captain Greenbeard's Treasure Hunt. "The treasure hunt was added to encourage families to shop the sales, promote shopping in the further comers of the community (sales off main roads usually have fewer shoppers), build excitement about the sale and foster partnerships with community residents and businesses. Prizes for children completing the treasure hunt were provided by sponsors Rick's Ice Cream and Red Mango. • Philz Coffee and Coupa Cafe were also event sponsors. They offered coupons for free hot bev~rages to shoppers bringing their own mug. • Staff developed press releases to social media outlets. A kit was developed featuring the official press release, a logo graphic and another press release in four ready-to-use formats written to appeal to our target interest groups: those interested in green living, DIY projects, vintage items, and families. The event was pitched as a fun, wallet-friendly, family-oriented event that would help the environment. Survey Results A survey was sent to the garage sale participants -the sellers, the treasure hunt locations and the sponsors. The surveys show that from previous years: • The number of sellers remained approximately the same -372 sellers in 2009 vs. 360 in 2007 • The number of buyers remained the same -50 buyers per sale in 2009 vs. between 35 to 60 buyers per sale in 2007 • The survey response rate more than doubled -43 percent in 2009 vs. 17. 8 percent for 2007 CMR:216:00 Page 4 of7 CMR:216:00 Page 5 of 7  The amount of items sold per household increased – 50 percent in 2009 vs. 30 percent in 2007  The number of households reporting land filling their leftover items halved – 8. 3 percent in 2009 vs. 17. 2 percent in 2007 BAY-FRIENDLY LANDSCAPING AND GARDENING COALITION The Bay-Friendly Landscaping and Gardening Coalition is a membership organization comprising individuals from public agencies, businesses and non-profit organizations from all of the nine bay area counties. Since January 2008, the City has been a charter signatory of the Bay- Friendly Coalition. Bay-Friendly landscaping and gardening is a whole systems approach to the design, construction and maintenance of landscape that works in harmony with the natural conditions of the San Francisco Bay watershed. It is based on seven principles for sustainable landscaping: Landscape locally; landscape for less to the landfill; nurture the soil; conserve water; conserve energy; protect air and water quality; and create wildlife habitat. Bay-Friendly practices foster soil health and conserve water and other valuable resources while reducing waste and preventing pollution. The Bay-Friendly Regional Coalition builds on work done previously by StopWaste.Org. The Bay-Friendly program provides resources such as trainings, workshops and publications for the both public and private sector landscape professionals and the home gardener. The Bay-Friendly educational materials were developed with guidance from public and private landscape architects and designers, contractors, representatives from Alameda County public agencies and staff of StopWaste.Org. The Coalition is now working to provide these resources regionally. Staff is continuing its efforts to increase Bay-Friendly participation throughout Santa Clara County. The County Home Composting Program has taken the lead on teaching Bay-Friendly Gardening workshops. These workshops are replacing the home composting workshops taught by Master Composters. Palo Alto will have seven Bay-Friendly Gardening workshops this year: three “Bay-Friendly Basics,” two “Gardening from the Ground Up,” one “Gardening to Manage Pests Naturally,” and one “Let Worms Eat Your Garbage”. Participants can sign up for a workshop on the City’s website. Staff is working with the Bay-Friendly Coalition and Santa Clara County stakeholders to hold a 2011 Bay-Friendly Garden Tour in Santa Clara County. Staff is also continuing its efforts to build the regional coalition. Last year the coalition was incorporated as a nonprofit. Staff assists the coalition in building its membership, investigating funding sources and creating an implementation plan for Bay-Friendly tools (e.g., workshops, tours, certifications, and ordinances) to be used by coalition members. SINGLE USE BAG ORDINANCE Palo Alto is one of a very small number of cities in the United States to have successfully implemented single use bag restrictions. The City of Palo Alto adopted an ordinance requiring the elimination of single use plastic checkout bags at large grocery stores on September 18, 2009. All affected stores complied by the deadline, with Whole Foods, Country Sun, and Piazza’s eliminating the plastic bags voluntarily ahead of schedule. The goal is to convert from all types of single use bags to reusable bags. Plastic bags are especially harmful to the environment when littered because they breakdown very slowly and endanger wildlife. Recycling plastic bags is very difficult and less than 5 percent are currently recycled. However, just switching to paper is not desirable because, like plastic bags, virgin paper bags consume energy and resources in the manufacturing process. At the time of the ordinance adoption, Council requested that staff return with a proposal for a fee system on paper bags to help avoid conversion from plastic to paper bag use. On November 16, 2009 (CMR:401 :09), staff updated Council on the status of a regional review of fee options and our joint efforts with other local governments working on a single use bag Environmental Impact Report (EIR). Staff continues to track the City of San Jose's EIR process, and expects the draft report to be released this spring. By late summer 2010, staff will return to Council with recommendations on a fee system for paper bags and on an expansion of the program beyond large grocery stores. BRING YOUR OWN BAG! CAMPAIGN Since 2008, the City has been promoting the Bring Your Own Bag (BYOBag!) campaign, a multi-year effort to increase the use of reusable shopping bags instead of single-use plastic or paper carryout bags at stores in Palo Alto. Reusable bags reduce waste and litter in the community and have a positive impact beyond Palo Alto. In 2008, staff began surveying reusable bag use at grocery stores to gauge the effectiveness of the BYOBag! Campaign. The February 2008 baseline survey showed Palo Alto shoppers chose reusable bags less than 10 percent of the time. The goal of the initial campaign, conducted from April through December 2008, was to increase reusable shopping bag use to 30 percent by December 2008. When the survey was repeated in February 2009, reusable bag use at large grocery stores had increased from 9 percent to 19 percent. Also notable was that shoppers choosing the option of "no bag" increased from 8 percent to 16 percent. In the February 2010 survey, a slight increase in the use of reusable bags occurred at grocery stores, up to 21 percent, and the "no bag" option increased from 16 to 20 percent. However, most shoppers (59 percent) continued to opt for the single use alternative, now limited to the paper bag since the adoption of the single use bag ordinance in September 2009. Interestingly, at pharmacies (not subject to the bag ordinance) while the use of reusable bags is only 6 percent, the "no bag" option has increased to 41 percent in 2010. Palo Alto is also collaborating with other Bay Area cities on public education efforts to increase reusable bag use through the Bay Area Regional Outreach Coalition (BayROC). More information is located at www.igotmybag.org. EXTENDED PRODUCER RESPONSIBLITY Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is a key tool delineated in the City'S Zero Waste Operational Plan to help the City reach its goals by 2021. Palo Alto cannot achieve zero waste without EPR -the May 2006 waste composition study showed that, due to its composition, greater than 25 percent of the waste disposed by the community cannot be diverted from landfills through recycling or composting. EPR provides a tool to address these hard-to-manage CMR:216:00 Page 6 of7 materials. On December 14, 2009, Council approved an EPR policy for the City, and adopted an EPR Resolution to support state and national producer responsibility actions (CMR:456:09). Palo Alto is one of the few cities in the state, and in the nation, to have adopted both an EPR policy and an EPR resolution. The EPR framework policy is designed to create incentives for manufacturers and suppliers to reduce waste and pollutant releases in Palo Alto. Specific products and implementation details will be added to the framework over time as they are developed. The first specific product addressed by the policy is foam plastic packaging (commonly referred to as Styrofoam). The EPR Resolution states Palo Alto's support of state and national efforts to implement the EPR concept on the widest geographic scale possible, where implementation will be most efficient. . RESOURCE IMP ACT Resources for the Zero Waste Program are included in the Refuse Fund Operating Budget. POLICY IMPLICATIONS All of the above programs are consistent with the City's Sustainability Policy, the Climate Protection Plan, and the Zero Waste Operational Plan. ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW This report is informational in nature and does not constitute a pr~ject under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). ATTACHMENTS Attachment A: 2010 List of New Certified Green Businesses PREPARED BY: DEPARTMENT HEAD: Ii 1 flk----- GLENN S. ROBERTS Directo of Public W CITY MANAGER APPROVAL: CMR:216:00 Page 7 of7 ATTACHMENT A City of Palo Alto FY 2009-10 (to date) ABAG Certified Green Businesses Organization Certified Date Premier Pro erties* 7/20/2009 . Sustaina 7/21/2009 Major, Lindsay & Africa 7/23/200 9 Stoecker a 7/23/2009 I>r. 1lra~!Jeclerc* 9/9/2009 I Cody Anderson Wasney Architects, Inc. 9/22/2009 1lotal Quality Maintenance 10/19/2009 Martin Thomas Wealth Mana~ement* 10/29/2009 1lhe North Face* 10/29/2009 Sheraton Palo Alto Hotel 11/5/2009 Westin Palo Alto Hotel 11/5/2009 Straits Cafe 11/30/2009 The Private Bank* 11/30/2009 Wu Orthodontics 2/26/2010 • Kennedy/Jenks Consultants 3/24/2010 Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy* 3/30/2010 Webst~r Financial Corp.* 4/5/2010 PaperWhirl* 4/7/2010 !Jetter Perfect* 4/8 /2010 The Princeton Review* 4/8/2010 * Client ofWA VE ONE