BILL ANALYSIS Ó ----------------------------------------------------------------- |SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | AB 2396| |Office of Senate Floor Analyses | | |(916) 651-1520 Fax: (916) | | |327-4478 | | ----------------------------------------------------------------- THIRD READING Bill No: AB 2396 Author: McCarty (D) Amended: 4/13/16 in Assembly Vote: 21 SENATE ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY COMMITTEE: 6-0, 6/8/16 AYES: Wieckowski, Gaines, Bates, Hill, Leno, Pavley NO VOTE RECORDED: Jackson SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE: 7-0, 6/20/16 AYES: Lara, Bates, Beall, Hill, McGuire, Mendoza, Nielsen ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 79-0, 5/5/16 (Consent) - See last page for vote SUBJECT: Solid waste: annual reports SOURCE: Author DIGEST: This bill requires state agencies to include information relating to commercial recycling and organic waste recycling in their annual report to the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle). ANALYSIS: Existing law, pursuant to the Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989 (Public Resources Code (PRC) §40000 et seq.): 1)Establishes a statewide diversion goal of 75% by 2020. 2)Requires state agencies to develop an integrated waste AB 2396 Page 2 management plan on how the state agency or facility will divert 50% of its waste from landfill disposal by 2004; and requires each state agency to submit an annual report to CalRecycle summarizing its progress in reducing solid waste. 3)Requires local agencies to divert, through source reduction, recycling, and composting, 50% of solid waste disposed by their jurisdictions. 4)Requires each jurisdiction to submit a countywide siting element (CSE) to CalRecycle that includes: a statement of goals for the environmentally safe transformation and disposal of solid waste; an estimate of the total transformation or disposal capacity necessary for a 15-year period; the remaining capacity of existing solid waste facilities; identification of areas for the location of new solid waste facilities that are consistent with the general plan if the county determines that existing capacity will be exhausted within 15 years, or as specified; and, for CSEs submitted after 2003, a description of the actions taken to solicit public participation by the affected communities. 5)Requires local governments to include organic waste recycling facilities in the planning requirements for CSEs. 6)Requires commercial waste generators to arrange for recycling services and requires local governments to implement commercial solid waste programs designed to divert solid waste from businesses (including public entities). This bill requires state agencies to include information relating to recycling of solid and organic wastes in their annual reports to CalRecycle. Background AB 2396 Page 3 1) Statewide waste diversion goals. CalRecycle is tasked with diverting at least 75% of solid waste statewide by 2020. Currently, an estimated 35 million tons of waste are disposed of in California's landfills annually, of which 32% is compostable organic materials, 29% is construction and demolition debris, and 17% is paper. In addition, CalRecycle is charged with implementing Strategic Directive 6.1, which calls for reducing organic waste disposal by 50% by 2020. According to CalRecycle, significant gains in organic waste diversion (through recycling technologies of organic waste, including composting and anaerobic digestion) are necessary to meet the 75% goal and to implement Strategic Directive 6.1. 2) Mandatory commercial recycling. According to CalRecycle's Statewide Waste Characterization data (2008), the commercial sector generates nearly three fourths of the solid waste in California; and, much of the commercial sector waste disposed in landfills is readily recyclable. Increasing the recovery of recyclable materials will directly reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In particular, recycled materials can reduce the GHG emissions from multiple phases of product production, including extraction of raw materials, preprocessing and manufacturing. A cobenefit of increased recycling is avoided methane emissions at landfills from the decomposition of organic materials. AB 341 (Chesbro, Chapter 476, Statutes of 2011) sets forth the requirements of the statewide mandatory commercial recycling program, which has the purpose of reducing GHG emissions by diverting commercial solid waste to recycling efforts and to expand the opportunity for additional recycling services and recycling manufacturing facilities in California. 3) Recycling organic waste. For purposes of recycling, "organic AB 2396 Page 4 waste" is defined as food waste, green waste, landscape and pruning waste, nonhazardous wood waste, and food-soiled paper waste that is mixed in with food waste. Organic material represents about one-third of the solid waste sent to landfills even though a large percentage can be recycled or composted. Recycling technologies for organic waste include composting, anaerobic digestion, and other types of processing that generate renewable fuels, energy, soil amendments, and mulch. Anaerobic digestion, which produces biogas that can be processed into biomethane fuel, is particularly suited to handle food waste. Green waste is more efficiently processed through composting. In addition to improving the quality of soil, compost prevents soil erosion, reduces the need for chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, and enables better soil water retention. 4) Waste reduction and GHGs. According to the California Air Resources Board (ARB), a total reduction of 80 million metric tons (MMT), or 16% compared to business as usual, is necessary to reduce statewide GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. ARB intends to achieve approximately 78% of the reductions through direct regulations. ARB proposes to achieve the balance of reductions necessary to meet the 2020 limit (approximately 18 MMT) through its cap-and-trade program. Landfill gas is generated by the anaerobic decomposition of organic materials such as food, paper, wood, and green material. 50% of landfill gas is methane, a GHG with a much shorter life, but much higher global warming potential than carbon dioxide (methane is approximately 25 times more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide over a 100-year time span). Depending on the types of solid waste, the chemical makeup of landfill biogas can vary greatly from the biogas produced from dairy farms, municipal solid waste, and wastewater treatment facilities. While most modern landfills have systems in place to capture methane, AB 2396 Page 5 significant amounts continue to escape into the atmosphere. According to ARB's GHG inventory, approximately seven million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent are released annually by landfills. That number is expected to increase to 8.5 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2020. Composting and other organics processing technologies, including anaerobic digestion, reduce GHGs by avoiding the emissions that would be generated by the material's decomposition in a landfill. For example, in the case of anaerobic digestion, the process produces methane from the organic waste in a controlled environment for use as a renewable fuel, and results in climate benefits by both reducing GHGs from landfills, and displacing fossil fuels. Recycling organic waste provides significant GHG reductions over landfilling. According to CalRecycle, Mandatory Commercial Recycling was one of the measures adopted in the Scoping Plan by the Air Resources Board pursuant to the California Global Warming Solutions Act. The Mandatory Commercial Recycling Measure focuses on increased commercial waste diversion as a method to reduce GHG emissions and is designed to achieve a reduction in GHG emissions of 5MMT of CO2 equivalents. To achieve the Measure's objective, an additional two to three million tons of materials annually will need to be recycled from the commercial sector by the year 2020 and beyond. Comments Purpose of bill. According to the author, "This bill will ensure that the government of California joins our counties by including summaries of state agency efforts regarding organic waste diversion when submitting their reports about recycling compliance. With the legislature's ambitious goal to reduce greenhouse gas emission to 1990 levels by 2020, we need to know how our agencies contribute to meeting this goal by diverting greenhouse gas-producing waste." AB 2396 Page 6 Related/Prior Legislation AB 876 (McCarty, Chapter 593, Statutes of 2015) required local governments to include organic waste recycling facilities in the existing planning requirements for countywide solid waste management. AB 1045 (Irwin, Chapter 596, Statutes of 2015) required the California Environmental Protection Agency to establish policies to encourage recycling of organic waste and coordinate the oversight and regulation of organic waste recycling facilities. AB 1826 (Chesbro, Chapter 727, Statutes of 2014) phased in requirements for generators of specified amounts of organic waste to arrange recycling services for that material beginning January 1, 2016, through January 1, 2019. AB 341 (Chesbro, Chapter 476, Statutes of 2011) required local businesses and multifamily residential dwellings of five or more units that generate more than four cubic yards of solid waste per week to separate recyclable materials from solid waste and subscribe to a basic level of recycling service that included collection, self-hauling, or other arrangements for the pickup of the recyclable materials or subscribe to a recycling service that may include mixed waste processing that yields diversion results comparable to source separation. FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.:YesLocal: No According to the Senate Appropriations Committee: AB 2396 Page 7 Minor additional state costs. State agencies are already required to report annually to CalRecycle on their waste diversion programs. This bill clarifies that mandatory commercial recycling and mandatory organics are a part of the waste diversion programs that agencies must include in their annual reports. SUPPORT: (Verified6/21/16) Los Angeles County Solid Waste Management Committee/Integrated Waste Management Task Force Northern California Recycling Association Solid Waste Association of Northern America OPPOSITION: (Verified6/21/16) None received ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 79-0, 5/5/16 AYES: Achadjian, Alejo, Travis Allen, Arambula, Atkins, Baker, Bigelow, Bloom, Bonilla, Bonta, Brough, Brown, Burke, Calderon, Campos, Chang, Chau, Chávez, Chiu, Chu, Cooley, Cooper, Dababneh, Dahle, Daly, Dodd, Eggman, Frazier, Gallagher, Cristina Garcia, Eduardo Garcia, Gatto, Gipson, Gomez, Gonzalez, Gordon, Gray, Grove, Hadley, Harper, Roger Hernández, Holden, Irwin, Jones, Jones-Sawyer, Kim, Lackey, Levine, Linder, Lopez, Low, Maienschein, Mathis, Mayes, McCarty, Medina, Melendez, Mullin, Nazarian, Obernolte, O'Donnell, Olsen, Patterson, Quirk, Ridley-Thomas, Rodriguez, Salas, Santiago, Steinorth, Mark Stone, Thurmond, Ting, Wagner, Waldron, Weber, Wilk, Williams, Wood, Rendon NO VOTE RECORDED: Beth Gaines AB 2396 Page 8 Prepared by:Joanne Roy / E.Q. / (916) 651-4108 6/22/16 15:15:18 **** END ****