tremendous flux<\/a>.<\/p>\nCrews have begun delivering new containers to about 225,000 homes eligible for city trash service. In addition, the city continues to help secure private trash service for some of the roughly 19,000 homes deemed no longer eligible for city service.<\/p>\n
City officials say the launch of the inspections, which began Oct. 8, is unrelated to all the other changes. They say the launch is part of the city\u2019s transition to the next phase of its rollout of organics recycling.<\/p>\n
The city delivered green trash containers and compost bins to customers in 2023 to comply with SB 1383, a state law that aims to fight climate change by limiting the amount of organic materials in landfills.<\/p>\n
Methane contributes more to climate change than any other gas except carbon dioxide, according to the California Air Resources Board. It traps heat about 80 times more effectively than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period but is a short-lived pollutant.<\/p>\n
To continue complying with SB 1383, the city must start inspecting what customers are putting in their bins and keep trying to educate those who are making mistakes.<\/p>\n
Green bins are for yard trimmings and food waste. Blue bins are for glass, metal, paper, cardboard and rigid plastic. Everything else goes into the gray bins.<\/p>\n
The education campaign is important because customers continue to struggle with which items can be placed in the green bins, and with how to use the green compost bins to separate food scraps from other trash, said Julie Sands, the city\u2019s recycling program manager.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat kind of behavior change doesn\u2019t just happen overnight,\u201d Sands said Monday, adding that the city\u2019s education campaign remains in progress. \u201cWe\u2019re in the middle of it right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Customers who get \u201coops\u201d tags placed on their bins also get directed to the city\u2019s website so they can conveniently learn more.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey shouldn\u2019t have to spend an hour researching,\u201d Sands said. \u201cThere is more participation the more education there is out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
If customers ask the inspectors what they are doing, the inspectors hand them fliers in one of four languages \u2014 English, Spanish, Vietnamese or Tagalog\u00a0\u2014 explaining the new campaign.<\/p>\n
Many other cities across California have begun deploying similar inspectors, Sands said.<\/p>\n
And the private haulers who handle San Diego\u2019s businesses and apartment complexes have also begun sending out inspectors, she said. The city only handles trash collection from single-family homes and multifamily complexes with four units or less.<\/p>\n
Sands said there\u2019s also been a public misperception that\u00a0the inspectors are new hires whose only job duty is performing the inspections.<\/p>\n
The inspections are being handled by existing code compliance officers in the city\u2019s Environmental Services Department. They only spend a little over two hours a day on the inspections, with the rest of their day spent on other duties like making sure multifamily properties have the proper bins.<\/p>\n
The city is devoting 12 inspectors to the effort \u2014 six teams of two. They typically work from 6 a.m. to just after 8 a.m., work that includes inspections, travel time and logging the results into the city\u2019s recycling database.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are arriving at the routes before the collection trucks come \u2014 that\u2019s why they start so early in the morning,\u201d Sands said.<\/p>\n
She said it was too early to give an estimate of the staffing costs for the inspections.<\/p>\n
Another goal is keeping trash truck drivers safe and the trucks in good condition by getting dangerous items like propane tanks and lithium batteries out of the bins. Those items must be taken to household hazardous waste drop-off sites, like one the city operates at the Miramar landfill.<\/p>\n
The batteries, which are used in laptops and e-bikes, have been responsible for 25 city trash truck fires so far just this year, officials say. When they get crushed by a trash packer, they sometimes explode into fire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Diego has begun sending teams of trash inspectors to neighborhoods across the city to gauge whether people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,2558,983,2559,3,111,79,2557],"class_list":{"0":"post-285592","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-local-politics","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-top-stories-sdut"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}