The city of San Diego recently completed a pilot program in which people transitioning out of homelessness were hired to pick contaminants out of organic waste collected in the city's green bins, it was announced Monday.
The two-week program, which concluded last week, was intended to improve the quality of compost generated by Miramar Greenery. The "Follow The Compost Pile" project employed homeless people, working through the East County Transitional Living Center, who were tasked with removing any non- organic material brought to Miramar, including plastic bags, scrap metal, glass bottles and more.
"If we are able to implement this process moving forward, we can lower the number of contaminants at the end, improve operational efficiencies, and in turn produce better compost to put out to the community," said Jennifer Winfrey, assistant deputy director in the Environmental Services Department, which led the pilot program.
Since the city added the green bins in 2023, more than 200,000 San Diegans have recycled food scraps and yard waste. The total organic waste climbed from 142,297 tons in 2023 to 194,310 tons in 2024.
Before the pilot program began, the process at Miramar Greenery involved removing contaminants through a grinding and screening process. The people working with East County Transitional Living Center — an organization that provides opportunities for people experiencing homelessness to re-enter the workforce — manually picked through the waste.
Contaminants observed during the pilot program were documented, weighed and manually removed. It will take several weeks to analyze the data, a city statement read.
San Diego's ESD is also planning a campaign this fall to inform city residents about what can and cannot go into the green bins. One of the biggest problems is plastic bags — even if they are labeled compostable.
"A single plastic or compostable bag that moves through our composting and grinding process can ultimately result in a thousand tiny pieces of plastic," Winfrey said.
"Left to decompose in landfills, organic waste releases methane, a gas that traps the sun's heat and warms the atmosphere," a city statement read. "If not managed appropriately, decomposing organics are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. They emit 20% of the state's methane, a climate super pollutant 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide."
Items that can go in the green bin include yard waste (such as grass clippings and branch trimmings) and food scraps (such as eggshells, vegetable and fruit peelings, coffee grounds and chicken and meat bones).
Recycling options for hard-to-recycle items like appliances, bulky items and electronics are available at WasteFreeSD.org.
