SACRAMENTO – Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters) authored and passed a suite of environmental policies through the Assembly Natural Resources Committee this week with unanimous bipartisan support.

AB 144, AB 815, and AB 1237 will change the way the state of California looks at recycling, and treats and diverts organic waste for environmentally beneficial purposes.

The bills will require state government to develop strategies to reduce emissions from organic waste and wildfires, clean up our recycling streams, and increase access to environmental project funding for communities in rural California.

AB 144 requires the Strategic Growth Council to develop a coordinated strategy for reducing climate and air pollution associated with forestry, agricultural and urban organic waste.

“Emissions from wildfires, urban landfills, and open pile burning can be avoided by supporting sustainable reuses of organics, like making compost or renewable energy. Without a coordinated strategy to support these beneficial reuse markets, the state will not be able to support practical alternatives to polluting at a scale necessary to achieve California’s climate and air goals,” said Aguiar-Curry.

Neil Edgar from the California Compost Coalition said, “California has strong mandates and goals to reduce the landfilling of organic material and to reduce short-lived climate pollutants and other emissions from the unsustainable management of agricultural, forestry and municipal green waste. Various industry sectors involved in organic materials management have essentially been competing against each other for limited state funding and policy advantages. Without a well-reasoned, empirically-sound scoping plan, this confusion and conflict will likely continue and the state will not reach its laudable goals.”

AB 815 provides incentives to local governments to increase curbside separation in their recycling programs, often called dual-stream recycling, to reduce contamination rates in the recycling stream.

Several foreign countries have largely stopped importing U.S. recycled material because of contamination.

This bill is necessary to improve the quality and marketability of recycled materials, which will reduce the amount of these materials that are stockpiled, landfilled, or burned at home or overseas.

It will also make recycling cheaper overall, because higher quality recyclables are more marketable for reuse because they can be manufactured into new products.

“When we throw all of our recyclables into the same bin, glass breaks, leftover soda spills on copy paper, and many recycled materials become too dirty to be reused. We used to send our contaminated recyclables to China, polluting land and water overseas, but China won’t take it anymore. AB 815 will keep our recyclables cleaner and more marketable so they can actually be turned into new products,” said Aguiar-Curry.

“It seems the future of marketing recyclables in California is going to depend on our ability to reduce contamination and deliver cleaner material to processing plants,” said James Iavarone, Manager of Mill Valley Refuse Service.

Mill Valley Refuse Service recently conducted a pilot project on dual-stream recycling. The report on that pilot is here.

AB 1237 requires competitive financing programs funded with Cap and Trade dollars to provide information online about application timelines, eligibility criteria, technical assistance, and agency staff contacts.

“More than $8 billion in Cap and Trade money has paid for environmental projects in California, but the vast majority of these projects are in four regions: Los Angeles, San Diego, the Bay Area, and the San Joaquin Valley,” said Aguiar-Curry. “The lack of information on what programs exist and how to access state funding makes these programs, and the environmental benefits from them, inaccessible to many communities in our region. AB 1237 will make these programs easier to navigate and more transparent, increasing the number and diversity of applicants. It will also help policymakers and the public better understand how these programs are being administered to achieve the state’s climate and air quality goals.”

She added, “Smaller communities in Northern California face different environmental challenges than our neighbors in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Passing AB 144, AB 815, and AB 1237 means Legislators are recognizing that sustainable agriculture, improved waste management, and healthy forests are just as important to achieving our climate and air quality goals as reducing industrial and transportation emissions in urban centers.”

Each bill in Aguiar-Curry’s environmental package passed 11-0 with support from Democrats and Republicans representing diverse communities across the state. AB 144, AB 815, and AB 1237 will go to the Assembly Appropriations Committee next.

Aguiar-Curry represents the Fourth Assembly District, which includes all of Lake and Napa counties, parts of Colusa, Solano and Sonoma Counties, and all of Yolo County except West Sacramento.