It is the directive of City Council that Piedmont achieves a 75% diversion rate of material from its solid waste stream.  As the staff report indicates, there has been some fluctuation in the estimate of Piedmont’s annual diversion rate by StopWaste. From my time on the Solid Waste Management Authority Board (SWMA), “outliers” were usually found in some years and corrected by StopWaste staff.  To my recollection, the 84% and 69% rates were attributed to a misreporting of tonnage at the landfill and are inaccurate.  When those numbers are excluded, the trend of Piedmont approaching the 75% goal is more evident and is paralleled by diversion rates calculated by Republic Sanitary Services (numbers from the RSS 2013 Annual Report).

 Diversion Rates:

	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
StopWaste	60	63	64	66	73	84	75	69	71	80
RSS						68.5	67.6	68.4	71.3	72.7

Diversion Rates:

The performance audit of RSS should certainly look into this discrepancy but there are likely methodological differences beyond RSS’s control that explain the different estimates.  Both trends are currently capturing the diversion of recyclables and organics.

The adoption of 75% goal was a mandate of the SWMA authority of its members to continue to receive funding and it appears Piedmont is on the way to achieving that goal.  In my last year on the Board, there was an interest in moving away from these calculated diversion rates, which most cities had achieved or were close to, to actual measurement of “divertables” – recyclable and compostable materials – that are in the solid waste. This is the basis for the benchmarking study, which is based on a survey of waste containers and just came out last week. That report showed Piedmont to be an excellent recycler (less that 5% recyclables in the city’s trash) but a below average composter (39% compostable material in the city’s trash).  I think it would useful to evaluate RSS performance in the collection of green waste as part of the performance audit.

Garrett Keating, Former City Councilmember

Editors’ Note:  The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Piedmont Civic Association.

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