The Los Angeles City Council approved a new program May 8 to encourage more restaurants and residents to properly dispose of organic waste.
The council voted 11-0 in favor of establishing the LA Organic Compliance Incentive Program, which is intended to support the city’s recycLA efforts and comply with Senate Bill 1383, a law that aims to achieve a 75 percent reduction in emissions of short-lived climate pollutants by 2025, and rescue at least 20 percent of currently disposed surplus food by the same year.
Council members Kevin de León, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Curren Price and Monica Rodriguez were absent during the vote.
The move comes in response to a motion introduced by council members Katy Yaroslavsky and Hugo Soto-Martinez in February.
According to city documents, the state law requires all residential and commercial customers to participate in organics recycling -- and the council adopted an ordinance in December 2022 to comply with the bill. However, the city currently lags in compliance, with only 32,414 or 48 percent of commercial and multifamily customers serviced by the city’s recycLA program compliant.
LA Sanitation and Environment (LASAN) will allocate $4 million for the incentive program and assist qualified customers who are not subscribed to an organics service. Staff will offer a 64-gallon green bin to these customers, and the bin will be picked up once a week for up to nine months.
The incentive program is intended to maximize organics diversion and reduce the potential financial impact for those most impacted by increased costs related to recycling. It will also focus on two categories of customers, referred to as Priority One and Priority Two.
Priority One customers are standalone restaurants, not part of chain establishments with their own recycLA accounts. These ccustomers are “high organics generators” that will cause the greatest environmental impact if their organic waste is diverted from landfills, according to a report from LA Sanitation and Environment.
Priority Two customers are multifamily properties located within designated areas, where 85 percent of residents are classified as low or moderate income.
SB 1383 went into effect Jan. 1, and LASAN commercial and multifamily properties without organic waste collection are subject to fines of up to $250 per violation. Customers were notified most recently about these penalties in December 2023 -- which staff say boosted participation.
The city has granted about 10,045 waivers exempting some eligible restaurants from obligations under the state law.
