Waste diversion, food waste versus yard waste composting and DC

For almost 10 years I've been writing about how DC could do a better job with waste diversion, especially yard waste--unlike all area jurisdictions, where state requirements force them to do it, DC doesn't do yard waste diversion.  Why I don't know.

According to the EPA, food waste is about 14.6% of the waste stream, and yard waste about 13.5% of the waste stream.

I've suggested that the city needs to have two different programs based on geographic, one for the outer city, where houses tend to have larger yards and generate large amounts of yard waste, and one for the core of the city, in particular the rowhouse neighborhoods, where houses with small yards tend to (but not uniformly) generate less yard waste.

-- "A way for DC to begin adding yard waste collection as a separate element of waste collection and reduction programming," 2013

In fact, as far as the core is concerned, a program could vary by block, depending on micro-local conditions, as there are plenty of blocks in rowhouse neighborhoods, especially in Capitol Hill and Columbia Heights, that generate fair amounts of yard waste. (Note that DC does some diversion of trees and branches, especially in conjunction with post-storm clean up.)

And I suggested the city could develop the program slowly, ward by ward, as it develops the capacity and expertise to do yard waste diversion.

I bring this up because WUSA-TV reports ("Public curbside composting? It could soon be a reality in DC") that the city is close to piloting to 10,000 households a program for picking up "organic" waste.  I am motivated to write this entry because according to the story:

“Making composting accessible to residents across the District is the single most meaningful step the District can take toward meeting its Zero Waste goals,” the committee report reads. “Organic waste, which includes food and yard waste, makes up roughly a third of the District’s waste stream.”

It's true, but judging on the proposed costs of the program, they aren't focusing on yard waste at all, just food waste.  From the report:

• Opt-in mailers for all DPW-serviced households ($36,750)
• Compost caddies for 10,000 households ($200,000)
• Compostable bags (50 per household) ($24,000)
• Curbside containers (5-gallon buckets) ($360,000)
• Disposal costs ($93,600)
• Collection costs ($3,640,000
• Hauling costs ($37,440)
• Ongoing education and outreach for opt-in households ($40,000)

First, more impact would be realized by yard waste diversion more generally, and rather than opening it up to the entire city as intimated by the report, pilot the program on a geographic-specific basis.

In my opinion, the most important steps the city could take wrt waste reduction ("More on zero waste practice (and DC)," 2015) would be to:

(1) institute yard waste diversion; 

(2) develop more focused waste diversion programs for other types of waste; 

(3) working with the private sector, develop recycling and waste diversion programs for multiunit housing; 

(4) expand food waste diversion programs from the current drop off program, working with community gardens, multiunit buildings, etc.; and 

(5) incorporate food waste diversion within regular yard waste programs, which is how it's done in Salt Lake City, San Francisco and other places.  But also encourage residents who are able to do on-site composting themselves.  Montgomery County, Maryland is a national leader on this, even though they have a formal yard waste collection program anyway.

This does remind me of the point I made in response to the development of a City Sustainability Plan during the Gray Administration (2011-2014).  I said the city has no chance in becoming the most sustainable city in the US by 2032 if even now, the practices that it adopts are nowhere near the best in class practices already adopted by the nation's most sustainably focused cities.

-- "Realizing all aspects of Sustainable DC," 2013

Conclusion.  In short, it seems like this pilot program won't accomplish all that much, compared to focusing on yard waste reduction first, developing geographically specific foci, targeting the outer wards initially, creating a pilot for rowhouse neighborhoods specific to their needs, and developing the yard waste diversion program in a manner where it can also handle food waste.

While simultaneously developing special waste diversion programs for multiunit housing and the encouragement of on-site composting for those households with the yard space to accommodate it, using Montgomery County's best practice as an example ("Urban/Community composting," 2014).

Social marketing and aberrant driving

The Washington Post reports, "Can tailored messages to bad drivers prevent crashes? D.C. is about to find out," that DC's Department of Transportation will be sending social marketing messages to bad drivers, with the aim of improving their behavior.

The unit that has developed this program, Lab @ DC, I've criticized in the past ("5 new forms, is that all you got?") for not being particularly innovative.  And I can't claim to have read the documents and reports developed in support of this initiative.

But I do have experience with social marketing, health communication and organizational behavior, as my first DC job was working for the nation's largest consumer group focused on nutrition and health, where I was exposed to the field of "social marketing" and related health communications programming.

Social marketing is using the principles of marketing not to sell things, but to change people's behavior towards more optimal outcomes.

A preponderance of bad drivers are not likely to be conscientious and susceptible to messaging aimed at inducing better behavior.  

In short, it's not lack of knowledge about how they act that leads to their behavior.

From the abstract "The Five‐Factor Model, Conscientiousness, and Driving Accident Involvement," Journal of Personality, (1996):

Personality researchers and theorists are approaching consensus on the basic structure and constructs of personality. Despite the apparent consensus on the emergent five‐factor model (Goldberg, 1992, 1993), less is known about external correlates of separate factors. This research examined the relations between Conscientiousness, one dimension of the model, and driving accident involvement. Using multiple measures in independent samples drawn from college students (N= 227) and a temporary employment agency (N= 250), the results generally demonstrate a significant inverse relation between Conscientiousness and driving accident involvement; individuals who rate themselves as more self‐disciplined, responsible, reliable, and dependable are less likely to be involved in driving accidents than those who rate themselves lower on these attributes. The findings are consistent with other research demonstrating the relations among Conscientiousness and other tasks and job performance. Suggestions for future research are discussed.

A different paper, "The Five-Factor Model and Driving Behavior: Personality and Involvement in Vehicular Accidents," studied "agreeableness," and found that disagreeableness was positively associated with:

the total number of driving tickets received as well as the sum of combined at-fault accidents, not-at-fault accidents and driving tickets received by subjects.

Besides social marketing, and combining that with an understanding of personality, a related approach which I came across in advocacy, is the concept of "Building Public Will," where the leading proponent of the concept argues that people are best reached when you touch their already felt beliefs.

For example, rather than telling people that they shouldn't litter or otherwise despoil rivers because it's the right thing to do, that they should have a sense of stewardship of the environment, etc., focus on the fact that 90% of the nation's drinking water comes from rivers and you don't want to pollute your primary source of drinking water.

In short, the point I am making is that bad drivers are bad drivers for a variety of reasons, and for most, their behavior isn't going to be modified by receiving a text message.

Better to determine that nature of the "behavior segments" of bad driving, and determine the best way to reach each segment.  The reality is that for most bad drivers, punishment, not messaging, is the most effective way to change their behavior ("Why is reckless driving bad," Morris Bart LLC; "Cycletrack under construction on Florida Avenue NE").

On the other hand, years ago I came across a program in Howard County ("Howard County Police Department Best Practice on Aggressive Driving," 2011) where the police department did send letters to drivers about bad driving incidents, as reported to them by citizens.

Because people believe most of their incidents of bad driving are unobserved and that there are no consequences, I do think this kind of initiative is worth doing.

The messages approach that will be tested by DC does have antecedents and examples of success in other areas, such as energy conservation programs which show people data comparing their consumption to their neighbors ("Utilities Turn Their Customers Green, With Envy," New York Times).

So maybe it could work, although in the case of driving, where people feel privileged, entitled, and powerful ("Why Driving Makes Us So Mad," Psychology Today), I am doubtful.

Probably what would work better is:

(1) significantly higher cost of insurance than even the high rates already paid by bad drivers, think of it as insurance costing the equivalent of gasoline in Europe--there it's about $7 per gallon; currently here it's about $2.25;

(2) making penalties more severe more quickly, resulting in license suspension.  Currently, some but not all states will suspend a driver's license depending on how many infractions there are over time ("Driver's license points: What you need to know").  But most states are pretty lenient, although some like California are not.  And then there is the problem of reporting between states, which often fails.

Because in the US mobility is car-dependent, the legal system doesn't like to restrict a person's ability to drive.  But driving is a privilege not a right, and like most any behavior, the 80/20 rule applies in that most of the egregious behavior is performed by a small percentage of the population.

Update: Bike sharing data from Seattle

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Update and a reposting of this entry with a new date:

NotionsCapital calls to our attention a DC-area workshop on dockless bike sharing, held in late May by the area MPO, featuring presentations by DC and Montgomery County, sharing their experiences with other jurisdictions. The presentations are online. See "Dockless bikeshare workshop emphasizes the importance of regional coordination," Transportation Policy Board, Bicycle and Pedestrian Subcommittee, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.
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Dockless bikes in Seattle.  Streetsblog photo.

In the same line of inquiry around my point that "The problem when you define every outcome as a success, you don't learn, and therefore failure is more likely: bike share in Seattle and Los Angeles as examples," comes data on dockless bike sharing in Seattle, "State of bike share: 10K bikes in Seattle — out of 44K nationwide — and 468K rides, study finds," as reported by Geekwire.

According to the data/interviews, most of the trips were utilitarian, that is for transportation, not recreation.  From the article:

The study underscores the rapid growth of bike sharing in Seattle and the city’s status of a nationwide proving ground for the concept. The program only kicked off last summer, when the city granted permits to Spin and LimeBike starting with 500 bikes a piece, a threshold that was increased later in the year. In August, Chinese bike share company Ofo jumped into the fray.

Nationwide, the survey found there were 44,000 dockless bikes in 25 cities at the end of last year, managed by five companies. Seattle’s approach has drawn national attention, and the study was undertaken earlier this year to find out information about who uses bike share, how they use it, and what they don’t like about the services.

The survey found that most people using bike share are biking to transit or work directly, with very few using the bikes for exercise. Most users were between the ages of 25 and 44 and 62 percent of users were male, according to the survey.

The survey found that 74 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of the program, however 85 percent of comments received via phone and email were negative. The biggest complaints concerned poorly parked bikes, that the companies weren’t responsive and riders didn’t wear helmets.

About a third of residents have tried the program, another third hasn’t tried it but is open to doing so and the final third is unwilling to give bike share a shot.

Although in my observation in DC, I believe most of the dockless bike trips are recreational, not transportational.

If 10,000 bikes were used 468,000 times over a period of 7 months (210 days) that's 0.22 rides/bike/day.   We know that figure isn't accurate because they didn't start out with 10,000 bikes.  According to a more detailed assessment, "Taking stock of dockless bike share in Seattle," in Streetsblog, we know the actual number was 0.85 rides per day.

I don't see how that can be touted as a success.

The big advantage of dockless is that cities don't have to pay for the bikes, and can even make a little money from licensing ("D.C. withdraws plan targeting dockless bike operations with fees and parking demands," Washington Post), although it comes at a cost in terms of how the bikes are often discarded improperly in the public space.

Anyway, my issue with bike share in general is that in many respects, the issue of availability or access to bikes isn't what's holding people back from biking, as data in the National Household Travel Study indicates on average each household has at least one bike.

It's that in a paradigm of automobile-centric mobility, people need direct assistance to make the switch from the car to a bike for at least some of their trips.

What's interesting about the traditional bike sharing system in London is how it is branded with a "roundel" from the same family of logotypes used to brand different forms of transit in London.  The maps on the stations are drawn from the Legible London wayfinding system, rather than being a completely different system.

My trip in the UK was a blur. I wanted to check out bike parking at train stations in a directed way. I didn't have the time.

I wanted to check out the bike hub at Heathrow Airport -- but I presumed I could get there but it turns out it is an employee only area and I would have had to set up a visit ahead of time with the Heathrow public communications group.

I wanted to check out London Cyclist Campaign and at least one of the biking assistance programs in cities and boroughs, and I didn't get to do it.

Many communities in the UK have programs that will lend or rent for a very low price a bike + helmet + lock for two to four weeks, to provide people with a way to try out biking, without their having to buy a bike and gear first, before being able to try it out. Many community centers in the UK offer bicycle skills training for free. And nationally, there is a program where people can buy bikes through a payroll deduction program. Some cities, including London, have programs that provide grants towards buying bikes.

-- Bikeability skills training, Hounslow, UK
-- "Hackney Cycle Loan Scheme: Borrow bike for month for just £10," Hackney borough, London
-- Cyclescheme | The UK's most popular cycle to work benefit
-- "Paris to offer subsidies to those who buy bikes, give up cars," Smart City Dive

Plus many communities have a wide range of cycle (and walking) promotion efforts, and there are national efforts too, like Let's Ride which bring "Open Streets" programs to cities across the country each year.

In general, such assistance programs are not offered in the US. Or at least they are not very prominent.

Some credit unions do provide loans to purchase bikes. Many bike advocacy groups offer skills training, although not usually for free. Most places do not have formal "bike lending" programs. At least, I haven't come across any examples in the US that are comparable to those in the UK.

Santander bike share station near the South Kensington London Underground station, with a dockless bike. The placement of the docks at this station is interesting. While in the US and Canada Bixi type stations are placed at a 90 degree angle, this are placed at a 45 degree angle, to fit better from an urban design standpoint into the street and right of way.


Note that in talking about mobility in London with Ivan Bennett, formerly a senior product designer at Transport for London and now a consultant, he said the primary motivation for London introducing bike share wasn't to make money from it, but to increase the visibility of cycling as a way to encourage more people to cycle.

Given the very crowded public realm there, even though there is a fair amount of bike parking -- the UK seems to have stronger zoning and building requirements for the provision of bike parking at transit stations, office buildings, and housing estates, he doesn't believe they have the ability to accommodate dockless bike sharing in a way where improperly parked bikes won't cause problems.

In short, we need to put a lot more energy in developing direct assistance programs to help people make the shift from driving to biking for at least a preponderant number of trips.

More bikes a la bike share and more facilities a la bike lanes and even cycle tracks, do get more people biking, but given the research that finds that upwards of 2/3 of the US population is willing to bike for transportation and the current rates of less than 6%, clearly more focus needs to be put into programming

Waste diversion is better to start from incrementally

The Washington Post reports, "Composting and curbside pickup in Washington's five-year plan," that DC plans to institute curbside yard waste and composting pick up by 2022.

But DC is way behind.  In "A way for DC to begin adding yard waste collection as a separate element of waste collection and reduction programming" and "More on zero waste practice and DC," I discuss a wide variety of initiatives DC could undertake to divert a significant amount of waste from the waste stream, and few seem to be being pursued.

From "Solid waste management update":

Maryland just released the draft of the state's Zero Waste Plan, with aggressive goals for significant diversion and reduction within the waste stream by 2040.  The plan has 56 action steps.   Steps include banning unrecyclable materials, 90% diversion of food waste, and significant take up of recycling in multiunit buildings.

While a goal for a program to launch in five years seemingly isn't particularly ambitious, it's pretty ambitious compared to where the city is at today with solid waste practice:

- people toss into trash a lot of waste that can be diverted from the waste stream
- especially recyclables (cans, bottles, cardboard, paper)
- but also other reusable items (furniture, construction materials, etc.)
- the city isn't diverting yard waste at present, even though the outer city generates a considerable amount of such waste
- there is no real program to promote on-site composting in the outer city, where many households have lots of a large enough size to do so
- diverting recyclables from trash receptacles in the public space is hit or miss, with a lot of recyclables tossed into the trash
- most multiunit buildings do little in the way of recycling and diversion
- most food service establishments could do a lot better job of recycling and capturing food waste for composting
- the city hasn't created new building regulations that could systematically support diversion ("Reformulating building regulations to systematically support sustainability")
- a lot of the trash dumped by individuals at the Fort Totten Waste Transfer Station is divertible, if they were required to sort what they dump

In short, DC is very much behind better practice, let alone best practice, although from a Gerschenkronian perspective (summary of Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective) there can be advantages in being so far behind. 

Theoretically, it allows you to jump ahead of being behind, to the best of best practice.  But I don't see that happening.

DC's solid waste planning process is constrained.  One problem is that "DC's" solid waste diversion planning is constrained because DPW is primarily concerned with the trash it picks up, mostly from households, not commercial and multiunit residential buildings.  This shapes how it plans.

And serious "reeducation" is required for current programs, let alone new programs.  From the Post article:

Brenda Platt, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance — a District-based national nonprofit that has pushed for composting programs — said the success of a wide-scale composting program depends on education. She urged the city to establish more programs in schools to teach children the importance of composting, while ensuring residents understand how it helps the environment and how to get involved.

Yes, education is an issue. But it's an issue now, with solid waste practice more generally, let alone for the adoption of significantly new practice.

Interim measures to adopt now.  Important interim measures can be adopted now to get the city to a better place concerning actual diversion of waste, working towards 2022 as more a midpoint on better practice, rather than the start of it.

1.  Institute yard waste diversion in the outer city "now" (something I suggested maybe 10 years ago, but is standard practice in states such as Maryland). I would start by testing it in one ward, like Ward 4, and then rolling it out to other wards as the program is implemented, tested, and refined.

2.  Promote on-site composting in the outer city "now."

Montgomery County promotes yard waste diversion on site as well as through regular pick up. We developed our personal on site composting program based on materials and website based information provided by Montgomery County. Last time I checked, similar information was not available on the dc.gov website.

While the new drop-off program is a good thing (something that was initiated in Manhattan decades ago by the Lower East Side Ecology Center), plenty of households could do this on-site, reducing the demand for government-provided services.

For example, my household has been doing on-site composting since 2009 and over time as I've become even more hardcore, in a typical week we generate less than 2 gallons of "trash" but a full bin of recycling.

3.  Institute city-wide "education" programs to discourage people from tossing recyclables into the trash stream.

This is a major program, partly because when people are given large trash cans, they are less inclined to sort  ("Why don’t Austinites recycle more? The answer might be simple," Austin American-Statesman)

4.  Institute city-wide "education" programs to discourage people from tossing into recycling stuff that isn't recyclable, from dog feces to light bulbs to all kinds of weird s***. 

I did read the city's Solid Waste Study which was released a few months back with the intent to write about it, but it wasn't particularly scintillating.  We can do a lot better, especially on this dimension.

5.  Then add composting pick up pilots, working to add curbside composting to one "center city" ward "now" -- meaning before 2022, to test the viability in the urban core, as well as curbside composting to one "outer city" ward "now", to test the viability there too, all the while massively promoting on-site composting.

6. Create best practice recycling and diversion programs for multiunit residential properties.

Because DPW doesn't pick up from these properties, and in fact generates revenue from such properties as tipping fees, there isn't much going on in terms of solid waste diversion with apartment, condominium, and cooperative properties, especially older properties controlled by regional rather than national firms.

7.  To accomplish this, DC should start out by identifying one multi-property firm to work worth to develop best practice across various types of properties.  As such a program is created and refined, other properties can be added to the program.

Mayfair on the Green condominiums.

Toronto has some significant best practice examples that DC can learn from ("Toronto Green Multiunit Building Challenge"). Toronto's multiunit buildings recycle and compost 27% of their waste, while single family residents divert 65%.

The example of the Mayfair on the Green complex in Scarborough demonstrates that significant improvement is possible ("Best practice multiunit residential zero waste project in Scarborough").

The complex now diverts 85% of their waste, stream, after instituting changes to collection practices accompanied by a heavy and ongoing education and participation campaign.

8.  Require the sortation of divertible "trash" dropped off by individuals at the trash transfer stations.  Nothing prevents DPW from doing this now, as I have testified/written about for some time.

Instituting new programs in 2022, without improving current practice, and testing in the interim isn't likely to significantly improve outcomes.  Unless somehow the city believes that by adding curbside composting all of a sudden those households that are laggard will start not just composting but modifying their currently less sustainable behaviors as it relates to the waste stream, adding new programs will only have some benefit.

Households committed to sustainable practice are primed to do the right thing. 

But the vast majority of households aren't committed to sustainable behavior and therefore have to be educated, incentivized, and or "punished" in order to adopt new sustainable waste diversion practices.

Set real metrics for measurement of success, improvement, and progress for 2018-2022, including:

1. Increasing recycling
2. Reducing the number of recyclable/divertible items tossed in the regular waste stream
3. Bringing yard waste diversion online in the Outer City
4. Reducing the amount of unrecyclable items tossed into recycling bins
5. Participation in urban composting programs (drop off at farmers markets, on-site, curbside)
6. Development of recycling and diversion best practice for multiunit residential buildings

Wyoming displays traffic death totals on highway safety signs

I'm intrigued by the idea of sensor networks and other counters and displays of relevant information in the public space, be it bike counters like in Arlington County (and many cities in Europe) or potentially the display of information on water and air quality ("Park bench air monitoring station at Smithsonian National Zoo and city sensor networks").

Another way to do this is in online dashboards, although I sometimes question failures in the quality of the information provided ("Does the focus on big data mean we miss the opportunity for better use of "little data": Part 1--Road Condition Data as an example of failures in presenting data (Information Design)").

Yet another example is information presented within office buildings on various environmental metrics ("A Measured Approach to Going Green: IBM “Green Sigma (TM)”: Consulting Offering to Help Clients Reduce Energy and Water Usage," IBM).

According to the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle ("Wyoming electronic signs highlight highway deaths"), the Wyoming Department of Transportation is using the freeway sign active information displays to present information on traffic fatalities.

Photo: Wyoming DOT.

From the article:

You might have already seen this staggering statistic on electronic message boards across the state: 25 fatal crashes have happened on Wyoming highways since July 15.

As of Thursday, there had been 73 fatalities so far this year.

“The message in all of this is that a third of our fatalities this year have occurred in the last 30 days,” said Gregg Fredrick, the Wyoming Department of Transportation’s chief engineer.

“It’s a sobering message, and it’s not a message that we want to see out there. We don’t want to see any fatalities on our highways.

It turns out that many other states do this too.  Nevada does it, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Colorado, Texas, Illinois, and likely others.  Texas, being so big and populated, has over 2,000 traffic-related fatalities each year ("TxDOT Signs To Regularly Display Traffic Death Numbers").

While only a small proportion of the population makes behavior changes based on information and logic ("The healthy choice:n ow behavioral factors create influential health campaigns," Deloitte), it's still powerful.

Note that a few weeks ago I was traveling from Virginia across the 14th Street Bridge and there was a similar message about the WMATA SafeTrack program advising people to consider other transportation options, but I wasn't in a position to be able to get a photo.