A couple of falcons are trained to chase gulls away from the landfill
by Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist (read the orignal in Noozhawk by clicking here)
A hot ticket these days is a site visit to the Tajiguas Landfill and ReSource Center. My Channelkeeper Board buddies raved about their summer field trip, which I missed. Instead, I jumped on a tour for the CEC Climate Stewardship class my husband was taking. I wanted to see our good old reliable landfill after its makeover.
More than two decades have passed since the facility, facing a looming capacity and government mandates, began the makeover process. The ReSource Center that emerged may be the first to host every element of the waste cycle from waste mixture to compost and energy production.
Lead contractor John Dewey called the $150 million facility, “Farm to table and back to the farm in a healthy soil cycle.”
Our guide Sam Dickinson was knowledgeable and approachable. He walked us upstairs to a glass box high above the machines of the receiving facility. We watched conveyors disgorge trash which was methodically sorted by sifting, dropping through openings, or being retrieved by magnets.
A plethora of signs, charts, graphs and videos supplemented Dickinson’s clear description of the remarkable activity around us.
Educational signs around the sky room explained difficult-to-recycle products. Electronics, “sharps” (home-generated needles, syringes with needles, and disposable lancets), textiles, and pharmaceuticals each have a procedure for recycling or disposing of properly. Different recycling and collection locations around the county handle these assorted items.
After touring the recycling facility, we piled into cars and snaked up past mountains of compost to the landfill. There we watched trucks, tiny in the distance, haul in dirt to layer into Santa Barbara’s ultimately rejected trash.
We also met a falcon, one of two trained to chase gulls away from the landfill. According to the falconer, this creative solution was developed here at Tajiguas after seabirds were found to be fouling the ocean a half mile away.
“Bird deterrence programs have allowed a lot of falconry hobbyists to move out of their parents’ basements,” he laughed.
The only part of the tour that was TMI was the aroma: some of us had to hold our noses. Tajiguas officials have been working with Arroyo Quemada neighbors, who say the efforts to reduce noxious fumes haven’t been satisfactory.
Nevertheless, our community is benefiting in many ways. The center will divert 60% of waste from the landfill, in addition to what is recycled by households before it reaches Tajiguas.
Overall, the center expects to boost our community’s recycling rate to about 85%, including diverting close to 100% of the organics that would previously have been landfilled.
The ReSource Center fulfills state mandates to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and divert organic waste and recyclables. The methane byproduct is used to power the facility and the compost produced is available to the public. It is expected to create about 100 permanent living-wage jobs. Permanent, that is, until Tajiguas is full, which is about a decade away.
The ReSource Center is also a great information resource. I’m often wondering whether a used item of mine is hazardous, can be recycled, or needs to be rinsed. Do the numbers on the bottom of a plastic bottle still matter? Does rinsing use more water than is justifiable to recycle it? Where should dead batteries and expired medications go?
The answers are found on the LessIsMore website.
After seeing the efficiency of the sorting, one question that plagued me was whether we should recycle at all at the household level. It matters, Dickinson told us, because clean recyclables commingled with trash get wet or dirty, effectively reducing them into trash. Recycling still begins at home.
As great as recycling is, however, we can’t recycle our way out of society’s growing trash problem. Of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, reduce is still the superior action. Before you make a purchase, it’s essential to ask yourself how you will dispose of the packaging and the used product. Is there a better option?
What the world needs now is less.
Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist
Karen Telleen-Lawton is an eco-writer, sharing information and insights about economics and ecology, finances and the environment. Having recently retired from financial planning and advising, she spends more time exploring the outdoors — and reading and writing about it. The opinions expressed are her own.More by Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist