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We've got a really comprehensive recycling plan that's being implemented in Santa Barbara.
The city council approved a strategic plan several years ago that said environmental
services needs to go out and really work aggressively with the business community and the schools
to increase diversion, diversions recycling.
And when we took a look at what was going on we realized that great opportunities with
the new food scraps program that's taking all the leftovers, that's taking the bones,
taking the cheese, a lot of things that people have traditionally considered compostable
and putting those into a new container, a yellow container.
And then we take those food scraps up to Santa Maria and we turn them into healthy compost
that then gets turned right back into our fields, and then that gets put back right
out on our farms and parks right here in Santa Barbara.
So it's really full circle and it's doing it right inside of the county and that's something
we're rolling out across the business sector.
We've got 56 businesses doing it now. We've probably got about 350 left. We've got four
schools, all elementary schools, and we're going after the next 23 in the next year or
two.
One of the things that people love about our program is, if you are going to recycle and
you're going to compost, people say I'm interested but things are tight right now, times are
tight.
One of those things that we spent so much time building was what we call a new raid
structure, and what that effectively means is if you want to do the right thing, you're
going to pay a lot less.
So businesses in Santa Barbara, if they get to 50% recycling, 50% diversion, their bill
is going to go down. And one of the things we've offered now is this food scraps program.
Food scraps recycling costs 85% less than trash. Most businesses in the problem are
going to save a thousand to three thousand dollars a year if they really go whole hog
with the new composting program. It's incredible.
We have businesses right now, they're at ninety percent recycling. It's incredible. And that's
not just one business. We probably have a dozen plus restaurants right now that are
at ninety, ninety five percent recycling. These businesses are seeing thousands of dollars
in savings.
So this is really, just an economic message. You're going to do the right thing of course,
everyone wants to do the right thing. Everyone wants clean air, healthy water, healthy food.
But really if they can save money, that just makes it a win-win, it's very easy to do.
And at the same time, trash companies in the city of Santa Barbara are what we call franchised
haulers.
Meaning they work on contract with the city. The city pays them to collect waste over the
course of the year. They don't pay them to collect trash. And so, one of the things we
do is, if they're not collecting trash and they're collecting another material. We're
paying them a commensurate amount for that material so there's no economic loss for them.
In fact, their revenues are neutral from that standpoint and we make sure every year that
they're kept whole.
So that's one of the reasons reasons we've had such strong support from our trash companies
is they see it as a win-win because they're still making the revenue that they put on
their projections, and at the same time, they're getting to do the right thing, so everyone
is really in a good space right now about that.
I think the key for getting people to recycle more is for them to see the benefit to them
economically and to see the benefit to our community.
Because really everybody wants Santa Barbara to stay as beautiful as it is, so as we start
to make those connections between doing the right thing and saving money and it benefiting
our community we'll see more businesses take that leap into high recycling.