1. Sunnyvale Food Scraps Collection Pilot
CRRA Annual Conference
August 10, 2016

2. City of Sunnyvale Overview:
Population 148,000
SMaRT Station facility
MRF/Curbside sorting
31% diversion rate from MSW
Dual stream SF/MF recycling
Commercial cardboard
Commercial food scraps
Commercial glass
65% diversion

3. Sunnyvale Food Scraps Collection Pilot Details (March 2015-Dec 2015):
5oo houesholds, 5 diverse neighborhoods
All received a 50/50
split-cart
Mon-Single family
Tue-Townhouses
Wed/Thur-Single family
Fri-Mobile home park
Reuse of old split carts
New lids
Residents familiar with split system
Black = Garbage
Yellow = Food
Those with 35G & 65G garbage carts received 64G split cart. 95G customers received 96G split. 87% pilot participants received a 64G cart. Pre-pilot audit showed 50% of the 65G garbage carts were half full or less. 
The Mon/Frid households were our big generators
Tuesday townhouses had the least amount of garbage

4. NEW Set-Out
Food + Garbage
Yard Trimmings
Containers + Paper

5. Pilot Details: Letter (1 month prior)
Outreach to residents prior to implementation:
Residents received:
Letter (1 month prior)
Postcard (1 week prior to cart delivery)
Website info
Countertop pail
2 boxes of compostable liners

6. Cart Label
Acceptable items included food, meat, food soiled paper/pizza boxes:

7. Early Findings:
50/50 cart didn’t have enough garbage space for some residents.
Carts overfilled in high generation areas (Monday and Friday)
Overfills = 6% of all carts audited.
Monday rabble rouser

8. Adjustments to Monday Route:
Allowed extra garbage bag set-out for no charge
Allowed switch to non-compostable bags
Number of overfilled carts dropped by 43%
by end of pilot (but increase by 30% from week 1)
There was a slight increase in participation the first few weeks after allowing the extra bags, but it came back down
The number of overfilled carts decreased the first few weeks afterwards, came up a bit, then decreased the remaining part of the pilot

9. Adjustments to Friday route
Replaced 50/50 carts with a 70/30 cart
Allowed switch to non-compostable bags
Participation went up: from 62% to 81%
Overfills actually went up slightly
Total overall overfills up 35% from start
Overfills
Green line is mostly food, big jump after new cart was delivered, came back down after a few weeks

10. We used several outreach tools to spur behavior change:
In weeks 5, 7, 10, and 16 we placed Oops or Good Job tags on carts with goal of:
Reducing contamination
Increasing participation
Providing “norming” info
Wanted people to know that the pilot had good participation as a way of showing that most of their neighbors were doing it (norming behavior).

11. Results of outreach tools
Tools work but the number of times we tagged and visited the carts isn’t quite scalable.

12. Cart stickers for participating households
Monday’s low participation neighborhood got stickers on carts to “norm” neighborhood behavior and spur more participation.
In post-pilot survey the influence of the sticker was:
Stickers only went on carts that had food in the yellow side of the cart

13. Data collection methods during pilot:
Floor sorting (32 days out of 190 day pilot)
Material sorted
Material weighed
Lid “flipping”(65 days)
Volume of food scraps
Volume of garbage
Overfilled carts
Perceived contamination
Cart sorting
8 carts/route (40 carts total)
Sorted/weighed
Surveys
Audit sheet for tipping

14. Floor sorting findings:
Each bio-bag weighed on average 2.5 lbs
Average food/household = 11.4 lbs (36% of total material weight)
Average garbage/household = 19.5 lbs (63% of total material weight)
Bagged material was very clean--only food scraps
Food soiled paper loose, not in bags

15. Cart sorting findings – 40 samples
85% of all food scraps were in yellow side of cart
15% contamination rate, but all material was able to be processed for animal feed
All households
Total food generated per Household/week
13 pounds
Food diverted via the yellow (food) side of cart
8 pounds
% of total household food diverted
62%
Richard will be telling you about how our organics are processed in the SOS system

16. Lid flipping findings:
Participation=(meaning: had food or nothing in yellow/food side of cart)

17. Participation was high at 74%!
Green bar shows the entire program overall. This number stayed high throughout. Even the larger garbage generating neighborhood had decent participation rates.
Participation was lower in high density housing, higher in low density housing, lowest in townhouse community (lower pounds/household of food scraps)
2009 EPA report: average participation rate for residential food scraps collection programs %*. *

18. The yellow side of the cart had mostly food in it:
3739 carts visually audited during 38 week pilot. "Mostly Food" means at least 62% of yellow side contents appeared to be food. If you add in the folks who leave the food side empty (might not particpate but at least they aren’t contaminating), it’s closer to 75%
Food plus, mostly food is equal to 73%

19. Other lid flipping tidbits:
17% of yellow sides were “mostly garbage” at the beginning. That dropped to 11% by the end.
Outreach tools (tags, stickers) positively impacted participation each time they were deployed.
Change to 70/30 cart increased participation by 9%.
By allowing M/F routes to put out extra garbage- increased participation by 3% initially, but then it went back down.

20. Most of the contaminants were:
Food packaging:
EPS egg cartons
Plastic takeout containers
Frozen food boxes
Jars
Bottles
EPS meat trays
There was a reluctance to de-package food before disposal (yuck factor).

21. Survey results Highest-when people ran out of bags they bought more
Most people thought pails were easy to use and kept it on counter

22. Response to oops/great job tags:
Based on items found in the yellow side of the cart, city staff hung “Oops” or “Great Job” tags on the cart.
I didn’t notice the tag
If contaminants they got oops tag
It did cause a behavior change to correct use and remove packaging. The positive tags seemed to spur a little more change.
Complaint from someone about feeling reprimanded with oops tag
1 (Not at all Agree ) - 5 (Strongly Agree)

23. Survey Response to the 70/30 cart:
84% felt they could fit all their garbage into the garbage side of a 70/30 cart
For the majority of survey takers we asked them to image if they could fit, the Friday folks did get the 70/30 so they had the experience.

24. Survey: “Your Experience”
These results show how stronly they agree with the statements.
While people had good intentions and wanted to do the right thing (in red), they weren’t as willing to change behaviors around wasting:
-fewer waste less food and bought food with less packing
1 (Not at all Agree ) - 5 (Strongly Agree)

25. Issues Expressed in Comment Sections
Compostable bag requirement and reduced garbage capacity generated the most complaints
Issues Experienced with the bag:
Cost of bags: 19
Bag Fragility (break/leak): 16
Hard to find bags: 12
Bag fell down in pail: 10

26. A few residents went to great lengths to show their disapproval of the program:
Also had a hacked cart where someone broke the plastic separator between the two sides and bolted it so the garbage side was bigger.

27. But plenty of residents were thrilled about it!

28. Broad Findings and Next steps:
Participation was high and remained fairly consistent.
Residents moved 30% of the food from the garbage side of cart into the yellow side of the cart
Contamination was around 17%
Outreach tools bumped participation overall
Complainers often said “no one’s doing this” and then were surprised to hear the 74% participation rate.
Plan to go to Council in September with recommendation.
Leaning towards split-cart vs. food + yard trimmings due to good results plus highest and best use of materials after collection
1. Aside from when we changed out the 50/50 cart to the 70/30 and there was a big bump in participation
2. Overall the low engagement areas stayed lower and the high ones high.

29. Karen Gissibl kgissibl@sunnyvale.ca.gov 408.730.7277
Questions?
Contact info:
Karen Gissibl