Energy and Biosciences Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, United States.
Energy Technologies Area, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, United States.
Environ Sci Technol. 2024 Nov 12;58(45):19913-19924. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.4c06371. Epub 2024 Oct 29.
California's organic waste diversion law, SB 1383, mandates a 75% reduction in organics disposal by 2025 to reduce landfill methane emissions. Composting will likely be the primary alternative to landfilling, and 75-100 new large-scale composting facilities must be sited in the state to meet its diversion goal. We developed a strategy for evaluating site suitability for commercial composting by incorporating land-use, economic, and environmental justice criteria. In our Baseline scenario, we identified 899 candidate sites, and nearly all are within a cost-effective hauling distance of cropland and rangelands for compost application. About half of sites, mostly in rural areas, are not within a cost-effective collection distance of enough municipal organics to supply an average-sized facility. Conversely, sites near cities have greater access to organics but cause greater health damages from ammonia and volatile organic compounds emitted during the composting process. The additional required composting capacity corresponds to $266-355 million in annual damages from air pollution. However, this excludes avoided emissions from landfilling, and damages could be reduced by 56% if aerated static piles are used instead of windrows. Siting a higher number of smaller decentralized facilities could also help equally distribute air pollution to avoid concentrating burdens in certain communities.
加州的有机废物转移法规 SB 1383 要求到 2025 年减少 75%的有机废物处理量，以减少垃圾填埋场甲烷排放。堆肥可能是替代填埋的主要方法，该州必须建设 75-100 个新的大型堆肥设施，才能实现其转移目标。我们通过纳入土地利用、经济和环境正义标准，制定了一项商业堆肥场地适宜性评估策略。在基线情景中，我们确定了 899 个候选场地，几乎所有场地都在农田和牧场进行堆肥应用的经济有效的运输距离内。大约一半的场地主要位于农村地区，其收集足够的城市有机废物以供应一个平均规模设施的成本效益不佳。相反，靠近城市的场地更容易获得有机废物，但在堆肥过程中氨和挥发性有机化合物的排放会造成更大的健康损害。所需的额外堆肥能力相当于每年因空气污染造成的 2.66 亿至 3.55 亿美元的损失。然而，这还不包括避免垃圾填埋造成的排放，如果使用充气静态堆而不是条垛，那么损失可减少 56%。建设更多数量的小型分散设施也有助于将空气污染均匀分布，避免某些社区负担过重。
