C.V. LAUNCHING FREE ACADEMY TO TEACH ABOUT ZERO WASTE

Seven-session class begins Feb. 9, runs through March 23

Chula Vista is launching a free, interactive academy to teach residents how they can help bring the municipality closer to becoming a zero-waste city.

Zero Waste Academy is a seven-session course that begins Feb. 9 and runs through March 23 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Classes will be available in person at the Chula Vista Civic Center library or online.

The course was designed to offer residents hands-on learning opportunities.

Enrollees will have a chance to participate in a sustainability project that they will present at the end of the course. For example, they could reuse or repurpose an unwanted item or share changes made in their lifestyle. Participants will also conduct a waste audit at home and tour places like the Otay Landfill, a materials recovery facility and a construction and debris facility.

There are also classes that will cover how to deal with household hazardous waste and plastics and how businesses can implement more sustainable practices.

The goal is for participants “to take the lessons learned and become advocates for implementing Zero Waste practices,” the city said on its website.

Zero waste goes beyond recycling and composting. The Zero Waste International Alliance defines the practice as “the conservation of all resources by means of responsible production, consumption, reuse, and recovery of products, packaging, and materials without burning and with no discharges to land, water, or air that threaten the environment or human health.”

Chula Vista’s inaugural academy would come as California begins its first year mandating that households and businesses recycle their food waste.

Senate Bill 1383, which former Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law in 2016, mandates that all jurisdictions establish a program that will reduce the amount of organic waste sent to landfills to curb methane emissions.

The state’s reduction target is 75 percent over the next two years. Chula Vista has set a goal of reaching 90 percent citywide by 2035, according to its zero waste plan. Of the city’s overall waste composition, about 22 percent is recoverable for recycling and 44 percent for composting. Paper and edible food waste comprised the most significant portions that could be recycled and composted, according to a city study on its waste composition.

Chula Vista’s zero waste plan, which was last updated in 2021, estimates that an estimated 84,810 tons of material could be diverted from landfill disposal every year.

“This would decrease Chula Vista’s disposal rate to 2.4 pounds per person per day, a diversion rate equivalent to 77 (percent),” the plan reads. In 2019, the city’s per capita disposal rate was 4.1 pounds of landfill material per person daily.

The plan considers reaching those figures a challenging task for a growing city like Chula Vista but finds it attainable if all strategies in the plan are implemented.

One of the plan’s six overarching strategies is educating the public, such as hosting the academy. The plan also details ways to reduce the use of toxic materials, promote the practice of reusing items, support the recycling industry and keep organic materials out of landfills.

To register and learn more about the academy, call the city at (619) 691-5122 or visit chulavistaca.gov/zerowaste.

tammy.murga@sduniontribune.com

JARROD VALLIERE U-T FILE At the Otay Compost Facility, organic waste goes through a grinder. Resulting mulch is then covered, watered and pumped with oxygen to speed decomposition.