Beth Am Sustainability Update

By Lisa Steinback, BAW Co-President in collaboration with Beth Am’s Dayenu Circle

Have you ever wondered why Beth Am does not do more recycling, composting, and separating out of trash? Did you think we need to do better? Members of our Dayenu Circle Sustainability team and other groups, including Beth Am Women, were asking about this, and we were concerned. It is a Jewish Value to respect the planet, and it may have appeared like we were not doing a great job. We decided it was worth looking into, and, thanks to some investigative work, we are happy to report that we are doing MUCH better than we thought.

Here is how it works: A company called GreenWaste picks up our garbage and recycling each week. Each city using GreenWaste has its own specific contract and rules. So, if you live in Palo Alto, food scraps go in the green toter along with yard trimmings. In Los Altos Hills (LAH), where we are located, it is different — and it is very sustainability focused.

There are two types of containers used by GreenWaste for Los Altos Hills:

• Blue container for bottles, cans, foil, clean paper (pure recyclables)
• Black or Dark Gray (Beth Am actually uses our old green bins) for Mixed Compostables, including:
  • Food scraps and dirty paper
  • Yard trimmings
  • Trash that is not recyclable

We need to put as many qualifying recyclables as possible into our Blue bins. When the Mixed Compostable bins are processed offsite, here is what happens to their contents:

• They are transported to the state-of-the-art GreenWaste Municipal Solid Waste facility in San Jose, where 75% of it is repurposed by being sorted into different streams, such as:

1. Bottles, cans, metal items, etc., that can be recycled, but were thrown in the trash bin by mistake
2. Organic waste (like food scraps) that are later sent to their facility in Gilroy to be composted
3. The remainder (approximately 25%) is trash that goes to the landfill.

The compostable/organic waste is sent to the GreenWaste Z-Best Composting Facility in Gilroy which transforms it into organic OMRI-listed* compost used for regenerative agriculture and landscaping. This process involves exposing the organic waste to the air, watering it periodically, and turning the soil.
 
The fact is that it often is hard to know exactly what to put in the garbage and what to put in the compost bin. Some products labeled as “compostable” are really “greenwashing”, i.e., inaccurately labeled, and might not work for some compost facilities. Thus, having GreenWaste LAH use their sophisticated facility to sort through the trash and recover the compostable and improperly placed recyclables is actually a better overall system than most in use today!

Our Dayenu sustainability team is putting in place more clearly labeled blue bins around campus because:

Cleaner Materials = Better Recycling!
When bottles, cans, and clean foil are placed in the blue bin, they stay cleaner and are much more likely to be successfully recycled. These same items pulled from the Mixed Compostables bins might get contaminated by food or moisture, making them harder to recycle. Our goal is that more materials get reused instead of ending up in the landfill.

What does this mean for you when at Beth Am?

• Continue to put your trash AND food scraps in the garbage bins around campus.
• Ensure separation of clean paper, plastic and metal recyclables, that then can go into the blue bins located around campus.
• Know that additional composting and sorting will happen offsite, so you need not worry about things going into the trash that you might separate out at home.

Overall, we are happy to report that we are acting more sustainably than many of us thought we were, and we should all be grateful that our trash processing is being handled by GreenWaste LAH!

If you are interested in learning more or getting involved with our Dayenu Sustainability Group, or Beth Am Women, or if you have ideas you want to share with us, please contact us at Dayenu@betham.org or BAWinfo@betham.org.

*OMRI offers a trusted independent review of brand name input products intended for organic farming and processing. OMRI's standards are based on the U.S. National Organic Program (NOP) and on the Canada Organic Regime (COR) standards.