Welcome to business session.

Our first item is approval of minutes for business session of October 5th, 2023.

Is there a motion?

So moved.

Second.

They're moved and seconded all in favor indicated by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

Motion passes.

Our first item is a solid waste study presentation.

Please come up, city staff.

Person went to a prior resolution of this city council.

There was a direction for staff to study our solid waste needs, what we do with it, the work we do, all of those sorts of things.

So director of public works and friends, please take it away.

I know.

All right.

Everybody.

Good afternoon, Morgan Holichek, uh, City Manager's Office.

Um here today in response to resolution 230161, directing the city manager to study solid waste needs in Kansas City.

Um there's kick off, uh give you a little bit of the landscape, solid waste in Kansas City.

Got uh three transfer stations in Kansas City, Missouri, and three landfills uh access.

Yeah, I talked to Matt.

Current projections uh from SCS engineers forecast 2037 uh reaching capacity at our landfills.

Currently, there are other studies being performed to review this.

Um heard a few different numbers here, so using this more as setting the tone for what we're looking at today.

When we think about looking at landfills in Kansas City, looked at a few different things, the impact that landfills have on communities, uh, environmentally, there's some concerns, water contamination, air pollution, social concerns on land value, pests, stigmas, things like that.

To extend you can't speak a little more into the microphone for us.

Thank you.

Okay, uh there's some health concerns too.

We see coughing irritation, all sorts of things that we wouldn't want in our community.

Um this was based on a study performed by the National Library of Medicine, and looking at what some other cities have done in remediation.

Um that consider um industrial waste requirements, uh incentivization, regulated single use materials.

San Francisco, Austin, Seattle are all identified by EPA as some case studies to reference.

Uh in 2009, and Director Shaw can talk to us a bit more.

Kansas City set a goal for 80% diversion.

Right now we're at about 40% of that goal, looking at 33% diversion, and some of the primary challenges here are contamination rates and diversion, commercial and industrial waste processes that aren't regulated, and we have a hard time getting any data on those, and then infrastructure opportunities that we could continue to build out.

This is a roadmap that maybe you can talk to a bit more.

Yes, uh, Michael Director of Public Works.

Um as Morgan was talking about, we have a our waste reduction goal is 80%.

Currently, we're we're right around 40 percent.

Um there's still very many steps that we can do to help continue to reduce the amount of waste we send to landfills.

And what you have before you today is back in 2008-2009, we commissioned the study, a solid waste management study related to what we can do to manage our waste back then.

Back for many of you who know, in 2004, we began our waste reduction model.

Um we were one of the original adopters of the climate action plan that cities have, and uh one of the goals in that climate action plan was to reduce the amount of waste we sent to landfills, and thus we began waste reduction, meaning we started the two-bag limit and um we started curbside recycling.

Back then, we were collecting about 150,000 tons of residential trash from about 130,000 residents.

Um pre-COVID, we were picking up roughly 89,000 tons of trash from about 150 plus thousand residents.

Today we're picking up around post-COVID, we're picking up about 115,000 tons from 162,000 residents, our customers that are in our systems.

So trash is increasing the amount of waste we are collecting is increasing.

And so this roadmap was done in the previous study that gives us the ability to understand some things that we can do to help mitigate and reduce our waste.

Some things we can't do because we've been preempted by the state, such as plastic bag bands, styrofoam bands, and the like.

So that just to refresh some folks' memory on the original solid waste study.

So as a result of this study, we identified a few key actions that we could take to increase opportunities for diversion and hold off the concerns that have been raised on uh landfill needs in the region.

Number one, um looking at infrastructure improvements, issuing an RFI for a waste sorting facility.

A lot of times, I think on the one of the previous slides we mentioned that recycling contamination is a concern and helping to take some of that burden off of the resident would improve those diversion rates.

Second point identified is public-private partnerships looking at commercial and industrial waste, which has a low level of regulation right now.

Um creating a byproduct synergies group, looking at if uh one man's trash is another man's treasure, thinking about where we can create those synergies in the region.

Um and the last piece investing in public education, um helping to educate people from childhood up until adulthood on how they can play a part in increasing diversion opportunities.

Currently, um household recycling, as you all know, uh delivering of recycling bins was a huge success.

162,000 recycling bins were delivered.