Gavelus into order.

And we have one excused absence.

Councilmember Jones is not in town.

Everybody else is here, so we will start it.

This is the Yard Waste Center is the first item on the agenda, and we have Mr.

Gregory Jenkins.

The second.

Good afternoon for the second day in the row here.

Right.

All right.

I am the interim director of Solid Waste Services.

This afternoon I'm going to be speaking to you about organics management feasibility study.

The purpose of this presentation is to narrow down options for you to narrow down some options for us so that staff can get a more detailed and budget projections for future conversations.

And then we will open it up for questions and discussion.

Now we will transition to considering the process required to incorporate food waste into our collection and processing to the City Service offerings.

Composting requires two distinct operational improvements.

One, collections.

How will Solid Waste Service collect, transport food waste from residential or public locations?

Two processing.

Once the food is collected, where and how will it be processed?

Now we will discuss the processing.

Here is a map of the compost processing facilities in our region.

McGill Mary Oaks, 30 miles away, one way from the Yard Waste Center, accepts food waste, but has a limited capacity.

NC State research NC State has a small facility and only processes food waste related to the university, and Brooks contract in Goldstone is 60 miles one direction and is the most utilized by third-party contractors operating in Wake County.

Opportunity.

Site improvements for stormwater and other needs are already in the budget in the CIP for future years.

In order to consider the feasibility of the Yard Waste Center to accept and process food waste, staff recommend exploring an initial pilot to test food waste quantities, the compost mix and recipe operations and final compost product.

Case studies demonstrate starting small and working up yields the best results.

Because food waste is already being collected by a third-party vendor, the center could accept food waste as part of a pilot without incurring any expans any expansion in collection operations.

Our current permit will allow for a short-term pilot.

Collections.

Now that we discussed the infrastructure improvement needs, let's transition to the operational concerns with food waste collections.

For collections, we will discuss three options demonstrating a range of costs of investment and operational requirements.

Staff recommends the following approach to piloting a processing program, piloting a processing program that will start similar to what we started got tongue-tag on that.

We will pilot it very similar to our processing program where we will start small and work our way up.

This approach will lessen the upfront capital and personnel investment.

The city could install a food waste convenience site strategically located throughout the city.

18 to 20 locations could fully cover the city and yield the desired collection amounts.

Service in the bins could be managed by either the city or a third party.

The next option would be to establish a contract with an existing vendor that already has curbside subscription services to residents.

This would be a benefit to the City for open offering a local processing at the Yard Waste Center, and the City would benefit by offsetting the need to expand operational expenses.

The City and the third option would be for the City to, which would be also the largest, will be to actually collect curbside, which will be a huge investment.

In order to accommodate curbside collection for the best practice and management, Solid Waste will need to acquire and distribute a fourth bin to each residence.

Adding a fourth bin will flow will require an assessment to impact staffing, routes, vehicle infrastructure, customer service, and more.

So our request in front of council today is to help us by giving us a little direction in which option do you want us to further explore?

Questions and discussion.

Thank you so much for the presentation.

Councilor Harrison.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Really excited to see this study done and to see the various options.

This is one of my first requests when I came on council and just to understand what are some of the challenges and opportunities to start collecting our food waste.

I just want to note, you know, again, 25 percent of what is going to the landfill is food waste.

That's 25,000 tons per year.

It's crazy.

So I think there's a lot of opportunities to be more sustainable and hopefully also reduce costs and lengthen our time for that landfill.

Um I know Marshall thinks I'm going to create a mutiny if I we get rid of uh trash from every week, which she might be right.

Um but if we start with something that is more um reasonable in terms of helping folks get you know reduce their waste, then we might start seeing a change.

So I'm just really excited about some of these opportunities.

The pilot.

Um I was looking at the memo that came from the third-party consultant, and it looked like they were recommending scenario two, which was a separate food waste collection going to the Yard Waste Center.