Dump the Dirty MRF

The Gaviota Coast Conservancy and many other groups have questioned the county’s proposed high-tech, high dollar trash processing plant at Tajiguas Landfill on several grounds. The Tajiguas Resource Recovery Project entails significant technological and financial risks to ratepayers and, if things go really badly, could require a subsidy from the general fund.

Not only are there less expensive programs that could accomplish the project objectives, but the organic waste that the county wants to comingle with trash could instead be used for much more effective, long-term carbon sequestration while revitalizing county grazing lands. It could be a “win-win-win” but, instead, will create $120 million of public debt, make a 20-year commitment to a questionable technology that other communities are abandoning, dramatically increase home and commercial trash rates by over 40 percent over the life of the project, and close the door to innovative changes in municipal waste management for two decades.

The project’s core technologies are a “dirty MRF” (pronounced “merf”) and an anaerobic digester at the county’s landfill at Tajiguas canyon on the Gaviota Coast, 26 miles from Santa Barbara. Today, our blue bin recyclables go through a MRF that mechanically separates and hand sorts plastic, glass, metals, and paper. The proposed dirty MRF would use automated equipment to sort the contents of both our trash and recycling bins. While we would continue to put certain recyclables in a blue bin, we would be asked to dump kitchen scraps and other organic waste into the trash bin. The dirty MRF would recover some of the recyclables that ended up in the trash bin. The rest of the waste would end up in the anaerobic digester, where the waste would be processed into methane. The methane would serve as a fuel for a 1 megawatt electric generating plant and emit 1,800 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually.