Greg Pryor began composting yard and food waste for San Francisco in 1996, and today he oversees nine industrial-sized composting sites in California and Oregon that turn discarded banana peels, coffee grounds, chicken bones and more into a dark, nutrient-rich soil that farmers covet for their fields and crops.

His company, Recology, processes organic waste from cities and municipalities across the Bay Area, Central Valley, Northern California, Oregon and Washington — part of a growing movement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by minimizing food waste in landfills.

But, said Pryor, if bioplastic and compostable food packaging manufacturers’ get their way, the whole system could collapse.

At issue is a 2021 California law, known as Assembly Bill 1201, which requires that products labeled “compostable” must actually break down into compost, not contaminate soil or crops with toxic chemicals, and be readily identifiable to both consumers and solid waste facilities.

The law also stipulates that products carrying a “compostable” label must meet the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program requirements, which only allow for plant and animal material in compost feedstock, and bar all synthetic substances and materials — plastics, bioplastics and most packaging materials — except for newspaper or other recycled paper without glossy or colored ink.

The USDA is reviewing those requirements at the request of a compostable plastics and packaging industry trade group. Its ruling, expected this fall, could open the door for materials such as bioplastic cups, coffee pods and compostable plastic bags to be admitted into the organic compost waste stream.

Amid pressure from the industry, the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery said it will await implementing its own rules on AB 1201 — originally set for Jan. 1, 2026 — until June 30, 2027, to incorporate the USDA guidelines, should there be a change.

Pryor is concerned that a USDA ruling to allow certain plastic to be considered compost will contaminate his product, make it unsaleable to farmers, and undermine the purpose of composting — which is to improve soil and crop health.

Plastics, microplastics and toxic chemicals can hurt and kill the microorganisms that make his compost healthy and valued. Research also shows these materials, chemicals and products can threaten the health of crops grown in them.

And while research on new generation plastics made from plant and other organic fibers have more mixed findings — suggesting some fibers, in some circumstances, may not be harmful — Pryor said the farmers who buy his compost don’t want any of it. They’ve told him they won’t buy it if he accepts it in his feedstock.

“If you ask farmers, hey, do you mind plastic in your compost? Every one of them will say no. Nobody wants it,” he said.

However, for manufacturers of next-generation, “compostable” food packaging products — such as bioplastic bags, cups and takeout containers made from corn, kelp or sugarcane fibers — those federal requirements present an existential threat to their industry.

That’s because California is moving toward a new waste management regime which, by 2032, will require all single-use plastic packaging products sold in the state to be either recyclable or compostable.

A worker at Recology’s Blossom Valley composting site rides his bike back to the sorting machines after a break in Vernalis, Calif., on June 26.

(Susanne Rust / Los Angeles Times)

If the products these companies have designed and manufactured for the sole purpose of being incorporated in the compost waste stream are excluded, they will be shut out of the huge California market.

They say their products are biodegradable, contain minimal amounts of toxic chemicals and metals, and provide an alternative to the conventional plastics used to make chip bags, coffee pods and frozen food trays — and wind up in landfills, rivers and oceans.

“As we move forward, not only are you capturing all this material … such as coffee grounds, but there isn’t really another packaging solution in terms of finding an end of life,” for these products, said Alex Truelove, senior policy manager for the Biodegradable Product Institute, a trade organization for compostable packaging producers.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Material is loaded into a mixing truck where biosolids and amendments are combined then stored in climate controlled piles to cure at the Tulare Lake Compost plant. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

“Even if you could recycle those little cups, which it seems like no one is willing to do … it still requires someone to separate out and peel off the foil top and dump out the grounds. Imagine if you could just have a really thin covering or really thin packaging, and then you could just put it all in” the compost he said. “How much more likely would it be for people to participate?”

Truelove and Rhodes Yepsen, the executive director of the bioplastic institute, also point to compost bin and can liners, noting that many people won’t participate in separating out their food waste if they can’t put it in a bag — the “yuck” factor. If you create a compostable bag, they say, more people will buy into the program.

The institute — whose board members include or have included representatives from the chemical giant BASF Corp., polystyrene manufacturer Dart Container, Eastman Chemical Co. and PepsiCo — is lobbying the federal and state government to get its products into the compost stream.

Greg Pryor, Recology’s director of landfill and organics, stands in front of a pile of processed compost at the integrated waste management’s Blossom Valley compost site in Vernalis, Calif., on June 26.

(Susanne Rust / Los Angeles Times)

The institute also works as a certifying body, testing, validating and then certifying compostable packaging for composting facilities across the U.S. and Canada.

In 2023, it petitioned the USDA to reconsider its exclusion of certain synthetic products, calling the current requirements outdated and “one of the biggest stumbling blocks” to efforts in states, such as California, that are trying to create a circular economy, in which products are designed and manufactured to be reused, recycled or composted.

In response, the federal agency contracted the nonprofit Organics Material Review Institute to compile a report evaluating the research that’s been conducted on these products’ safety and compostability.

The institute’s report, released in April, highlighted a variety of concerns including the products’ ability to fully biodegrade — potentially leaving microplastics in the soil — as well as their tendency to introduce forever chemicals, such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and other toxic chemicals into the soil.

“Roughly half of all bioplastics produced are non-biodegradable,” the authors wrote. “To compensate for limitations inherent to bioplastic materials, such as brittleness and low gas barrier properties, bioplastics can contain additives such as synthetic polymers, fillers, and plasticizers. The specific types, amounts, and hazards of these chemicals in bioplastics are rarely disclosed.”

The report also notes that while some products may break down relatively efficiently in industrial composting facilities, when left out in the environment, they may not break down at all. What’s more, converting to biodegradable plastics entirely could result in an increase in biodegradable waste in landfills — and with it emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, the authors wrote.

Yepsen and Truelove say their organization won’t certify any products in which PFAS — a chemical often used to line cups and paper to keep out moisture — was intentionally added, or which is found in levels above a certain threshold. And they require 90% biodegradation of the products they certify.

Judith Enck, a former regional Environmental Protection Agency director, and the founder of Beyond Plastics, an anti-plastic waste environmental group based in Bennington, Vt., said the inclusion of compost as an end-life option for packaging in California’s new waste management regime was a mistake.

“What it did was to turn composting into a waste disposal strategy, not a soil health strategy,” she said. “The whole point of composting is to improve soil health. But I think what’s really driving this debate right now is consumer brand companies who just want the cheapest option to keep producing single-use packaging. And the chemical companies, because they want to keep selling chemicals for packaging and a lot of so-called biodegradable or compostable packaging contains those chemicals.”

Bob Shaffer, an agronomist and coffee farmer in Hawaii, said he’s been watching these products for years, and won’t put any of those materials in his compost.

“Farmers are growing our food, and we’re depending on them. And the soils they grow our crops in need care,” he said. “I’ll grow food for you, and I’ll grow gorgeous food for you, but give us back the food stuff you’re not using or eating, so we can compost it, return it to the soil, and make a beautiful crop for you. But be mindful of what you give back to us. We can’t grow you beautiful food from plastic and toxic chemicals.”

Recology’s Pryor said the food waste his company receives has increasingly become polluted with plastic.

He pointed toward a pile of food waste at his company’s composting site in the San Joaquin Valley town of Vernalis. The pile looked less like a heap of rotting and decaying food than a dirty mound of plastic bags, disposable coffee cups, empty, greasy chip bags and takeout boxes.

“I’ve been doing this for more than three decades, and I can tell you the food we process hasn’t changed over that time,” he said. “Neither have the leaves, brush and yard clippings we bring in. The only thing that’s changed? Plastics and biodegradable plastics.”

He said if the USDA and CalRecycle open the doors for these next-generation materials, the problem is just going to get worse.

“People are already confused about what they can and can’t put in,” he said. “Opening the door for this stuff is jut going to open the floodgates. For all kinds of materials. It’s a shame.”

Federal contractors tasked with clearing ash and debris from the Eaton and Palisades wildfires improperly sent truckloads of asbestos-tainted waste to nonhazardous landfills, including one where workers were not wearing respiratory protection, according to state and local records.

From Feb. 28 to March 24, federal cleanup crews gathered up wreckage from six burned-down homes as part of the wildfire recovery efforts led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and its primary contractor Environmental Chemical Corp.

However, prior to reviewing mandated tests for asbestos, crews loaded the fire debris onto dump trucks bound for Simi Valley Landfill and Recycling Center, and possibly Calabasas Landfill in unincorporated Agoura and Sunshine Canyon Landfill in Los Angeles’ Sylmar neighborhood, according to reports by the California Office of Emergency Services and Ventura County.

Later on, federal contractors learned those tests determined that the fire debris from these homes contained asbestos, a fire-resistant building material made up of durable thread-like fibers that can cause serious lung damage if inhaled.

The incident wasn’t reported to landfill operators or environmental regulators until weeks later in mid-April.

Many Southern California residents and environmental groups had already objected to sending wildfire ash and debris to local landfills that were not designed to handle high levels of contaminants and potentially hazardous waste that are often commingled in wildfire debris. They feared toxic substances — including lead and asbestos — could pose a risk to municipal landfill workers and might even drift into nearby communities as airborne dust.

The botched asbestos disposal amplifies those concerns and illustrates that in some cases federal contractors are failing to adhere to hazardous waste protocols.

“You have to wonder if they caught it here, how many times didn’t they catch it?” asked Jane Williams, executive director of the nonprofit California Communities Against Toxics. “It’s the continued failure to effectively protect the public from the ash. This is further evidence of that failure. This is us deciding those who work and live around these landfills are expendable.”

As of May 1, nearly 1 million tons of disaster debris has been taken to four landfills in Southern California. Simi Valley, an 887-acre landfill in Ventura County, has taken two-thirds of the tonnage. Several residents who live nearby voiced their disappointment ahead of the June 24 Ventura County Board of Supervisors vote to approve emergency waivers to allow fire debris to continue to be disposed of at Simi Valley Landfill — without a cap on tonnage — until Sept. 3.

“When I told my kids about the fire debris being dumped at the landfill, they asked me, why would anyone allow us to be exposed to this?” said Nicole Luekenga, a resident of nearby Moorpark, at the June 24 board meeting. “We are deeply concerned about the potential health risks from the fire debris being dumped at a residential landfill in our community. It feels as though profit and convenience are being prioritized over public safety, and that is unacceptable.”

An Environmental Chemical Corp. official acknowledged the lapse in asbestos protocols led to the improper disposal in February and March. He said the ash and debris from the six homes — four in Altadena, one in Pacific Palisades and one in Malibu — contained “trace amounts” of asbestos but did not elaborate on the specific type of building material that contained asbestos, or why the debris wasn’t flagged.

Asbestos has historically been used in a variety of construction materials — large and small — including roofing shingles, cement pipes, popcorn ceilings and insulation.

The company official said the improper disposal may have been due to a failure of either its workers or subcontractors to properly review paperwork. He also said he was unaware of any other cases in which asbestos or hazardous waste were improperly disposed. The Army Corps of Engineers declined to comment on the matter.

Environmental Chemical officials told Simi Valley Landfill that the asbestos should be presumed to be friable, a form of the fibrous mineral that is more easily broken down into smaller pieces and considered hazardous waste, according to an April letter from the landfill’s owner, Waste Management, to the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board.

During the time the asbestos waste was taken to the landfills, workers handling fire debris at Simi Valley Landfill had not been wearing protective masks or respirators, according to inspection reports. Typically municipal landfill workers don’t wear face coverings because they are mostly handling trash and nonhazardous waste.

But experts say protective masks are essential for protecting worker health at landfills. Landfill workers or hired contractors regularly drill pipelines extending hundreds of feet underground into the layers of the waste to extract gases that can build up when garbage decomposes. Experts say drilling into hazardous waste, such as asbestos waste, could expose workers to harmful substances if they aren’t wearing appropriate protective equipment.

During at least one visit in March, a Ventura County inspector found workers without masks in parts of the landfill designated for fire debris. Waste Management staff told the county inspector that mask-wearing was voluntary for employees. In April, county inspectors observed at least four workers constructing a new well in the fire debris area without respiratory protection, and another worker with only a cloth face mask.

High-filtration respirators are typically considered the best form of protection against asbestos. Protective masks, such as N95 masks, can guard against breathing in small particles, but should not be used to protect against asbestos.

Since learning about the asbestos-containing fire debris, local regulators have ordered the operators of Simi Valley Landfill to consult with safety professionals to determine the appropriate level of protective gear needed to protect against breathing in hazardous contaminants.

Army Corps officials had previously vowed that contractors would test for asbestos and take steps to segregate this waste and to take it to the appropriate disposal locations, such as Azusa Land Reclamation Co., a 300-acre landfill in the San Gabriel Valley that is also owned by Waste Management.

Waste Management officials said the company intends to leave the asbestos-containing waste in place, because attempting to excavate it could increase the likelihood that some of the toxic material would be released into the air. Nicole Stetson, district manager at Waste Management, urged the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Board to ask Environmental Chemical what actions it would take to prevent more asbestos from inadvertently being dumped there.

The landfill staff “followed all relevant procedures during affected period and could not have prevented these events through any reasonable means,” Stetson wrote in a letter in April.

So far, regulators have been mum on whether any enforcement action has been taken after the lapse in hazardous waste protocols. The regional water board declined to comment. CalRecycle referred questions to local authorities that it partners with to provide oversight and ensure compliance.

The Army Corps of Engineers is more than halfway through its mission of clearing the wildfire debris from the vast majority of homes and schools that were razed in the Eaton and Palisades wildfires. So far, it has overseen the removal of fire debris from nearly 9,000 properties.

The wildfire ash and debris the Army Corps has moved from disaster sites to landfills probably contains elevated levels of toxic metals. For example, Nick Spada, a researcher with the UC Davis Air Quality Research Center, has collected dozens of ash samples from the burn scars and, in preliminary findings, found elevated levels of lead, arsenic, cadmium and antimony in the test materials.

Spada is sampling the air near Simi Valley Landfill in hopes of identifying the levels of dust pollution from the site. The air sampling will help determine the types of metals in the air along with the particle sizes. (Smaller particles can cause more health complications because after they are inhaled into lungs, some are tiny enough to enter the bloodstream.)

Spada said the forthcoming results should provide communities with important greater insight into public health risks associated with the wildfire debris that continues to be dumped there. But, beyond the community, Spada is also concerned with those who are the closest to the debris: the workers.

“I see our role as raising concerns and then exploring them and trying to help out our friends in the regulatory agencies and the government that are all working as hard as they can trying to get a handle on this massive tragedy,” he said. “I’m concerned about all the workers who are in the burn areas, who are doing this work without respirators. It’s really hot, so heat-related illnesses is a primary concern, as is respiration of these particles.”

When it comes to vaccines, virtually nothing that comes out of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s mouth is true.

The man in charge of the nation’s health and well being is impervious to science, expertise and knowledge. His brand of arrogance is not just dangerous, it is lethal. Undermining trust in vaccines, he will have the blood of children around the world on his hands.

Scratch that.

He already does, as he presides over the second largest measles outbreak in this country since the disease was declared “eliminated” a quarter century ago.

“Vaccines have become a divisive issue in American politics,” Kennedy wrote the other day in a Wall Street Journal essay, “but there is one thing all parties can agree on: The U.S. faces a crisis of public trust.”

The lack of self-awareness would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

Over the past two decades or so, Kennedy has done more than almost any other American to destroy the public’s trust in vaccines and science. And now he’s bemoaning the very thing he has helped cause.

Earlier this month, Kennedy fired the 17 medical and public health experts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — qualified doctors and public health experts — and replaced them with a group of (mostly) anti-vaxxers in order to pursue his relentless, ascientific crusade.

On Thursday, at its first meeting, his newly reconstituted council voted to ban the preservative thimerosal from the few remaining vaccines that contain it, despite many studies showing that thimerosal is safe. On that point, even the Food and Drug Administration website is blunt: “A robust body of peer-reviewed scientific studies conducted in the U.S. and other countries support the safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines.”

“If you searched the world wide, you could not find a less suitable person to be leading healthcare efforts in the United States or the world,” psychiatrist Allen Frances told NPR on Thursday. Frances, who chaired the task force that changed how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, defines autism, published an essay in the New York Times on Monday explaining why the incidence of autism has increased but is neither an epidemic nor related to vaccines.

“The rapid rise in autism cases is not because of vaccines or environmental toxins,” Frances wrote, “but is rather the result of changes in the way that autism is defined and assessed — changes that I helped put into place.”

But Kennedy is not one to let the facts stand in the way of his cockamamie theories. Manufacturers long ago removed thimerosal from childhood vaccines because of unfounded fears it contained mercury that could accumulate in the brain and unfounded fears about a relationship between mercury and autism.

That did not stop one of Kennedy’s new council members, Lyn Redwood, who once led Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy, from declaring a victory for children.

“Removing a known neurotoxin from being injected into our most vulnerable population is a good place to start with making America healthy again,” Redwood told the committee.

Autism rates, by the way, have continued to climb despite the thimerosal ban. But fear not, gullible Americans, Kennedy has promised to pinpoint a cause for the complex condition by September!

Like his boss, Kennedy just makes stuff up.

On Wednesday, he halted a $1-billion American commitment to Gavi, an organization that provides vaccines to millions of children around the world, wrongly accusing the group of failing to investigate adverse reactions to the diptheria vaccine.

“This is utterly disastrous for children around the world and for public health,” Atul Gawande, a surgeon who worked in the Biden administration, told the New York Times.

Unilaterally, and contrary to the evidence, Kennedy decided to abandon the CDC recommendation that healthy pregnant women receive COVID vaccines. But an unvaccinated pregnant woman’s COVID infection can lead to serious health problems for her newborn. In fact, a study last year found that babies born to such mothers had “unusually high rates” of respiratory distress at or just after birth. According to the CDC, nearly 90% of babies who were hospitalized for COVID-19 had unvaccinated mothers. Also, vaccinated moms can pass protective antibodies to their fetuses, who will not be able to get a COVID shot until they are 6 months old.

What else? Oh yes: Kennedy once told podcaster Joe Rogan that the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic was “vaccine-induced flu” even though no flu vaccine existed at the time.

He also told Rogan that a 2003 study by physician scientist Michael Pichichero, an expert on the use of thimerosal in vaccines, involved feeding babies 6 months old and younger mercury-contaminated tuna sandwiches, and that 64 days later, the mercury was still in their system. “Who would do that?” Kennedy demanded.

Well, no one.

In the study, 40 babies were injected with vaccines containing thimerosal, while a control group of 21 babies got shots that did not contain the preservative. None was fed tuna. Ethylmercury, the form of mercury in thimerosal, the researchers concluded, “seems to be eliminated from blood rapidly via the stools.” (BTW, the mercury found in fish is methylmercury, a different chemical, which can damage the brain and nervous system. In a 2012 deposition for his divorce, which was revealed last year, Kennedy said he suffered memory loss and brain fog from mercury poisoning caused by eating too much tuna fish. He also revealed he has a dead worm in his brain.)

Kennedy’s tuna sandwich anecdote on Rogan’s podcast was “a ChatGPT-level of hallucination,” said Morgan McSweeney, a.k.a. “Dr. Noc,” a scientist with a doctorate in pharmaceutical sciences, focusing on immunology and antibodies. McSweeney debunks the idiotic medical claims of non-scientists like Kennedy in his popular social media videos.

Speaking of AI hallucinations, on Tuesday, at a congressional committee hearing, Kennedy was questioned about inaccuracies, misinformation and made up research and citations for nonexistent studies in the first report from his Make America Healthy Again Commission.

The report focused on how American children are being harmed by their poor diets, exposure to environmental toxins and, predictably, over-vaccination. It was immediately savaged by experts. “This is not an evidence-based report, and for all practical purposes, it should be junked at this point,” Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Assn. told the Washington Post.

If Kennedy was sincere about improving the health of American children he would focus on combating real scourges like gun violence, drug overdoses, depression, poverty and lack of access to preventive healthcare. He would be fighting the proposed cuts to Medicaid tooth and nail.

Do you suppose he even knows that over the past 50 years, the lives of an estimated 154 million children have been saved by vaccines?

Or that he cares?

@rabcarian.bsky.social
@rabcarian