Data for the Bioresources Economy
Filling Informational Gaps to Make Soil Policy Work
What would California’s landscapes and communities look like if bioresources were managed in accordance with their availability and to benefit local ecosystems and communities? The state of California is unique in its vast access to high-quality organic materials. If these resources are incentivized to create soil amendments we could raise soil organic matter content, increase water holding capacity in our soils, and notably decrease the use of synthetic fertilizers in agriculture.
Currently, the amount of available feedstock vastly outweighs the amount being processed at existing authorized composting sites. This causes pollution in the communities where the feedstock originates.
The forthcoming map visualizes waste as a potential resource and also indicates the throughput and location of currently authorized/permitted composting sites to show the need for additional regional processing. The map visualizes the following:
Approximately 3.5 million annual tons of commercial food waste compared to a generous maximum of roughly 1.2 million annual tons of food waste throughput for commercial composting facilities
Roughly 75 million tons of manure are produced within CAFOs annually compared to approximately 690,000 tons of annual throughput from agricultural composting facilities
The locations of existing Community Composting for Greenspaces grant-funded community composting sites are estimated to have a throughput of anywhere from 30-300 tons per year, depending on the size and location.
Future data sets include residential food and green waste and forest sector woody biomass.