Organic Materials Measurement and Analysis Project
As California cities and counties strive to meet AB 939’s mandate to divert 50 percent of their waste from landfills, organic materials such as food and landscape trimmings remain a major component of unrecovered waste. In fact, municipal organic materials currently comprise over 40 percent of California’s solid waste stream. The amount of organic materials in the waste stream will likely increase as population pressures increase. The status of organic materials thus is a major factor in determining whether AB 939 diversion goals are met.
As part of its strategy to divert and create markets for compostable organic materials, the Waste Board undertakes activities and programs designed to prevent generation and to promote compost and mulch as marketable commodities with tangible environmental and economic benefits. (Please see the organics home page for program and activity summaries).
One of the challenges of a public agency promoting market development in a competitive industry context is determining the effectiveness of its programs and activities above and beyond private industry efforts. Doing so is useful in prioritizing programmatic agency goals, allocating resources, and monitoring agency progress. However, CIWMB efforts to develop markets for diversion goals dovetail in many cases with private industry market development efforts for profit, making it difficult to distinguish the impacts of the two. Predictably, then, making direct correlations between specific Board activities and growth in markets is difficult because many other factors can also impact markets. For example, energy costs can influence whether or not a farmer can afford different soil amendments.
Because information about effectiveness is critical in strategic planning, the Organic Materials Measurement and Analysis project was developed to quantify OMM activities to make inferences about market impact. Using selected indicators as a measure of OMM’s effectiveness in market development activities, OMM plans to use these indicators to: 1) determine which activities are yielding the most result for the allocated resources, 2) determine where resources should be redirected to achieve greater program effectiveness, 3) determine how activities or programs can be reworked to achieve broader message saturation, and 4) identify evolving trends, gaps, and opportunities in the marketplace and target future programs to match those opportunities.
The remainder of this page describes the selected indicators, generalized methodology, and implementation schedules.
Sixteen representative macro and micro level indicators, listed below, were selected based on criteria that balance available staff resources with ease of data capture, ability to quantify results over time, and relevancy. These measures attempt to selectively examine macrolevel industry trends, microlevel agency and jurisdictional programs, and the effectiveness of in-house programs. These baseline indicators may be expanded or revised as market trends and program priorities change over time.
I. Macro-measures examining broad, categorical areas of the organics industry:
II. Micro-measures examining organics diversion and reduction/reuse programs in jurisdictions, agencies, and other sectors:
III. Micro-measures examining effectiveness with a focus on surveys and follow-up activities to outreach efforts:
IV. Micro-measures that focus on tracking OMM activities exclusively:
In general, these indicators will be used to collect and examine data over time. Data will be collected in set time intervals, with frequency dependent on data and survey instrument types. In most cases, the baseline data for a given indicator will be the first set of data points collected, since there has been little or no attempt at formal data gathering for many of the above activities in the past. Of the sixteen indicators, four will use survey forms, six will query and track existing databases, and six will use a combination of the two methods.
Each indicator will have an associated database where collected data will be entered routinely by the staff member responsible for that indicator. Every quarter, the data will be analyzed by comparing current data to the baseline and previous quarters. After one year (four quarters) of data collection, a progress report will be developed for each indicator summarizing trends and providing a set of recommendations for improving (1) programs and activities, (2) data collection and analysis methods, and (3) goals and strategic targets for the following year. The individual progress reports for each measure will be integrated by the project manager into one annual report of activities.
Contact: Brian Larimore
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Last updated: August 29, 2008