Item Description:
title
Accelerating zero-waste implementation in Minneapolis
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WHEREAS:body
WHEREAS, Hennepin County has been a leader on solid waste policy in response to the environmental concerns with landfills and with the establishment of the Minnesota Waste Management Act in 1980, with each decade focused on a significant improvement toward meeting the goal to reduce waste and our reliance on landfills; and
WHEREAS, the 1980s included piloting recycling programs in Minneapolis, adopting the county’s recycling ordinance (Ordinance 13) in 1986, making curbside recycling available throughout the county; the 1980s also included responding to the state requirement that metropolitan counties submit plans for facilities that would process waste rather than disposing of it in landfills, which resulted in the siting and permitting of the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center (HERC) with the City of Minneapolis, which began operations in 1989; and the county implemented waste flow designation that requires all haulers to deliver trash to be processed rather than landfilled; and
WHEREAS, the 1990s included a focus on removing hazardous items from the trash with the opening of the county’s drop-off facilities in Brooklyn Park and Bloomington and first of its kind collections of e-waste and fluorescent light bulbs; and the state began distributing solid waste management tax revenues as SCORE grants to counties to fund recycling and waste abatement work, and early waste reduction education programs launched, and the last landfill in the county closed in 1993; and the U.S. Supreme Court overturned local flow control ordinances, which shifted the county to contract with waste haulers for trash deliveries to HERC; and
WHEREAS, the 2000s focused on diverting food waste with the county selling backyard compost bins, piloting citywide organics recycling in Wayzata and 21 suburban schools, and the county began providing grants to support recycling programs in schools, businesses, multifamily properties and public spaces; and
WHEREAS, in the 2010s further expansion of waste reduction programming, including the start of the Community Recycling Ambassador program, Fix-it Clinics and the Zero Waste Challenge; in 2014, the state set a recycling rate goal of 75% by 2030 for metropolitan counties and no-sort recycling programs became the norm; in 2018 the county amended its recycling ordinance 13 to require all cities offer organics recycling programs to their residents; require large food waste generators to recycle food waste and strengthened requirements for multifamily and commercial recycling; and
WHEREAS, in 2021 the county committed to achieving a zero-waste future and defined zero waste as preventing 90% or more of all discarded materials from being landfilled or incinerated; and WHEREAS, the county has followed through on this commitment with increased investments in policy, programming and infrastructure as documented in the creation of the Zero Waste Plan in 2023, a prioritization of the highest impact zero-waste actions in the Plan to Reinvent Hennepin County’s Solid Waste System in 2024, and culminated in the county’s 2024 Solid Waste Management Plan as required by Minnesota Statute § 473.803; and
WHEREAS, the county has established dashboard metrics for tracking progress toward the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s metro policy plan objectives and the county's zero-waste goal, including a 75% recycling rate, less than 10% biogenic material in the trash, a 22% reduction in waste generated per capita, and no net increase in landfilling over 2022 actuals; and
WHEREAS, the county has committed resources to the implementation of zero waste by increasing the 2024 waste reduction and recycling budget by $2.8 million, including hiring new staff, to expand existing programs and develop new initiatives that prioritize reducing materials with the greatest climate impacts such as food, plastics, and building materials, and to address long-standing disparities in access to recycling and organics services, especially in multifamily settings; and
WHEREAS, the City of Minneapolis is the largest city in the county and the county cannot reach its zero-waste goals or the 75% statutory recycling rate unless the city also achieves those goals; and
WHEREAS, the Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan, policy 75, Waste Reduction, identifies 22 actions steps that the city will take to maintain and expand opportunities to reduce and properly dispose of waste to meet the city's zero-waste goals; and
WHEREAS, the City of Minneapolis’ Climate Equity Plan, identifies 31 actions to advance a zero-waste circular economy and reaffirms its goals to achieve a zero-percent growth rate in its total waste stream from 2010 levels by 2030, and to recycle and compost 80% of citywide waste by 2030; and
WHEREAS, the county and the City of Minneapolis have a long history of collaboration on solid waste management, including the establishment of the first curbside recycling collection program in the state, electronics and mattress recycling initiatives, the Recycle Smart campaign to reduce contamination, the rollout of the organics recycling program, joint efforts to conduct waste composition studies, and continuous collaboration on education and outreach efforts; and
WHEREAS, the county required the City of Minneapolis to provide single sort recycling in July 2011 and organics recycling in October 2014 and the city successfully implemented those requirements; and
WHEREAS, the county provided funding to the City of Minneapolis in 2024 in the amount of $1.7 million in SCORE funding, including more than $215,000 for multifamily recycling, and an additional $150,000 to support organics processing, and made available $1,275,000 in grant funding countywide for schools, businesses, multifamily properties, community groups, food recovery, and deconstruction projects; and
WHEREAS, more than 60% of material in Minneapolis residential trash can be recycled or composted, as found in the 2022 Minneapolis Waste Characterization & Capture Rate Study; and WHEREAS, approximately 65% of the trash generated in Minneapolis comes from commercial and multifamily sources and more than 40% of Minneapolis households do not have city-provided solid waste and recycling services; and
WHEREAS, the county’s 2023 zero-waste engagement and analysis found gaps in the current system and identified the most impactful strategies for implementing zero waste as quickly as possible in the City of Minneapolis, including: 1) improve hauler reporting, 2) increase compliance with existing ordinances, 3) advance organized collection, 4) improve curbside recycling and organics participation, and 5) track progress annually on Climate Equity Plan zero-waste goals; and
WHEREAS, the county has a Plan to Reinvent the County’s Solid Waste System to accelerate closure and repurposing of the HERC, which establishes a zero-waste dashboard with criteria to be met to responsibly close HERC and identifies 22 policies that need to be adopted by the State Legislature to realize this zero-waste future and this plan builds on the county’s Climate Action Plan and Zero Waste Plan; and
WHEREAS, state law requires the county to comply with landfill abatement policies, which currently prioritize waste-to-energy as a means of processing trash, over landfilling; and
WHEREAS, state leadership is needed to make the transition to zero waste, including financing to match desired outcomes, changing state statutes to support the shift away from disposal and toward a circular economy, expanding accountability for zero waste outcomes to include producer responsibility, redeveloping infrastructure to meet state waste reduction and recycling goals, and supporting markets to adapt to changing demands; and
WHEREAS, the City of Minneapolis Resolution No. 2024R-360 supports a plan for closure of the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center (HERC) and will facilitate such a closure through implementing solid waste diversion and reduction measures as quickly as possible; and
WHEREAS, accelerating progress toward zero waste county-wide is not possible without more implementation by the City of Minneapolis on these strategies.
Resolution:
BE IT RESOLVED, that the City of Minneapolis report the city's recycling rates, including rates for (1) residential, including (single and multifamily), (2) commercial, and (3) overall recycling rates, and including organics recycling rates for those same 3 categories, for 2024 and establish annual targets through 2030; report on compliance rates with existing ordinances and establish annual targets through 2030; establish a date for implementing organized commercial collection; set capture rate targets by material type for 2030; develop a 2026-2027 zero-waste action plan with details about implementation; and submit this information to the Board no later than October 9, 2025; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the county’s Residential Waste Reduction and Recycling Funding Policy, which determines the county’s distribution of SCORE funding to cities, be revised to include requirements for cities of the first class, including measurable performance standards for local abatement of solid waste through waste reduction and recycling programs, standards and procedures to be used in determining annually whether the city has implemented and satisfied the performance standards for local abatement, and whether the city’s policies and programs are consistent with state policy and purposes as outlined in Minn. Stat. §§ 115A.02, 115A.551 and Minn. Stat. §§ 473.842 to 473.849.
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Background:
recommendationRecommendation from County Administrator: Recommend Approval