ENCINITAS, Calif. — Mimicking nature, employees at the Solana Center for Environmental Innovation turn food waste into nutrient-rich organic material. Through their Food Cycle composting program, residents and small businesses bring their organic waste to the center and collect finished compost for their home gardens.

“Starting out with shredded paper, coffee grounds, eggshells," said environmental educator Jennifer Galey. "Then put worms in there who start to eat food waste.”

From plastics and glass to food waste, the California nonprofit has pioneered recycling in the state for 40 years.

"People will say, is that worm poop? Yes, it is. But it's also the millions and millions of bacteria that have lived and died, as well as other organisms that help with the composting process," said Galey. "And this is how you can grow healthy food.”

But when this natural process is disrupted, food waste becomes a climate super-pollutant, emitting methane into the atmosphere.

“We continue to put layer on layer in the landfill. It does not allow it to naturally decompose and creates these noxious, climate change gases," said Jessica Toth, executive director of the nonprofit.

Food waste accounts for 20% of methane emissions in California. It's the third-largest source, trailing behind dairy manure and methane-producing belches and flatulence from cows.

Volunteers with the Solana Center are on the ground in Southern California, helping roll out the most comprehensive food recycling law in the U.S.

“It's a matter of change. And change is difficult. But this is important, important for the next generations," said Toth.

Enacted this year, the new law mandates Californians recycle food scraps and organic waste like yard trimmings. While the pandemic has delayed the rollout in some areas, cities are building the infrastructure necessary to collect organic waste: distributing green trash bins, purchasing new trucks, and hiring more haulers.

Redirecting food waste from landfills back to the soil, the state wants to cut organic waste in landfills by 75% from 2014 levels by 2025.

“Until the state-mandated that there would be no organic material going to the landfill — the infrastructure, the investment, spending on education and outreach — really did not kick in. That was really the kick in the seat of the pants that was needed," said Toth.

The Solana Center is helping businesses and homeowners understand the new law, offering resources online.

Cities in violation could eventually face fines of up to $10,000. Residents and businesses could also pay the price if they don't comply, from $50 to $500.

“People really want to do the right thing, for the most part. Understanding that organic waste going to the landfill, food waste rotting in our landfills, is detrimental to our environment and that all you need to do is put it in the right bin," said Toth.

Similar ordinances already exist in places like Seattle and San Francisco— ambitious plans advocates hope can help restore the balance in nature.

Technology is changing the way pollution is tracked across the United States.

That is clear in California, where a tool called CalEnviroScreen allows users to find out the relative impact of pollution on their community.

"The idea was to try to understand and address this issue of cumulative impacts," said Dr. John Faust, who works in California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. "CalEnviroScreen is a geographic screening tool that's intended to identify communities in California that are burdened by multiple sources of pollution."

The team at California's OEHHA first published CalEnviroScreen in 2013. The tool is now in its fourth edition.

Californians or other interested parties can look up the relative pollution in any U.S. Census tract in the state.

"There are about 21 [indicators] that represent different types of pollution," said Dr. Faust, "like air quality, water quality ... the presence of solid waste, landfills, and so forth. Each of those has an indicator that is scored in relation to all the other Census tracts in the state. For example, an 89 percentile in a given Census tract means that the score is higher than 89% of the other Census tracts across the state."

The publicly available tool is just one way the data is used.

A 2012 California state law required the state's Environmental Protection Agency to identify communities that are disproportionately impacted by pollution.

CalEnviroScreen was developed to help meet that goal. Data scientists had to assemble a variety of statistics from different state and federal agencies. Experts have called the finished product groundbreaking.

"Bringing all the data sets to a uniform geography, the Census tract, was pretty new for a lot of the data sets in CalEnviroScreen," said Laura August, a scientist at OEHHA. "The data might have existed, but we had to develop methods to aggregate it at a similar uniform scale for all the data sets."

"At this point," said Dr. Faust, "several billions of dollars have been allocated to disadvantaged communities as a result of this program."

The federal government has a similar mapping tool, EJSCREEN. It contains many of the same features as CalEnviroScreen, but does not include state-specific data, such as pesticide reporting.

Other states are developing their own tools.

"Washington state has had a similar initiative, and I know the state of Michigan has also started on this path," said Dr. Faust. "And as I understand, the state of Colorado's department of public health and environment is also committed to looking at the development of a similar tool."

OEHHA leaders say this tool would not have been possible without the technological innovations of the last decade.

"When I started 12 years ago, online, interactive maps weren't as easily developed and created," said August. "And now, it's just kind of a standard, that we can put our data on a map, that someone can search their address. That technology has definitely been a benefit."