Good evening. My name is Jennifer Olsen and I welcome everybody to the Shore View Environmental Speaker Series. Uh we in the months of January, February, March, and April, the environmental quality committee sponsors the environmental speaker series. Uh last month on January 26th, we had uh a speaker that talked about the state of the lakes in Shore View. That was the Rice Creek Watershed in the Ramsey Metro Wershed District. That is recorded. It's on the environmental quality website. Next month in March, we're going to have PAS in Minnesota and we're going to have a speaker from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency here talking to us. And in April, we're going to have the Ramsey County um folks come and talk to us about the food scraps pickup program that's about to be released hopefully sometime this spring. Tonight we are going to hear a talk about Roseville's Green to go ordinance and Noel here is going to talk to us about their um ordinance, how it worked and uh maybe sure of you can learn a few things from this program that Roseville rolled out. So Noel Bachan is Roseville's sustainability specialist and she has been with the city since 2021. She is also a resident of Roseville and she loves serving her home community. When she's not working, she enjoys cozying up with some knitting or going for walks in some of Roseville's mini parks. So let's welcome Noel. Thank you very much. I'm very happy to be here at Shore View today to talk about this ordinance that we've been working on with Roseville for quite a while. Uh, as Jennifer mentioned, I'm the sustainability specialist at the city of Roseville and I work on a lot of different aspects of climate change planning. Uh, my role is pretty similar to Christa's. Christa does a lot a little bit more natural resource management than I do. I do a little bit more kind of sustainability and climate focused work because I lucky to be the sole p person focused on that at the city. Um but this uh presentation I gave a version of this previously to the Falcon Heights um environmental commission last summer. So this is adapted from that a little bit. So this is really kind of coming at the ordinance from a city perspective and what drove us to put this together and how it's been going. So, we'll talk about the history of the discussion at Roseville, how long it's been going on, uh our reasons for putting this ordinance together, why we were interested in doing this in the first place, some of our goals with having this ordinance in place, our implementation and enforcement timeline, and then updates for what we're doing for 2026. And then there'll be time for questions and discussion at the end. Um, if you have questions in the middle, feel free to just reach raise your hand and ask to this is not meant to be very formal, so I'm happy to answer questions throughout as well. So, from a history of the discussion, we started discussing this in March of 2020 um before I ever came on board. So, this was uh introduced by a former council member at Roseville who was very interested in this. Uh he was really troubled to see the amount of styrofoam packaging that was at a lot of Roseville restaurants. Um at the time, they discussed St. Louis Park's experience. That was one of the cities that did have an ordinance in place at the point at that point. Um March 2020 was obviously a very key moment that right shortly after that I think everything pretty much shut down. So that conversation also shut down. Uh a couple years later I had been at the city for a few months. Uh this came back up with a discussion at our public works environment and transportation commission kind of the Roseville equivalent of your committee. Um so we started talking about kind of what similar ordinances look like in Minnesota and what that might look like for Roseville. um interest continued. They wanted to do a little bit more research and so I came back to the commission a few months later uh with a little bit more specifics about how this might look in Rosal and so they produced a recommendation to council to consider this ordinance. Uh it was not discussed until July of the following year. took a little bit of time to get to council. Um, but started kind of bouncing back and forth between council and commission starting to consider maybe this is the time to start looking at doing this kind of thing. Early in 2022, the restaurants were still reeling quite a bit also from COVID still and all the supply chain issues from the pandemic. So, at that point, it was still kind of a question as whether or not it would be a good thing to to put in place. Um things really started to get going in January of 2024 when I went to council and they finally approved that we can begin doing community engagement to start seeing what would this look like in the community. So we launched a survey out in the community. We had one for residents, one for businesses to get a sense of what for businesses we wanted to find out what kind of packaging are you using? What kind of issues are you seeing with your packaging? How would you feel about an ordinance like this? Uh and then a similar ordinance or survey for residents as well to kind of get a sense of what residents were looking to see the city do. Um we also sent out a letter to all the food licensed businesses in Roseville to um let them know about the survey availability. Uh we also had a couple of community meetings where we invited restaurant and business food business owners to come and check talk with us and hear kind of what we were thinking about the ordinance um and ask questions. We sent the second letter so that they were aware of that we were doing this. Um, and then finally went back to city council in August of 2024 with those results of the surveys and with kind of our recommendation for what we were thinking to do. Um, this is actually not in the history. I I don't know why it's not, but in October of 2024, the ordinance actually did pass at city council. They approved it and so we began doing education and outreach in January of 2025. So I go into this a little bit later, but we Once the ordinance is passed, we agree we would do a full 12 months of education and outreach before doing any kind of enforcements. That's what 2025 was all about. Um, so why did we look into this in the first place? Like I mentioned, we had a council member that was very troubled by the amount of styrofoam packaging and food service. Um, our commission similarly had those similar concerns. They had a really compelling presentation at one of their meetings by a scientist at the University of Minnesota about microplastics and how especially egregious styrofoam is at spreading those microplastics around. Um, PAS was also an issue in a lot of packaging materials. It's not so much anymore because of the um the laws that the state has now passed that you'll hear about in another upcoming meeting. Um, we also wanted to support the the state's solid waste plan and in that plan the goal is that cities should reach a 75% recycling rate by 2030. Um that's cities within the metro area counties, not all statewide. Um Roseville's rate is around 46% or so. Um we don't have a lot of very solid data on recycling because all that data is gathered at the county level and then aggregated down to the city level. Um but we know it's about 46%. Um the food scraps pickup program is also coming. So we wanted to encourage you know people composting those compostable materials as well and try to align with that program, another thing you'll be hearing about soon. Um, and also adding consistency with other communities. So, Minneapolis, Edina, St. Louis Park, and St. Paul all have these ordinances in place so far. Um, and it also aligns with the the state's packaging waste and cost reduction act which requires all packaging in Minnesota will have to be recyclable by I believe 2035 is that target date right now. So not just food packaging but all packaging. Um, and then I just put a note to that uh recycling is and reducing waste is also important on a local and a global scale because our packaging comes from all over the place. Um, right now Minnesota's really great about recycling all of its materials. All of its feed stock is kind of sent out to other local areas within or domestic. It's not going outside of the United States, but that's not always the case for all packaging. And so the more we can try to keep that, you know, within Minnesota or at least within the United States. So we're not shipping plastic out to, you know, developing countries is a really important thing as well. And then why did we focus on this specifically for food? And we wanted to talk about this so food businesses didn't feel like we were kind of calling them out and targeting them. Um but the two kind of biggest solid waste issues we see are plastic pollution and microplastics and food waste. Um some studies think that food and packaging combined make up about 45% of materials landfilled in the United States, which is an awful lot. Um, plastic production is an as is at an all-time high um and continues to grow. Uh, an alarming statistic is that 50% of all plastic that's ever been produced was made in the last 18 years, which is pretty wild considering plastic production started in the 50s and 60s. Uh, and then with the pandemic, a lot more people are ordering food for takeout and to go. And so, a lot of restaurants has seen their their to-go sales really increasing quite significantly. So they're going through a lot more materials as well. Uh and then food waste is something that we do talk about when we go to restaurants as well. And you know four to 10% of food purchased is actually thrown out before it even reach the reaches the consumer. So if food businesses can start composting that food, if consumers can compost that food, that diverts a whole lot of waste from um the landfill and the incinerator stream and we can turn that food waste into a useful product. Uh, and some of the benefits that we've really been trying to let businesses know about is that Ramsey County has one of the highest solid waste fees in the entire state. Uh, the Ramsey College County solid waste tax is 70%. Which is extremely high. So, that's only on trash. So, recycling and compost is not is not subject to that same tax. So, we're trying to encourage these businesses to divert as much of their waste as they can to recycling and compost. And a lot of businesses produce a lot of cardboard waste from the things that they bring in. Uh depending on the restaurant, sometimes they do produce a bunch of food waste with prep, sometimes they don't. But if they can divert that food waste into a compost bin, they can reduce their their trash comp their trash bin and really save a lot of money on their on their waste. And this is something that I took straight from biz recycling. But waste is inefficient. A business pays for a product. They pay to collect the product. They pay to dispose of the leftover product and then they pay a tax on that disposal. So if they can work on getting more recyclable, more compostable items, then they're not necessarily paying all that taxes and all those additional costs. Um, and then the other thing that I point out too is that if businesses are starting to model, you know, sorting your waste up front of at the front of the house, that really normalizes that idea of it's okay to it's normal to separate your trash a little bit when you're getting rid of any everything instead of just throwing it all in one bin. So, these are the goals that I set up when we started working ahead with our our ordinance. So, I wanted to make sure that our businesses were aware of the ordinance, that they understood what supply options they have, that they understand their disposal options, uh, also work on increasing the residential recycling rate, and recognize businesses that are already compliant. And so, I put that residential recycling rate in there because I wanted businesses to know it's a two-way street. We are expecting businesses to help by producing more compostable and recyclable waste, and it's our responsibility to try to educate residents on the best way to to sort those, which it's always a a challenge because a lot of people will say, "Well, I get all these compostable materials and people are just throwing them in the trash." So, the best I can do is try to at least educate residents as much as I can to let them know this is where this goes. This is not recyclable. This is recyclable. I talk a lot about how recycling is just too complicated in general, but I'm doing my best to make it a little bit simpler. So, some of the things that we've done to reach some of these goals, especially as far as businesses understanding the ordinance, the supply options, and their disposal options, we've got a flyer um that I can pull up in a little bit that kind of explains the ordinance, explains what materials are, okay, explains what materials are kind of the most common notable materials that you see. Uh we've done mailings to businesses to let them know that everything is happening. Uh we have a landing page on our city website where people can go to learn more about it. Um last summer we held a packaging fair. So we invited all the suppliers in the Twin Cities area that offer compostable or recyclable materials and they each had a table set up with all their different options that uh restaurants could come and kind of take a peek at what was there. Talk specifically about maybe what their food specifically is that they're serving so they can find what options work best for them. Um I think St. Paul is going to do the same thing. We might hold a second one next year depending on kind of what we hear from the restaurants. Uh we did a lot of in-person outreach over the last summer, especially with my intern that was here. Uh we met with at least 10 or 15 per month more throughout the summer. Um just to see what kind of materials they're using, uh see what kind of food they're serving, give them recommendations. Um and then we also used our we have Roseville business council meetings now on a quarterly basis. So we did announce it there as well. Uh for residential recycling we did a lot of education at community events. Um I created a waste sorting game. I'm lucky enough to have a husband that has a 3D printer. So we had 3D printed bins which with each of the colors black for trash, recycling was blue, and then um compost was green. They look like the little bins that you roll out to your curb. Um, kids loved sorting stuff into those. That was really fun. Um, we've created flyers to kind of help demystify things. I did a newsletter article about, you know, commonly misunderstood items that are not recyclable because there's a lot of, you know, misunderstanding around different types of glass, black plastic, things like that. Uh, we recently started a new contract with Waste Management. They now our recycling hauler. So, we I was hoping to do some of these things in the last year and they didn't happen. But, uh we will I'm hoping to do kind of some webinars to let people know about like recycling 101, answer a lot of questions and demystify things and maybe host one or two tours of their material recovery facility in Minneapolis. Uh similar, we're hoping to get people down to the recycling and energy facility down in Newport. Um they have really great tours as well to understand where our trash goes when it leaves your house. Uh we've been promoting the environmental service center in Roseville very heavily. That's a very popular item now that that's been opened up. Um there's a lot of excitement around the food scraps pickup program. Can it can't come soon enough for a lot of Roseville residents. Um and then once we get some hauler reports from waste management, we'll use those as well to kind of educate residents on some issues, some items that they tend to be seeing a lot in their in their bins. um for recognizing businesses that are already compliant. U my intern and I worked on creating a map last year and I have to admit we stole this idea directly from St. Louis Park, but we created a map of all the businesses that are currently um compliant with Green to Go materials so that if residents want to go and kind of find out where they can go to get food and a material that they feel okay eating out of um that's one place that they can go and we'll continually up update this. We also have a recognition program at Roseville called the sustainable steward program. So we re recognize residents and businesses who are doing good sustainability work throughout the year. We actually have three households that are getting recognized uh probably about a half hour ago uh at this at Roseville. Um none of them were able to attend, so it kind of worked out that I didn't have to be there to or try to split my time. Um but we have little stickers that we've been giving out to businesses. And so you'll if you'll go to like Original Pancake House in Roseville or some other restaurants, you'll see this little sticker on the door kind of by their um their like chamber chamber of commerce stickers and things like that. So that's a little marker that they're doing good work. Um one thing that we're lucky is that we have a lot of really great resources within the Twin Cities for businesses already. So, while Roseville really doesn't have as much financial support that we can offer, we have a great program called Biz Recycling that is through the state chamber of commerce, um they can do things like help people look at their hauler bills and see where they can maybe save some money. Uh they have connections to a lot of suppliers. I I think honestly Roseville has more connections to suppliers now even than Biz Recycling based on the work we did last year with our our recycling fair. Um, but they can really do a lot of help with that. And they also have a grant program where people can get up to six months of supplies to kind of help with that transition. They can help get bins, signage, um, training for staff and all sorts of things. So, it's a really great resource that we've sent people to over and over again. There's a couple of other smaller programs available, too. So, one is Minimize, which is another program through the chamber. Um, they're working specifically to reduce single-use plastic within the restaurant industry. So they have um kind of like the the green step program. They've got a different tier status for businesses that they can reach based on the types of plastic reduction actions they've taken. Um they've also got some small rebates available. And then another one that I found was called Rethink Disposable, which is actually geared towards restaurants that are currently using disposable food items for people who are dining in. And so helping those businesses transition to using reusable items that they can very inexpensively to help reduce the amount of disposable stuff that they're using for dining in because somebody's just sitting there. They don't have to use disposable materials. So, haven't had anybody actually bite on that yet, but they it's a great uh program that I would love to see more restaurants start to take advantage of. So once our ordinance was passed, like I mentioned, our our next steps that we recommended were a 12-month phase in for restaurants to kind of learn about things and adapt. Through our um surveys, we learned that most restaurants keep about three months of supplies on hand. So this is more than enough time for restaurants to really switch over their supplies. Um but it kind of gave us a lot because Roseville has over 150 food licensed businesses. It also gave us a lot of time to kind of make it to most of those restaurants as well. Um and then post12 month that was when we started doing um that was just in January of this year. That's when we start doing enforcement. Um I will say Roseville doesn't have a lot of enforcement teeth with this ordinance. We don't do any kind of licensing. That's all done at the county level for for businesses. So we can't threaten that. We're going to take your license away if you're not using the correct materials. So, currently we're just going to be charging an a $100 admin fee. Um, which even then I'm trying very hard to not have to charge that as well. So, if somebody is maybe not using the correct materials, but there's either an issue finding something that's a good replacement or they're actively working on getting something in, we're not going to charge them. Um, and then we're also hoping to just kind of connect frequently, especially with the smaller businesses, just to make sure that they feel supported and that we're not just kind of, you know, stringing them along and trying to get them to do something and take on a lot of extra costs without any extra support. So, 20 m middle of last year, we were doing pretty well. We had visited 46 restaurants out of 155 with 15% of those fully meeting standards and 29% had already made some changes and 45% altogether on their way to compliance. Um, a lot of things that we saw were restaurants trying to get in touch with their actual suppliers. Um, sometimes the suppliers were a little hard to reach. Um, we had some challenges with corporate entities as a lot of people could maybe expect what they really wanted their corporate branded materials. So, that's kind of been a challenge. Depends on the corporations. Some corporations have been easier to work with than others. So, your mileage may vary. Um, but hot and insulated cups was another challenge. There's really no other alternative for a hot cup or like a soup cup besides something that's compostable. Um, sauce cups are also an issue because they're there's a lot of different materials and they're also very small, so they really can't be recycled anyways. Uh, utensils, a lot of places just there's the only option again is a compostable option for a pack of u disposable utensils. So, people we got a little bit of push back on that. Um, and then we saw a lot of issues with specialty packaging. Um, I I mentioned Asian foods here. So, we have a lot of Asian restaurants that use these kind of plastic uh little tubs that everybody has seen. The bottom is plastic number five, which is recyclable, and the top is plastic number four, which is not. There's no alternative to this, and this has been an issue across all the the metro. And we haven't yet been able to make a connection with Asian Foods reps either to kind of talk through this issue. Um, and then finally, just anything that's labeled biodegradable. There's a lot of things that are labeled plant-based or green or any kind of number of different types of monikers like that that aren't truly biodegradable. So, helping people understand what that means as well has been a challenge. Um, as I mentioned, the packaging fair was really a key part of this. And I think for any city with a larger number of businesses, this is a great way to go. And, um, I'd be happy to help pass along information about this, but it really was a great way for packagers that were local to kind of get all their materials out and show off some of the new things that they're seeing. Uh, we also had the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency there to talk about some laws that were coming up. And we also had um biz recycling was there and waste management. Our recycling hauler was there too to ask questions about recycling. So we didn't get as much attendance as we hoped unfortunately. Kind of getting that timing for business professionals when like when the best time for all of them to be available has been a challenge. I heard from two different people at the end of the day that one said it should be in the evening, one said it should be in the morning. It's like well we're we're trying our best. We had it midafter afternoon on a Monday, which that's the other challenge is trying to get business owners when they're not completely swamped. Um, but yeah, that's our that was our little invitation. And so we we might do this again with St. Paul at some point. And then updates for 2026. So, as we are starting with our actual enforcement this year, we decided to make a couple of exemptions. So, I mentioned the sauce cups was an issue because of their size. So, we're deciding to just exempt those for this year. Um, because they're too small to be recycled. Ideally, something like that should be really be compostable because if you have like a sauce or a salsa or something, it's, you know, it's just going to be stuck in there anyways and it's easier to just put the whole thing in compost rather than trying to clean it out and get it to get recycled. Um, we also exempt any foods that come prepackaged by the manufacturer. This is a common exemption across other cities in the Twin Cities. U paper food wraps and liners. So if you get a sandwich from somewhere like you know Jersey Mike's those the wrap that that sandwich comes in is exempt because there's really no alternative available right now. Um and plastic films is the same other thing. There's really no great alternative. Um we also did get some money from our score grant that we're going to be using to um give any business that they would like a case of compostable utensils. Uh we're offering that to them too. So as kind of a let us at least try to help you a little bit, especially since that was one of the most common materials we saw that people were struggling with. Um, so that is our exemption for this year. Um, and that is pretty much all I have. So, if are there any questions I can answer or any I can go if you'd like I can actually bring up our I have a copy of our ordinance here too that I can bring up on the screen and I also have a copy of a large copy of our green to go flyer as well. people would like to look at that. Yeah. >> Yes. So, the question was, can compostable silverware handle heat? And the answer is yes. Um, the only issue I've had with compostable materials and heat, um, I learned the hard way is that the little clear compostable sauce cups, that's the plant-based plastic, those do not handle heat, including direct sunlight. So, um, but >> you can eat soup with those utensils. Yes. So, they work great for that. >> Yes. >> Yep. >> Yeah. The question is do we are we able to ask businesses to make it an option if you order something to go you say if you actually need the silverware or not and we have been encouraging that very highly. Um some it depends on you know especially if somebody's doing an online order depending on where they're ordering from sometimes that portal does or does not have the option to add that. Uh the other issue we were hearing was you know restaurants kind of packing things back of house. it's a little fast-paced and sometimes they get a lot of push back that they don't include the utensils, the condiments and all of those things. And so sometimes it's just as a matter of course they do include those, but it's we're trying to encourage that, you know, op it's optional, but it's kind of it it comes down to training and that business's preferences too for how much they want to if they want to hear from people who aren't getting them or if they want to hear from people who are getting them. Yes. >> Recycle. >> I don't know. because I'm think >> yeah so the question is is this ordinance also good for helping encourage people to do backyard composting is that I'm repeating that that correctly? >> Yeah. >> Okay. And I would say largely yes. So, one of the issues with backyard composting and some of the materials that are compostable that come through for restaurants, I mentioned that compostable plastic like those little sauce cups that melt in the sun. Um, those will not necessarily break down in your backyard compost or like their compostable utensils are not going to break down in your backyard compost because those types of bioplastics really need a lot of high heat and really need an industrial composting system to break down. So, food scraps would be great. Yes. >> Yeah. Yeah. Food scraps and napkins and even like cardboard or fiberbased things. So, like Chipotle bowls, for example, is something that will break down very well. But yeah, it's it's another education component. I've actually made a little vin diagram that shows this is what you can put in your backyard compost and this is what can go in the industrial like the compost drop sites that we have across the county and there's a little place in the middle for here's stuff that can go into both because not everybody wants to put you know like meat and dairy products in their backyard compost too. So I think but I think encouraging any kind of composting is it's a great opportunity to kind of bring that topic up and let people know about you know the the county does compost bin sales each year I believe and things like that too. issue people want to have the reason. >> Yeah. >> Organic compos. >> Exactly. >> Yeah. Yeah. And so Just to repeat that back. So the comment was that a lot of people don't like to compost because of the smell and especially things like the food scraps that break down a little bit more quickly. And so that is the backyard is a much nicer way to kind of you can just take it right back there and you're done with it. You don't have to bring it to another place. We don't backyard compost at our house. I just take everything to the drop site and I'm very guilty of going there once the bag itself is kind of broken down in my little bucket and you know so I think it's It's a lifestyle change that it's kind of one of those things that you have to kind of slowly introduce people to getting to start making those changes a little bit. >> Yes. >> Yes. That's actually the requirement for anything that's not like a food scrap waste. any any containers that are compostable must be BPI certified. And that's actually a new state law that started as of January this year. Um, and that's something that we've been actually grappling with a little bit from on the city level with we have calls every quarter or so with the other cities that have these ordinances to talk through issues that we're seeing. And uh World Centric is an example of one very large supplier that's now moving away from BPI certification to another type of certification and which is really frustrating because um that's a state requirement that everything compostable now has to be PPI certified and World Centric is one of the largest suppliers in the metro. But long answer to a short question is yes. Anything that goes into that drop site has to be BPI certified. previous question. >> Yeah. >> Yep. >> Yep. The question is Yeah. The question is, how do we get people to understand how to which items have to go into which type of compost so that you're not putting, you know, compostable utensils in your compost and expecting those plastic compostable plastic items to break down. And I think that's just a matter of, you know, talking to people at events where like I try to get out to as many community events as I can and most of the educational activities I do are recycling related just because I feel like that's one of the lowest hanging fruit to try to get people started on things and a lot of kids are already starting to see this at their schools. But um I think especially as the food scrap program starts to kind of pick up a little bit is bringing that ven diagram that I talked about a little bit earlier about what can go in your backyard versus what should go in the industrial drop site and helping people understand those differences and why. I think the why is very important because I think our commission got to go visit the Eureka's facility a few years ago and that was a transformative event where they got to really see how items were getting sorted and help you understand why certain items that you think might be recyclable are not once you see that sorting process. And so I think the same thing kind of goes for the composting process is understanding why you know your food scraps and your napkins might break down very quickly but this compostable plastic cup is not breaking down in your backyard compost. So >> yeah any other questions? Yes >> that's a very good question. The question was, what percentage of my time was spent on this effort in 2025? Um, it's a tricky question because I my summer intern I tasked very primarily with working on this and he spent probably 75% of his efforts on this. Um, for me throughout the year I would say maybe 20 to 30% of my time was spent on this. Um we one of the other large projects we're working on right now at the city is a climate equity action plan which has taken quite a bit more time now um with kind of working on that process and so especially early in 2026 I haven't been focusing as much on green to go and another reason I also didn't bring up too was with all the immigration enforcement restaurants are really seeing a lot of uh difficulties right now and so I'm not very not having feeling a lot of urgency to try to meet with them right now until things kind of normalize a little bit. So, um, restaurants have I I did send out an email in January just to kind of let them know about the changes that we're doing and some of the updates for 2026 and some some places have reached out with some questions. But, um, my next intern starts in April, so I'll have him probably do a little bit of outreach, too. But, um, but yeah, it's it's unique for Roseville because the other that do these ordinances. Minneapolis Edina and St. Louis Park especially have dedicated staff to work in this area. So Edina has a solid waste specialist person that works on this. St. Louis Park has an entire solid waste team that this is one of the things that they work on and Minneapolis obviously is in a whole other league compared to any other city in the metro. Um St. Paul is a little different kind of case because they've really struggled to staff up their department that would work on this. So Roseville's actually kind of run ahead of St. call as far as our enforcement timeline >> uh throughout from about May through August >> I would say 75% he did other projects as well and it also would depend on how many restaurants and food licensed businesses you have so for example Roseville has over 150 uh Falcon Heights has been considering ing this. I think they have six, maybe 10. So, and when I gave this presentation last summer, I actually offered to just take on the all of Falcon Heights because we do other engineering services for Falcon Heights. So, it kind of would have made sense as that's the department I'm in. But, um, but I know Shore View also has quite a few retail areas and maybe not quite the volume of Rosville, but I honestly don't know. Um, and it could be a pretty pretty significant task. county to find out how many requests. >> Yep. That's where Yeah, the I'm not responding the questions back. The question was uh did I have to go to the county for all the businesses and yes, that's where I got all the business information. They update that list about twice a year. So, I try to reach out to them about twice a year to get that update. So, I just recently got the latest one. Um, so I usually tend to know which new businesses happen just because I see it from being a resident, but um, it's helpful because I don't always have the contact information. And so that licensing information also has an email, contact, and a phone number usually. >> Yeah. >> Yes. Jennifer, >> you touched on it a little bit. What were the most common barriers that you're getting? >> Cost was the biggest one. cost by far. A lot of I would say by far most restaurants are very interested in making this transition, but the cost is a really big challenge. Um, sometimes finding the materials is a challenge. I know there's one restaurant that uses a lot of times compostable bowls for one of their items and if it's not available, their supplier will just send whatever next item, next best thing is available, which is not a compostable thing. Um, I would say the second thing that I've heard a lot is concern over customers not sorting things correctly. And so I stress that we don't expect them to try to dig around in the trash to resort things properly. You know, that's not necessarily within their job description or whatever they have time to do. So, but cost by far is the biggest one because I think especially if somebody's using styrofoam, anything that's not styrofoam is going to be much much more expensive just by n the nature of how cheap it is to produce foam. >> Yes, the question is did I find an alternative to the hot cups? And that is an interesting uh development that recently came about at the end of 2025. Um Waste Management is now able to accept so most of the hot cups are it's a paper cup with a plastic liner. Same thing with kind of the soda. I'm from Wisconsin so I say soda pop cups. Um but >> um but so Waste Management is now accepting those in their recycling facility because they are able to recover that fiber in their mixed paper bales. Um it's causing some controversy because other recyclers in the Twin Cities are currently not accepting these cups. Um the way our ordinance is written is that we require any materials that our hauler accepts for residential recycling. So we're currently accepting those hot cups even though we spent last year kind of telling people the only alternative was compostable. So, um I that's how we're going to start this year at least by saying that they're accepted and then if it's causing issues where you know like say Starbucks is switches back to their old cups they they had they are using compostable in Roseville right now but if they switch back and put those in their recycling bins and then they're starting to get push back from their commercial recycling hauler then we might have to look at this again. Um, but the only universally disposable option that would fall within this range is compostable for regardless of what recycling hauler you use. And I know you use Republic, I believe, in Shore View. So, Republic is one that I know for sure is not accepting those cups at their facility right now. So that is a new and ongoing thing that we're following very closely and we'll make adjustments as needed throughout the year depending on how how things kind of shake up. But there have been many conversations already in the last six to eight weeks about how this is kind of going to affect the metro wide recycling things. So >> yes a little bit kind of answered it. I love the timeline and like the sort of you demonstrated how thoughtful the process was just kind of building up socializ that that commercial issue. Um what about the residential side? Was there a market contrast or anything that jumped out at you? anything that informed the process or the ordinance or anything like that? >> That's a great question. So, the question is about the two surveys and whether or not we we made any changes based on how what kind of feedback we got from residents. Um, I like to preface this by saying any survey that you put out, you kind of get self- selection based on who responds and is interested. So, that being said, the residential survey was by and large extremely supportive of this kind of thing. There were a couple people that said, "Who cares? let best businesses do what they want. Um, but residents were extremely excited about this and I've gotten feedback even before this started from residents about complaints they had about different types of businesses using certain types of materials and this and that. Um, I I think the challenge with businesses, we also didn't get as much business feedback as we were hoping to. I think we all we I don't think we even received 20 responses which it's you know a lot of restaurant owners are extremely busy. They are they have a lot on their plates and so just getting them to respond to this kind of a survey was a challenge but the information we did get was extremely useful. And one of those items that I had asked was you know how much material do you keep on hand at a time because I had no idea. I worked in a restaurant when I was 15 as a dishwasher, but I wasn't paying attention to their material orders and I don't think they even did to go materials in Chilton, Wisconsin at this little dinner club. Um, so so like that was helpful just to get a sense of their operations and kind of what they were seeing and also understanding what kinds of um hauling services they were currently using or if they were even aware that their supplier had any types of materials that might be compliant with this kind of thing. Um, so And I also have all that saved too. So if people are interested in releasing similar surveys, I think I've got some notes on things we would have done differently because I think there were a couple of questions I wished I'd asked that I I wish I could remember but I can't offh hand. But um it was it was very helpful and I would 100% do the two surveys again because it was great to get that business perspective because I really wanted to hear from both sides and get a sense of like once I had that information I could bring both of those back to city council and talk about here's what we heard. Especially with Rosedale and the amount of businesses in Roseville, we really wanted to make sure that they felt like they'd been heard and listened to as we talked through this. And that was kind of where some of the exemptions came up to. Yeah. Any other questions? >> Yes. in there. >> Yep. >> I'm not sure I'm following what you're asking. I think are you asking if people as That's okay. very >> my experience recycle. >> That's Y >> yeah, that was a great question and I thank you for clarifying. The question was whether we can also encourage people to reuse the materials that they're getting from these these takeout situations. And so the plastic bag that the containers come in, some of the containers are quite sturdy, so you could probably reuse them for a number of purchase purposes. Um, and I have a lot of conversations with residents about that actually when I'm at events. Um, people will talk about how they reuse plastic bags. And I should I want to mention too, we also don't include plastic bags as part of this ordinance. We talked about it early on about maybe doing a plastic bag fee. There's we can't do a ban under state law, but we can charge a fee which Edina and Duth are in and Minneapolis all do that. But we didn't want to add too much to businesses. So the plastic bag that the items are carried in is not part of the ordinance. Um but we do talk a lot about how you can reuse plastic bags, how to recycle them if you do want to recycle them. So especially, you know, keeping them out of your recycling bin so it doesn't get wrapped up in all of the machinery. Um, people talk about reusing all those containers for crafts. Things like that. Those plastic containers, especially the black ones that cannot be recycled, are great for holding things. Um, I also like to really encourage people to not reheat food items in these plastic containers, regardless of the color, because that's really the easiest way to introduce more microplastics into your system, at least as far as we know scientifically. So, I talk a lot about that, too. Um but but I think that that's an area that we could definitely explore a little bit more. So I really appreciate that suggestion. >> Yes. >> Correct. >> Yeah. The the comment was just about the with the three Rs reducing and recycling and reusing. reducing is really the first and most important step to all this. And I think that's that's a challenge I think especially with takeout because if you're if you're going somewhere eating out and you're taking food to go like leftovers, it's easier to bring your own containers for that kind of thing, but it's harder to, you know, encourage them to maybe use your own reusable container for something that you're coming up to get to go, you know. Um, and so I think that's part of the idea with this is at least if we're going to be creating waste, can we create waste that can be recycled or composted instead of just thrown in the trash? But there there's a lot of research right now going on on, you know, different types of reusable to-go containers and how that system might work. And some places are starting to try that a little bit, but uh there are some sanitation challenges too with that. But but I agree the the reduction I think is a key component that's not really addressed as much with this ordinance. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Well, thanks everyone and I like I said, Christa has all this information and I'm happy to share any surveys, any other information that you're interested in seeing afterwards. It's the best kind of city work is always shared. So I appreciate >> that's why this is