Case Study: City of Los Angeles, Bureau of Sanitation, SWIRP

The City of Los Angeles Department of Public Works, Bureau of Sanitation is preparing a Solid Waste Integrated Resource Plan (SWIRP) to make Los Angeles a zero-waste city by the year 2030. The Solid Waste Integrated Resource Plan (SWIRP) will be the City’s 20-year master plan to achieve zero-waste. Developing SWIRP is a six year stakeholder-driven planning effort. SWIRP will detail the zero-waste infrastructure, programs, policies, regulations, incentive, technological innovation and financial strategies necessary in order to eliminate landfills, develop alternative technologies, convert the City’s collection trucks to be clean fuel vehicles, and revitalize existing industries and attract new industries to become “green.”

Services

As a key community outreach consultant with the Bureau of Sanitation, DSO works closely with community stakeholders to develop the guiding principles and vision for SWIRP. The goal of the community work on this project is to reach out to the community in a meaningful way, educate and create a dialogue, and include all members of the community in the process to ensure a broad cross-section of perspectives in making the guiding principles.

DSO has been successful in bringing the community together on this project through one-on-one meetings with key constituents, holding house meetings in communities around the City, and facilitating workshops and conferences in the different wastesheds of the City.

A key component of DSO’s outreach efforts have been the house meetings and community workshops. These are geared to educate community members about the project while providing the community member with a forum to have questions, concerns and safety issues addressed. Additionally, the workshops are a venue for identifying possible key constituents and community leaders that had not been identified previously.

DSO’s one-on-one meetings have been held with neighborhood council members, community organization leaders, community environmental activists, chambers of commerce, homeowner associations and other members of the community identified as persons with key information and understanding of the issues. This is an on-going project in the first phase of the six year process.

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