Changes in Recycling

Beginning in January 2020, key pieces of legislation will have significant impacts on cities, haulers and our own landfill operations. Together we are working on solutions to divert Processed Green Material (PGM) that will no longer count as diversion when used as Alternative Daily Cover (ADC) and other organic material that is currently being disposed of in the landfill.

AB  341  Mandatory Commercial Recycling

 AB 341 requires businesses, public entities and multi-family complexes to establish a recycling program to achieve a statewide 75 percent waste diversion goal by 2020.

SB 1383  Organics Diversion and Edible Food Recovery

SB 1383 uses the methane emissions reduction as the driving force for organic waste diversion and edible food recovery. The two-part bill seeks to reduce organic waste by 75 percent and recover 20 percent of disposed edible food for human consumption by 2025.


AB 1826  Mandatory Commercial Organics Recycling  

AB 1826 launched on January 1, 2016. It calls for mandatory commercial organics recycling. Through incremental implementation, this bill and others seek to reduce statewide disposal of organic waste by 50 percent by January 1, 2020.

AB 1594 Waste Management

AB 1594 redefines PGM used for ADC as material for disposal rather than diversion. Orange County is one of the largest users of PGM as ADC at our landfills in California, and is thus developing local infrastructure to process this material so that the region may continue to receive diversion credit for this material.