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Davis

Davis, California

Friday, May 9, 2025

The city of Davis conducts its third annual monitoring of waste-sorting

To ensure the city’s compliance with Senate Bill 1383, Recology Davis will be monitoring for waste contamination during trash collection

 

By PIPER AWEEKA city@theaggie.org

 

Beginning this April, Recology Davis is teaming up with the city of Davis to ensure its compliance with California’s Senate Bill (SB) 1383. Enacted in January of 2022, state law requires all California cities to evaluate residents’ trash-sorting efficacy. 

Jennifer Gilbert, the conservation coordinator for Davis’ Public Works department, elaborated on the purpose of the bill.

“SB 1383 aims to keep organic waste out of landfills since decomposing organic waste generates 20% of the state’s methane emissions,” Gilbert said. “All California cities are required to perform annual contamination monitoring either by flipping the lids on carts set out for collection and seeing how waste sorting is going […] or by performing annual waste characterization studies. We presented both options to the city council in December 2021 and they selected contamination monitoring.”

Following the city council’s decision, the city of Davis then further elaborated on the methods Recology has taken and plans to enact in the future, according to their website.

“Recology staff will lift the lid of containers to see the contents,” the city of Davis article reads. “If waste materials are sorted correctly in that container, they will leave a ‘congratulations’ tag to thank the customer for doing a good job. If the container has contamination (items inside that should not be there), Recology staff will leave a ‘let’s sort this out’ tag, encouraging customers to place waste into the correct container.”

Adam Dell’Orto, a resident living on Russell Boulevard, described his appreciation for this waste-sorting initiative.

“I think surveillance is a great idea,” Dell’Orto said. “A lot of people I know just throw their trash into whatever bin is closest, regardless of whether it’s recyclable or not. It’s easy to forget that trash contamination is really quite bad for the environment.”

Though Dell’Orto expressed his concern over potential consequences, the city of Davis’ website elaborates on the lack of drastic new repercussions.

City staff may follow-up with additional checks on excessively contaminated bins, but citations and fines for contaminated bins would not be considered unless there is an egregious situation with continued contamination over a long period of time where continued tagging and reminders is not showing any improvement in waste-sorting behavior,” the article reads. 

With Davis’ compliance with California state law via Recology surveillance, Gilbert emphasized the initiative’s unanticipated findings and the ways the city looks to address them.

In recent years, we have been surprised to see that cardboard is the most common recyclable item found in the trash, so we are adjusting our programs and outreach to try and improve cardboard recycling city-wide,” Gilbert said. “These waste sorting checks provide the city with valuable data on how our community is doing with sorting waste and where we need to direct our outreach efforts.”

 

Written by: Piper Aweeka — city@theaggie.org

 

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