Roseville, California, begins organic waste recycling

The Roseville & Granite Bay (California) Press Tribune reports Roseville has begun a new organics recycling program in early July 2016, which affects approximately 90 local businesses in 2016.

Maurice Chaney, a spokesman for Roseville Environmental Utilities, told the newspaper the program will divert more than 70 percent of organic waste from landfills, to be recycled into fuel under the partnership with the Western Placer Waste Management Authority.

“It’s sort of a long time coming,” Chaney told the newspaper. “The impetus was the state law that was passed back in 2014 requiring diversion of organic waste over time from the landfill.” 

According to a city press release, Roseville’s waste will be processed outside of Placer County to create compost and compressed natural gas (CNG). It is estimated the program will cost $235,150, the article says. 

“The primary reason for all of it is to reduce greenhouse emissions,” Refuse Superintendent Shelley Tilley says in the article. “We’re reusing our resources rather than throwing them in the landfill. In terms of economic impact, if customers who are utilizing the program can divert that material and reduce the amount that we’re hauling away in their trash, that’s an offset. So that helps balance it out. Eventually, regionally what we would like to do is produce gas to fuel city vehicles.”