landfill – Enviro Updates

Sonoma County officials resurrect decade-long effort for local composting facility

May 13, 2026

Anna Armstrong, PRESS DEMOCRAT

More than a decade after Sonoma County lost its commercial composting facility, county officials are moving forward with a proposal for a new regional site northwest of Santa Rosa they say could process most of the county’s residential green bin waste locally.

At an April 28 meeting, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors authorized the environmental review for a prospective compositing facility at 5200 Slusser Road, immediately west of the county’s airport at the former county landfill site.

Should the facility move forward, the site would process up to 70,000 tons of residential green bin waste annually, accounting for around 80% of the total amount of compostable waste generated across the county.

County officials say the centrally-located facility could help reduce truck traffic and greenhouse gas emissions associated with hauling the material out of the county, while fulfilling state requirements to divert organic waste from landfills.

Agriculture/Food System, Sustainable Livingcomposting facilities, landfill, Zero Waste Sonoma

3 California pest control companies settle case brought by Bay Area counties

November 24, 2025

Emma Murphy, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Sonoma County is among dozens of plaintiffs to settle an environmental lawsuit brought against three pest control companies for violating state pesticide, hazardous waste and customer records privacy laws.

The case, filed in Contra Costa County Superior Court, accused Clark Pest Control of Stockton, Crane Pest Control and Orkin Services of California of unlawfully disposing of pesticides and hazardous wastes in company waste bins headed to municipal landfills that were not authorized to accept that waste. It also accused the companies of failing to shred customer records containing confidential information before disposing of them.

As part of the settlement agreement, the three companies agreed to pay a total $3.15 million, including $2 million in civil penalties. The remaining $1.1 million will cover supplemental environmental compliance projects, investigative costs and compliance measures.

The companies also agreed to comply with a series of monitoring and training requirements. Those requirements include cooperating with annual dumpster audits performed by a third-party auditor at a minimum of 10% of facilities for five years; requiring all facility employees to complete a pesticide waste and hazardous waste training program; and devoting a minimum of 2,000 hours per year to enhanced waste management oversight and compliance.

Sustainable Livinghazardous waste, landfill, pesticides, toxics

Those holiday gift returns may end up in a landfill

January 13, 2022

Paige Bennett, ECOWATCH

It happens to everyone — the holidays roll around, and your great aunt, your co-worker, or your second cousin gets you a gift that is thoughtful, but not quite your style. Even with the tags intact and the packaging in good shape, that gift may not go back to sit on a store shelf after you’ve returned it. Instead, many gift returns end up in a landfill.

Last year, the National Retail Federation forecasted that in 2021, retail sales in the U.S. would exceed $4.4 trillion. With the pandemic raging on, many people spent more time shopping online, perhaps trying to achieve an Insta-worthy kitchen or to try out trendy new fashions for which they saw targeted ads. Holiday shopping ramped up, too, as people rushed to buy in fear of delayed shipping or supply chain issues.

But much of those purchases were returned. Hitendra Chaturvedi, a supply chain management expert and professor at Arizona State University estimated that returns for 2021 would reach around $500 billion, even higher than the National Retail Federation’s findings from 2020 that returns reached $428 billion. Chaturvedi also told NPR reporter Alina Selyukh that many returns likely go to landfills.

That’s not always the case. Some clothing retailers, particularly higher end clothing shops, may dry clean and resell returned items. Electronics may be clearanced and sold at a special “open box” or “used” price, as is the case at many major retailers like Best Buy and Amazon. But even so, many returns are tossed out.

As reported by NPR, retailers are estimated to throw away about 25% of returns. In 2020, returns solutions company Optoro said returns likely led to about 5.8 billion pounds of landfill waste in just one year. As if those returns going to the trash wasn’t enough, the shipping of those returns also contributed to 16 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Sustainable Livingconsumption, landfill

America’s ‘recycled’ plastic waste is clogging landfills, survey finds

February 18, 2020

Erin McCormick, THE GUARDIAN

Many facilities lack the ability to process ‘mixed plastics’, a category of waste that has virtually no market as new products.

Many plastic items that Americans put in their recycling bins aren’t being recycled at all, according to a major new survey of hundreds of recycling facilities across the US.

The research, conducted by Greenpeace and released on Tuesday, found that out of 367 recycling recovery facilities surveyed none could process coffee pods, fewer than 15% accepted plastic clamshells – such as those used to package fruit, salad or baked goods – and only a tiny percentage took plates, cups, bags and trays.

The findings confirm the results of a Guardian investigation last year, which revealed that numerous types of plastics are being sent straight to landfill in the wake of China’s crackdown on US recycling exports. Greenpeace’s findings also suggest that numerous products labeled as recyclable in fact have virtually no market as new products.
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While the report found there is still a strong recycling market for bottles and jugs labeled #1 or #2, such as plastic water bottles and milk containers, the pipeline has bottomed out for many plastics labelled #3-7, which fall into a category dubbed “mixed plastics”. While often marketed by brands as recyclable, these plastics are hard for recyclers to repurpose and are often landfilled, causing confusion for consumers.

“This report shows that one of the best things to do to save recycling is to stop claiming that everything is recyclable,” said John Hocevar, director of Greenpeace’s Oceans Campaign. “We have to talk to companies about not producing so much throw-away plastic that ends up in the ocean or in incinerators.”

In a news release accompanying the report, Greenpeace threatened to file federal complaints against manufacturers who mislead the public about the recyclability of their packaging.

Sustainable Livinglandfill, plastic pollution, plastics, recycling, solid waste

Petaluma crafting goal of zero waste by 2030

July 1, 2019

Yousef Baig, PETALUMA ARGUS-COURIER

With nearby landfills expected to reach their capacity in the coming decades, Petaluma officials are pursuing a zero waste goal that could also help lay the foundation for future policies on climate change.

City officials are currently ironing out the details of a resolution that will ask the Petaluma community to reduce its landfill deposits by more than 90% within 11 years by reusing many items.

Petaluma’s garbage is dumped at the Redwood Landfill in Novato, which is expected to reach its permitted capacity in 2032, said Patrick Carter, management analyst for Petaluma’s Public Works and Utilities Department.

An expansion beyond its permitted limit might be possible, he said, but that could lead to future cost increases that would trickle down to households and businesses.

The entire Bay Area will hit its capacity by 2058, according to a 2016 report by CalRecycle, the state agency that regulates landfills.

“That’s not too far in the future,” Carter said. “Just like we’ve done with water conservation and energy efficiency programs when we’re presented with a challenge like that, we’ve found that prevention is more effective than remediation.”

Land Use, Sustainable Livinglandfill, recycling, solid waste, zero waste, zero waste goal

As costs skyrocket, more U.S. cities stop recycling

March 16, 2019

Michael Corkery, THE NEW YORK TIMES

Recycling, for decades an almost reflexive effort by American households and businesses to reduce waste and help the environment, is collapsing in many parts of the country.

Philadelphia is now burning about half of its 1.5 million residents’ recycling material in an incinerator that converts waste to energy. In Memphis, the international airport still has recycling bins around the terminals, but every collected can, bottle and newspaper is sent to a landfill. And last month, officials in the central Florida city of Deltona faced the reality that, despite their best efforts to recycle, their curbside program was not working and suspended it.

Those are just three of the hundreds of towns and cities across the country that have canceled recycling programs, limited the types of material they accepted or agreed to huge price increases.

“We are in a crisis moment in the recycling movement right now,” said Fiona Ma, the treasurer of California, where recycling costs have increased in some cities.

Prompting this nationwide reckoning is China, which until January 2018 had been a big buyer of recyclable material collected in the United States. That stopped when Chinese officials determined that too much trash was mixed in with recyclable materials like cardboard and certain plastics. After that, Thailand and India started to accept more imported scrap, but even they are imposing new restrictions.

Sustainable Livingcontaminated recycling, incinerators, landfill, recycling

US cities burn recyclables after China bans imports

February 21, 2019

Oliver Milman, THE GUARDIAN

The conscientious citizens of Philadelphia continue to put their pizza boxes, plastic bottles, yoghurt containers and other items into recycling bins.
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But in the past three months, half of these recyclables have been loaded on to trucks, taken to a hulking incineration facility and burned, according to the city’s government.

It’s a situation being replicated across the US as cities struggle to adapt to a recent ban by China on the import of items intended for reuse.

The loss of this overseas dumping ground means that plastics, paper and glass set aside for recycling by Americans is being stuffed into domestic landfills or is simply burned in vast volumes. This new reality risks an increase of plumes of toxic pollution that threaten the largely black and Latino communities who live near heavy industry and dumping sites in the US.

About 200 tons of recycling material is sent to the huge Covanta incinerator in Chester City, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia, every day since China’s import ban came into practice last year, the company says.

Air, Sustainable Livingair pollution, incinerators, landfill, plastics, recycling, solid waste, toxics