solid waste – Enviro Updates

Plastics recycling startup Resynergi says it is moving

September 30, 2025

Jeff Quackenbush and Martin Espinoza, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Resynergi Inc., the Sonoma County startup whose decadelong effort to convert plastic waste into new material or fuel, is leaving the state.

The company plans to move from its demonstration site in Rohnert Park to an undisclosed location. The move follows three months of intensifying public backlash against plans for a first-of-its-kind processing facility at its site in the mixed-use SOMO Village and greater scrutiny from regulators.

CEO Brian Bauer said the move, announced in a Thursday morning news release, is driven by mounting regulatory hurdles here and a search for eased permitting and economic incentives elsewhere.

Land Use, Sustainable LivingBAAQMD, chemicals, industrial activity, plastic recycling, solid waste

Rohnert Park ups scrutiny of Resynergi

September 22, 2025

Jeff Quackenbush, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Resynergi Inc., a 10-year-old Rohnert Park company that has encountered strong local opposition in recent weeks to its plan to start up the latest generation of its unique system for dealing with plastic waste, was told this week it may need more county authorizations.

Sonoma County’s Environmental Health Division sent the company a letter, dated Sept. 16, saying the operation isn’t a recycling center, so it may need to get from the county a solid waste facility permit. The agency and CalRecycle, which regulates solid waste statewide, are talking about what approvals could be needed and are set to make a decision in a week or two, a division spokesperson told the Journal in an email Monday.

“Your facility will use pyrolysis to convert waste plastic into a form that can be re-used,” Director Christine Sosko wrote in the letter obtained by The Press Democrat. “Although your facility might be considered a recycling facility in vernacular language, it is not under state law.”

Resynergi is seeking to turn on its latest research version of its “advanced microwave pyrolysis” system, this one designed to sort, grind up and transform via heat in an oxygen-less slight vacuum up to 5 tons of certain plastics into pyrolysis oil to be trucked off to refiners for making more plastics or fuel. California law treats pyrolysis as “transformation” and not recycling.

Sustainable Livingair quality, Integrated Waste Management Plan, solid waste

California is about to witness its biggest change to trash since the ’80s. Hint: It’s all about composting

January 1, 2022

Chase DeFeliciantonio, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Dawn has just broken over Recology’s vast Blossom Valley Organics composting facility, about 70 miles east of San Francisco in Vernalis (San Joaquin County). The cold fall air hits like a slap to the face as orange light creeps over the horizon.

As the sun rises over the site, one of six the company operates statewide, a fine grit rides on the air, which is thick with the smell of earthy decomposition.

Operations Supervisor Clifford Reposa casts a wary eye on a 25-ton trailer of organic waste as it is hoisted on a hydraulic lift almost vertically against the pale and reddening sky.

“Not good. Lots of plastic bags,” Reposa mutters, his arms crossed as he watches a flood of pumpkins, apple cores, bits of wood and piles of leaves trucked in from San Francisco tumble out, adding to the towering piles of refuse that dwarf huge bulldozers moving it around in a deafening, mechanical dance.

This load of refuse is just a fraction of the roughly 1,500 tons of compostable material the 120-acre facility takes in every day from San Francisco and parts of the East Bay and South Bay. It comes here to be reborn as natural fertilizer used on vineyards and farms, and in varietals that are crafted specifically for different types of soil.

After those plastic bags and nonorganic materials are plucked out by men, women and gargantuan machines with names like The Titan, what remains will be placed into heaping piles that eventually break down into dark compost some farmers call “black gold.” Those heaps that stand higher than a person are spritzed with water and heated and cooled for two months to help trillions of microorganisms turn the solid waste into rich food for hungry crops.

Agriculture/Food System, Climate Change & Energy, Sustainable Livingcompost, compostable waste, composting facilities, food waste, soil carbon, solid waste

Negotiations for new Sonoma County composting site ended over financing issues

June 5, 2021

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

A four-year effort to bring green waste recycling back to Sonoma County has collapsed, scuttling hopes of restoring any time soon a high-volume, locally based compost operation to supply farmers, landscapers and backyard gardeners.

The breakdown came late last month after the company chosen to work with the county waste agency withdrew from negotiations after it failed to secure financing.

The company, Renewable Sonoma, and its principal, Will Bakx, terminated negotiations with the county agency and the city of Santa Rosa after 2½ years of trying to shore up plans for a high-tech composting facility that would convert food scraps and yard waste into valuable agricultural products. The project, estimated to cost $52 million, also was to produce biogas to help power treatment equipment on land leased at the city’s Laguna Wastewater Treatment Plant on Llano Road.

Bakx, whose proposal ranked first among nine pitches considered by the county in 2018 for siting and construction of a modern compost facility, said he had to pull the plug on negotiations because he couldn’t put together funding after talking with a variety of investors. He said he was not at liberty to disclose details.

Agriculture/Food System, Climate Change & Energy, Land Use, Sustainable Livinganaerobic digesters, biogas, compost, composting facilities, methane, recycling, solid waste

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

$50 million Santa Rosa compost facility inches ahead as opposition from neighbors grows

September 10, 2019

Tyler Silvy, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

When Greg Eicher and his wife, Gulten Eicher, moved to a quiet stretch of Walker Avenue five years ago, they were ready to embrace a more rural lifestyle there in southwestern Santa Rosa.

They’ve got a heap of homegrown fruits and veggies on offer, raise chickens for fresh eggs and even recently began beekeeping. There’s also a farm cat — Tekir, which is Turkish for striped or tabby cat.

Greg Eicher said they knew they were moving in a few blocks from Santa Rosa’s Laguna Wastewater Treatment Plant, which handles wastewater for 230,000 residents from Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park, Cotati, Sebastopol and portions of unincorporated Sonoma County.

The Eichers occasionally get whiffs of what is treated at the plant. But Eicher said one waste-related facility is enough, and neighbors can’t abide a push by local governments to relocate a commercial-grade composting facility across the street from the Laguna site.

“This neighborhood has been putting up with the noise and the smell and the traffic — to the benefit of the entire city of Santa Rosa — for years,” Eicher said. “You’re doubling down on me.”

There’s no organized opposition yet, but thanks to leadership changes and the fits and starts of governmental negotiations for green-bin waste, neighbors have months, if not years, to coalesce and build their campaign against the proposal.

Until then, and perhaps for many more years, the future of green waste handling in Sonoma County will remain in limbo — with both tons of material and millions of ratepayer dollars continuing to go out of the county.

It’s been more than a year since the board of Zero Waste Sonoma — the renamed Sonoma County Waste Management Agency — voted to begin negotiations with Renewable Sonoma, a private company, to handle commercial-grade composting operations, a service not offered in Sonoma County since that company’s previous site was shut down four years ago in the wake of wastewater violations.

Agriculture/Food System, Land Use, Sustainable Livingcompost, composting facilities, floodplain, Laguna de Santa Rosa, solid waste

Amazon under fire for new packaging that cannot be recycled

August 20, 2019

Miles Brignall, THE GUARDIAN

Use of plastic envelopes branded a ‘major step backwards’ in fight against pollution

Amazon has been criticised by environmental groups and customers after introducing a range of plastic packaging that cannot be recycled in the UK.

While supermarkets and other retailers have been reducing their use of single use plastics, the world’s biggest online retailer has started sending small items in plastic envelopes, seemingly to allow more parcels to be loaded on to each delivery truck.

Adrian Fletcher, an Amazon customer from Glasgow, is among a number who have complained to the company. He said the move felt like a “major step backwards” in the fight against plastic.

“My husband is disabled, and we rely a lot on Amazon and other home deliveries. Previously our small orders arrived in easily recyclable cardboard packaging, but a few months ago Amazon started using plastic envelopes. I diligently recycle all the packaging but can’t these,” he said.

“The supermarkets have all been dropping carrier bags from their online deliveries, but Amazon is going the other way – it’s madness. I have asked them not to ship my orders using plastic packaging but this falls on deaf ears.”

Amazon’s Second Chance website, which details how customers should recycle its packaging, states the Prime-branded envelopes are “not widely recycled across the UK”.
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It is thought that Amazon ships between 4bn and 5bn parcels a year worldwide. In February, the Washington Post reported on how the new Amazon envelopes were clogging up US recycling centres as consumers were wrongly placing them in recycling bins.

Sustainable Livingcontaminated recycling, plastics, recycling, solid waste