Commodities

For years, C&D recyclers in California have been complaining about lax alternative daily cover (ADC) landfill rules that allow wood waste heading to landfills to be counted as a recycling use by the state’s tracking agency, the California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB), Sacramento. A committee has now been formed, however, that may be a first step in revising those rules.

According to CMRA executive director William Turley, California’s Assembly Bill 939 law, which requires municipalities to recycle 50% of the waste they generate, have pushed governments into claiming that large amounts of C&D and green waste heading to landfills and being used as daily cover counts as a recycling application.

In a C&D Update article, Turley writes, "while all involved agree at least a small percentage of that could apply, the situation has gotten so out of hand that in the state overall, more C&D and green waste is made into ADC and claimed as part of the recycling goal than all the recycling generated by all the curbside recycling programs in the state."

One of the more absurd examples found in state documents was a claim by one landfill that 73% of the tons disposed of at the site in one three-month span was C&D debris used as ADC.

"Use of C&D as ADC is steadily on the increase, particularly in areas where there is competition from mixed C&D processing facilities and/or where C&D ordinances have been implemented," testified recycling consultant Joan Edwards of Manhattan Beach, Calif., at a CIWMB hearing.

When landfill operators in California take in C&D debris and claim it is being used as ADC, they avoid paying a landfill tax, explains Michael Gross of Zanker Road Landfill, San Jose, Calif. "We spent millions developing a recycling system that allows us to recover all but 5% of our incoming waste, and only 3% of our product is ADC. You are going to tell me that some guy running a tractor over his C&D on top of the landfill and calling it ADC can claim that is 100% recycling, and doesn’t have to pay any fee," asks Gross.

Recyclers such as Gross are hopeful that the formation of the new committee is the CIWMB’s signal that it has made a mistake regarding ADC. "For years, CIWMB staff had overlooked and understated the problem, but the board now recognizes it," says one recycling advocate in California.