City of Phoenix seeks landfill diversion ideas

The city of Phoenix, as part of its Reimagine Phoenix initiative, has announced a “call for innovators” and an accompanying request for proposals (RFPs) for “entrepreneurs and innovators with market-ready and emerging technologies or manufacturing processes that transform trash into resources.”

 

More information about what the city is seeking in terms of ideas and proposals can be found at the websites phoenix.gov/solicitations/277 and phoenix.gov/solicitations/280. Ideas and proposals are being accepted from March 9 through April 14, 2015.

 

According to Reimagine Phoenix and the Phoenix Department of Public Works, “Phoenix is home to more than 1.4 million residents and processes nearly 1 million tons of materials (per year) through the city’s two transfer stations.”

 

The city is “asking innovators to help create a circular economy based on transforming the city’s trash into resources,” Reimagine Phoenix says in its RFP background material. “We have assets [that] could include feedstock, land, favorable business terms and affordable financing, as well as a partnership with the Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiative at Arizona State University (ASU), to make this happen.”

 

The organization also writes, “We need and want input from the private sector as we reshape how the city manages its waste stream materials.”

 

As part of its citywide goal to increase its waste diversion rate to 40 percent by 2020, Phoenix has proposed a 50-acre (or larger) Resource Innovation Park built surrounding its 27th Avenue transfer station. That land already hosts a material recovery facility (MRF) operated by ReCommunity, Charlotte, North Carolina.

 

The RFP is targeting “some of the most challenging items in our trash [such as] non-rechargeable dry-cell batteries, carpeting, furniture, latex paint, mattresses, palm fronds and residential food waste,” the city says of the RFP posted at phoenix.gov/solicitations/280.