The City of Davis announced today that the annual waste collection route monitoring for contamination will begin May 20 to ensure the City is in compliance with State regulations under Senate Bill SB 1383.  

The law, which went into effect in January 2022, requires all cities in California each year to perform contamination monitoring, a process to see how well waste is being sorted when placed in the trash, recycling and organics containers for collection. 

The law is very specific about how cities are to perform this contamination monitoring. Route monitoring, or “lid flipping,” is when a number of containers on each hauler route are visually checked for proper waste sorting. If contamination is found, the City is required to provide additional education to customers on how to properly sort waste. 

Over 800 trash, recycling and organics bins need to be visually checked throughout the City annually. To perform this task, the City hired APTIM, a private company that specializes in this type of work. APTIM staff will be wearing safety vests with the APTIM logo as well as ID tags that identify them as an APTIM employee working for the City of Davis.

APTIM staff will select addresses at random along each waste collection route, including trash, recycling and organics. At these addresses, their staff will lift the lid of the container to see the contents. Bagged waste will not be disturbed and only the material at the top of the container will be reviewed. If waste materials are sorted correctly in that container, they will leave a “congratulations” tag to thank the customer for doing a good job. If the container has contamination (items inside that should not be there), APTIM staff will leave a “let’s sort this out” tag, encouraging customers to place waste into the correct container. Both tags will also have a waste sorting guide on the back to show what goes in each container. 

When route monitoring was performed last year for the first time, 81% of the surveyed trash, recycling and organics bins were found to have correct sorting. This was so much better than anticipated that APTIM staff ran out of the “congratulations” tags. The most common contaminate found in recycling and organics bins was plastic bags, which are neither recyclable nor compostable.

“There was great success during last year’s lid flipping, which further illustrates our community’s commitment to being stewards of the environment,” said Mayor Josh Chapman. “City staff have done a great job increasing the amount of outreach and education on waste sorting this year. The City of Davis has consistently been at the forefront in providing recycling and organics services to customers, and now, it is more important than ever to understand how the actions we take to reduce our carbon footprint make an impact.”

These route monitoring checks are not punitive, and the tags left by APTIM are not citations, fines or any other notice of violation. The checks are essentially status checks to see how the City overall is doing with waste diversion with reminders on how to sort waste properly and if there are any gaps in outreach. 

City staff may follow-up with additional checks on contaminated bins, but citations and fines for contaminated bins would not be considered unless there is an egregious situation with continued contamination over a long period of time, where continued tagging and reminders is not showing any improvement in waste-sorting behavior. 

Visit www.DavisRecycling.org for more details on the SB 1383 regulations and for information on how to sort waste correctly. The Public Works Utilities and Operations Department can be reached at PWWeb@CityofDavis.org or 530-757-5686.

Press contact: Barbara Archer, barcher@cityofdavis.org, 530-400-3418

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