The City of Davis announced today that the annual waste collection route monitoring for contamination will soon begin to ensure the City is in compliance with State regulations under Senate Bill (SB) 1383. This is the third consecutive year that route monitoring has been done in Davis. 

When route monitoring was performed in 2024, 81% of the surveyed trash, recycling and organics bins were found to have correct sorting. The most common contaminates found in recycling and organics bins was plastic bags, which are neither recyclable, nor compostable.

Over 800 trash, recycling and organics bins need to be checked throughout the City annually. This year, Recology Davis staff will be performing these checks. Recology Davis staff will be wearing safety vests with the Recology logo as well as ID tags that identify them as a Recology employee working for the City of Davis.

Starting this month, Recology Davis staff will be checking trash, recycling and organics containers that are set out for collection. Recology staff will lift the lid of containers 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), Recology 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 items goes in each container. 

These State-mandated route-monitoring checks are not punitive, and the tags left by Recology are not citations, fines or any other notice of violation. The waste container checks are only to see how the City is doing overall with waste diversion with reminders given on how to sort waste properly. 

“We have been very pleased with the results of route monitoring so far,” said Mayor Bapu Vaitla. “Landfills are the third largest source of methane emissions in California. The City of Davis has consistently been ahead of the game in providing recycling and organics services to customers, and now it’s more important than ever to understand the actions we can take to reduce our carbon footprint. These checks will help our staff understand what outreach is effective and where we might have gaps.” 

City staff may follow-up with additional checks on excessively 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. 

SB 1383, which went into effect in January 2022, requires all cities in California to perform waste-sorting 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. 

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