S.J. eyes new recycling firm
California Waste Solutions criticized for its services and treatment of residents, but the company says it’s being unfairly evaluated
SAN JOSE >> A while back, Bob Staedler noticed the lid on his recycling cart peeking open a few inches when he put it out at the curb for collection. Later, the Naglee Park resident found a warning notice from California Waste Solutions telling him he was breaking the rules.
Other nearby residents have gone out to bring in empty bins after their scheduled pickup only to find them full, with a noncollection notice attached explaining there was garbage inside.
“The service is just bad, and I know all my neighbors aren’t happy with them,” Staedler said. “It’s inconsistent. It’s frustrating.”
On Tuesday, the San Jose City Council is set to consider letting a contract with the company to pick up recycling for more than 75 percent of the city’s singlefamily
homes expire in three years and putting the job out to bid.
The city’s Environmental Services Department accuses California Waste Solutions, which has had a contract with
the city for more than a decade, of doing a poor job, being too aggressive in issuing noncollection notices and providing poor customer service.
The company has paid more
than $2 million in penalties for, among other things, late collections and slow customer response times, while Green Team, the other company that picks up recycling at single-family homes in the city, has paid just $14,000 in fines.
“We didn’t feel like we’d gotten value for the ratepayer in any of the categories,” said Kerrie Romanow, the department director.
The department is recommending that the City Council continue its relationship with the city’s three other recycling and trash contractors.
But California Waste Solutions says that it’s not being treated fairly and that losing the contract with San Jose — nearly half of the company’s business — would be a major blow.
“We’re very concerned,” said David Duong, the president and CEO, who came to the U.S. as a young Vietnamese refugee.
Right now, California Waste Solutions and the other recycling and garbage contractors have agreements to do business with San Jose through 2021.
Romanow and her team have been negotiating new terms with the companies for the years beyond that.
And while the city says the cost increases proposed by some of the other companies are reasonable, it argues that the increase proposed
by California Waste Solutions — about 60 percent — is not.
Yet the company says that its original pricing — which helped it win the bid — was much lower than that of its peers and that the actual dollar amounts are not significantly different.
The household service rate for California Waste Solutions now is slightly less than $11 but could be as much as $18 under the new proposal.
Green Team, on the other hand, would remain at around $15.
“We want to make sure we have a same level playing field,” Duong said.
But the city says a significant price increase in areas serviced by California Waste Solutions would
mean an uptick in costs for residents in those areas without an improvement in service.
And, Romanow said, while the companies do have different targets and contract stipulations, even if California Waste Solutions had been evaluated by Green Team’s standards, it still wouldn’t have met them.
When California Waste Solutions put in a bid to handle recycling for more than 160,000 homes in the early 2000s, the economy was different and it was easier to sell recyclables.
China, which the U.S. has relied on to take much of its recyclables, has cracked down on the level of — in industry parlance — contamination it will accept.
And with soaring housing costs, more people are cramming into single-family homes and producing more trash that sometimes gets wrongly shoved in the recycling bin.
California Waste Solutions estimates that as much as 40 percent of what it collects is contaminated. (The city’s own estimate is closer to a third.)
During a recent drive around a quiet neighborhood off Jackson Street, a quick survey showed Styrofoam, a banned item, poking out of one recycling bin.
A few houses away, a can of beans had congealed food cemented in the bottom, which can gum up machinery and render even more items unusable.
“I think a big part of it is a lack of understanding,” said Glen Holsenberg, the operations director for California Waste Solutions.
At the company’s processing plant in an industrial area east of Highway 101, workers sorted dirty diapers, greasy pizza boxes, shoes, propane canisters, Christmas lights and other nonrecyclable items from a conveyor belt rolling past them.
“We have to dispose of it,” Holsenberg said of the contaminated items mixed in with the cans and paper and plastic bottles the company likes to see.
Taking trash to a landfill is costly, so in an effort to limit dump runs, the company has issued noncollection notices. Thousands of them.
From January through September 2018, according to the city, California Waste Solutions issued on average more than 4,000 noncollection notices per month.
Green Team distributed just 14 each month on average.
One reason for the disparity may be that Green Team contracts with another company, Green Waste, to process the recyclables it collects in San Jose.
At the Green Waste facility, not far from California Waste Solutions, more of the sorting process is automated, and the company says it can sort and find markets for items that typically get trashed elsewhere, such as CDs.
The company is upgrading relatively new equipment to help meet China’s new standards, too.
“If you want to stay competitive in this market, you need to stay ahead,” said Tracy Adams, co-chief executive of Green Waste. “We’ve seen this coming for a while.”
If San Jose ultimately decides not to renew its contract with California Waste Solutions, the company says, dozens of good union jobs could disappear.
Of the 100 or so plant workers, the company estimates, 78 percent call San Jose home.
Martin Ngo, 28, is one of them. Ngo has worked for the company since his 21st birthday and earns around $23 an hour sorting recyclables.
“It would be heartbreaking,” he said of the prospect of the facility closing. “I honestly don’t want to think about it.”
Jose Barraza, who lives in Tracy and has been with the company nearly 20 years, agrees.
“Everybody inside is concerned about this,” the father and grandfather said. “This is our second house here.”
Romanow says she just wants to do what’s best for the residents of San Jose and find a recycling provider that can provide good service at a reasonable cost.
“It’s unfortunate,” she said. “I don’t want us to be in this position again.”