Recycling is changing in Manteca.

And at the same time, the city later this year will have three solid waste collection trucks stopping at homes in Manteca on a regular basis

Details on what can be recycled and answers to other questions will be provided by the  City of Manteca’s Recycling Information Manager Avneet Mahil during a talk Thursday, May 11, at the Manteca Historical Society meeting.

The program is from 7 to 8 p.m. at the Manteca Museum, 600 W. Yosemite Ave. Members and guests may attend free.  Refreshments and desert snacks will be served afterward.

Manteca has been able to negotiate a contract with a Stockton firm that will accept the city’s newspapers, other types of paper and glass recyclables. When that happens, the city will  once again allow those items to go into the blue carts.

Mahil will share exactly what can now be recycled as well as how to do so.

The move to collecting recyclables and yard/food (organic) waste will take place this summer when the city switches all customers to three 96-gallon carts. Each will be collected on a weekly basis.

It is designed, in part, to eliminate people from contaminating recyclables with garbage because they run out of room in their garbage carts.

Garbage contaminating recyclables has forced the city in recent years to landfill much of what they collect from residential customers, homes, defeating the purpose of recycling.

The changes are part of the plan for the city to meet a state mandate to divert 75 percent of organic waste from landfills by 2025.

That means the city will have to basically increase its solid waste division manpower and equipment to service residential accounts by upwards of 33 percent.

Currently garbage is collected weekly. Green (organic) waste and recyclables are collected every other week on a rotating basis with green cart collections one week and blue cart collections the next week.

The need for three visits each week from the solid waste department is driven by the fact residential food waste — minus all packaging — to meet the state-imposed mandate will need to be placed in green carts along with lawn clippings trimmings and other organic yard waste.

It will then be taken to a composting facility.

The weekly collection of the green and blue carts would eliminate the need for a fourth cart exclusively for food waste.

It also would minimize any issues such as smell that could become a problem with food waste sitting in green carts for up to two weeks, especially during hot weather.

In researching what other cities have done, Manteca found that the fourth cart for food collection is not effective.

And if Manteca opted to go that route despite the fact residents don’t comply as well, it would still create the need for an additional collection at each household.

It could also help reduce the city’s high contamination rate of 68 percent in the blue recycling carts that render the contents unfit for recycling forcing the city to bury them anyway.

More frequent green and blue cart collections could help reduce residents contaminating other carts by placing overflow in them as opposed to inadvertently making a mistake.

The state mandate to divert organic water from landfills is the driving force behind proposed solid waste rate increases targeted to go into place in mid-July.

*Solid waste trucks now cost $475,000 a pop. The city tries to replace one or two a year of its fleet of 24 plus waste collection vehicles. In order to implement the required organic waste diversion program, Manteca will need to buy a number of trucks all at once to make that happen.

*Not only will stepped up collection require additional manpower, but the cost of the existing workforce in terms of wages and benefits has also been increasing.

*Tipping fees at the landfill on Austin Road have gone up over the years from $24 a ton to $140 a ton.

Increased fuel costs are unlikely to be much of an issue in the rate increase.

That’s because Manteca for the past three years has been refining its own fuel.

They do so with equipment put in place at the wastewater treatment plant to use the methane gas byproduct that is combined with other organic materials to create natural compressed gas.

That CNG gas now powers more than a dozen solid waste trucks — almost half the fleet —  a Manteca transit bus and a vacuum truck used at the solid waste treatment plant.

Manteca was one of the first cities in  the Western United States to put such an endeavor in place that reduces greenhouse gases that would normally be burned off and released into the atmosphere during the wastewater treatment process.

It also means solid waste trucks are burning clean fuel and not oil-based diesel or gas.

Commercial food waste from restaurants, supermarkets, convenience stores, and intuitions such as schools and hospitals, are now being sent to the Lovelace Transfer Station where a massive food separator purchased by the city has been installed.

It separates the packaging from the food.

The food waste is then grinded into a slurry and is currently being taken to a composting operation.

However, as the wastewater treatment facility creating compressed natural gas steps up its output, the food waste  slurry will be trucked there instead of being converted into compost. The packaging is taken to the landfill and buried.

Such a process can’t be used for residential collections as the amount of actual food waste is too small in comparison with the commercial sources making extremely  uneconomical to pursue.

The fact city nearly 30 years ago opted to go to a three cart system while neighboring communities opted for a two-cart or a one-cart system will keep estimated costs for the transition to food waste diversion down.

Most cities are now finding out in order to make programs work to meet the state mandate, they need to buy at least one more cart per household.

The carts that are used  typically cost between $100 and $150 apiece.

 Senate Bill 1383 adopted in 2020 is designed not only to reduce methane gas emissions from landfills as garbage decomposes but to extend the life of landfills.

A 2017 study indicated California generates 27 million tons of organic waste a year.

Of the waste collected, organic food accounts for 18 percent, paper 18 percent, lumber 12 percent, and other organics 19 percent.

The remaining 33 percent is nonorganic waste.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com