Incentive Programs for Local Government Recycling and Waste Reduction

Transfer Station, MRF, and Landfill Incentives

• Permit Requirements
• Contract Clauses
• Lease and Financing Conditions
• Facility Fees and Taxes

Permit Requirements. The best time for incentives to be adopted as conditions of permits is at the time of siting for transfer stations, MRFs (material recovery facilities), and landfills. Local land use permits (e.g., conditional Use Permits [CUP]) or solid waste facility permits can include incentives as conditions. Planning departments can write local land use permit conditions, and local enforcement agencies (LEA) can write solid waste facility permits.

Some possible options for inclusion in one or more of the permits are:

• Offer source separation discounts, which allow lower rates to generators for clean, source-separated materials, to enable facilities to more easily recycle those materials.
• Provide areas for reuse and salvaging, drop-off and buyback recycling, composting, and retail sales of reused, recycled, and compost products on site.
• Require landfill operators to exceed federal pollution control design standards (especially on liners). This minimizes the risk that a site used by the city will become a "Superfund" site. U.S.EPA is now reviewing Subtitle D regulations, which may undergo significant changes in the next two to three years.
• Establish strong financial assurances (not just value of stock, as U.S. EPA allows), in perpetuity to provide for sufficient long-term care, preventive maintenance and corrective action/cleanup costs.
• Distribute public information materials on reuse, recycling, and composting.
• Assisting the community in meeting its waste reduction goals.

Contract Clauses. Conditions could be included in long-term agreements for these facilities such as:

• Disposal. Commit to a total capacity, not an annual amount, as in the City of San Francisco agreement with Altamont Landfill (Waste Management, Inc. [WM]). This enables the community to benefit directly by extending the life of the landfill, if it reduces the amount of wastes it brings to the facility.
• Preprocessing. Require that all wastes be processed for reuse, recycling, and/or composting before landfilling. This is particularly important for the larger, more distant "mega-landfills" increasingly being developed by the larger garbage companies. This requirement could be structured to require landfill operators to arrange for wastes to go to MRFs prior to shipping them to their landfills, or it could be done on site, depending on market and space considerations.
• Source separation. Require that targeted materials be source separated before accepting at facilities, or provide strong economic incentives through design of rates for facilities.

Lease and Financing Conditions. Local governments could require some of the above clauses as part of a lease or financing agreement, if the city is assisting on financing or leasing a site to a project developer.

Facility Fees and Taxes. Communities could establish fees or taxes on solid waste facilities to help fund their programs, in addition to those noted above as AB 939 fees.

Measure D in Alameda County in 1990 established by referendum a $6 per ton surcharge on landfills in the county. That surcharge, and other waste import mitigation fees at the Altamont, Vasco Road, and Tri-Cities landfills fund the Alameda County Waste Management Authority.

San Jose has a $13 per ton disposal facility tax that generates revenues for the city’s general fund.

Transfer station, MRF and landfill fees and taxes have the beneficial effect of also encouraging more waste reduction. The higher the cost of waste disposal, the more attractive reuse, recycling, and composting become.

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Last updated: October 26, 2007