Resource Recovery Parks

Case Studies

• Monterey Resource Recovery Park
• Urban Ore Resource Recovery Park
• San Leandro Resource Recovery Park

Monterey Resource Recovery Park

The Monterey Regional Waste Management District (MRWMD) operates a regional environmental park in Marina, California. The environmental park includes one of the first resource recovery parks in California (although the MRWMD has not called it that). The district also operates a water pollution control facility that handles most of Monterey County’s biosolids (sewage sludge).

Geographically, the MRWMD extends from Moss Landing in the north to Big Sur in the south, with the Pacific Coast forming the west boundary and the Salinas Valley forming the east boundary. The service area is 853 square miles, and the service population is 170,000.

The RR park includes a 315-acre permitted sanitary landfill site, a 126-acre buffer area (mostly Salinas River floodplain), and 20 acres for the administration building, scalehouse, and public drop-off recycling station, Also included are a resale facility (Last Chance Mercantile), maintenance buildings, landfill gas power project, a materials recovery facility (MRF), and a permanent household hazardous waste collection facility. In addition, construction and demolition (C&D) recycling operations, composting facilities, and a soils blending facility are located on the landfill site.

MRWMD limits land uses at the site to compatible uses and facilities that use recycled materials as feedstocks. The Monterey RR park was designed in large part based on the concept of the "serial MRF" in Berkeley. Urban Ore promoted this concept in the 1980s and 1990s. The company encouraged people to coordinate, co-locate, and promote related reuse, recycling, and composting businesses in an area.

Rather than building new facilities to compete with existing private investments, serial MRFs built on those investments. Public investments can bridge the gaps in existing and future private activities.

Because Monterey has numerous private curbside recycling programs, the MRWMD did not include the processing of residential curbside materials as part of their MRF design. Instead, the Monterey MRF targets materials brought in from self-haul loads and commercial wastes, C&D debris, wood waste, and yard waste received at the facility. The MRF has achieved its current goal of diverting 60 percent of these incoming materials. (Garbage trucks hauling residential garbage and wet commercial waste go directly to the landfill.)

The 95,000-square foot MRF building was completed in May 1996 at a cost of $9.6 million. The building features recycled construction materials throughout: in its base rock, its fiberglass and cellulose insulation, the wall paneling, bathroom tiles, bathroom partitions, and floor coverings. (The employee meeting area floor coverings are made from recycled tires). The special design of the MRF features earned a $34,000 rebate from PG&E for energy conservation.

Rather than developing its own composting and C&D recycling facilities, MRWMD has contracted with existing private operations to provide those services. The facility leases part of its site to several local composting companies for a nominal fee. As part of the contract, MRWMD requires the companies to first use MRWMD organic material as feedstock for their products. MRWMD has some control on material brought in from outside.

Table 1. Landscaping Supplies Sold at the Last Chance Mercantile

MRWMD sells low-cost landscaping supplies made from recycled wood and yard waste. These are available by the ton at the MRF and in bags at the Last Chance Mercantile. At the Last Chance, customers get a two-cubic-foot heavy plastic bag and they can fill their own bag for the published price. The facility assesses fines for recovered organic material and dirt.

MRWMD also contracts with the Granite Construction Company to process C&D materials received on site. The company brings in a mobile crushing unit when necessary. Granite provides the MRWMD with a royalty of 50 cents for every ton processed at their facility. The company also processes contaminated soils, paying MRWMD with a royalty of $1.50 for every ton they process at this site.

Granite Construction uses most of the crushed C&D material in a wide variety of area construction projects. As an example, most of a recent repaving of Cannery Row in Monterey used recycled base rock from this facility.

MRWMD uses crushed material on site for roads and other construction purposes. MRWMD often takes product in exchange for royalties due from companies.

The first landfill gas-to-electrical energy system in Central California was installed at the landfill in 1983. The system currently generates more than 2,800 kilowatts of continuous power. The district also accepts and safely recycles or disposes of household hazardous waste.

Urban Ore Resource Recovery Park

Urban Ore is in the process of developing a 2.2- acre resource recovery park in a former steel pipe manufacturing facility in Berkeley, California. The building itself is a reuse demonstration project, and it will house a synergistic collection of reuse businesses and small manufacturers.

Urban Ore is moving its 2 acres of used goods to this new leased location, on 7th Street half a block south of Ashby, right off Interstate 80. The site has good public visibility and is located near two major lumberyards, a hardware store, and two other reuse facilities within three blocks. This provides a steady stream of potential customers flowing nearby.

Urban Ore has several departments:

• Building materials exchange.
• Hardware exchange.
• Arts and media exchange.
• General store.
• Salvage and recycling.

Urban Ore has already moved its building materials and salvage and recycling departments onto the grounds, even though construction is still in progress. Urban Ore’s general store will remain in its warehouse until construction is complete, so the business will be split in half for a few months. This phased move should be beneficial to maintain contact with its customers. Since Urban Ore used the same location for 18 years, customers will need time to adjust to the new location.

Urban Ore will have subtenants whose businesses focus on reuse or manufacturing from recycled feedstocks. The park will operate like a mall, based on recovering materials and keeping resources in the economic stream. Although no subleases have been signed yet, potential subtenants include:

• A nonprofit organization that rebuilds and upgrades computers and then sells them at low cost to low-income people.
• A company that makes high-quality countertops out of recycled glass embedded in Portland cement (similar to granite).
• Overflow warehousing for another reuse company.
• A blacksmith who makes products from scrap steel.

Urban Ore does not currently envision a composting business because the 2.2-acre site is too small and located in a densely populated urban neighborhood.

Urban Ore will sign the lease on the private property and sublease it like a mall developer. Urban Ore is solely responsible for both the operations and the financing of this facility.

Urban Ore is exploring interest in shared overhead or equipment as part of its negotiations with potential tenants. Discussions are underway with one enterprise regarding sharing or trading supplies and services. They are also discussing a product sales exchange. Plans include a large meeting room to host community and recycling groups, training for employees on site, and classes on how to use recycled building materials.

Last year Urban Ore lost their lease on their old property, and the landlord wouldn’t sell them the site. They thought they might have to leave Berkeley or even go out of the building materials business if they couldn’t find a site. But then Urban Ore got tremendous support from the City, the Alameda County Recycling Board, and the California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB).

The support began with a unanimous city council vote in the spring of 1999 instructing staff to do whatever they could administratively and financially to keep Urban Ore in Berkeley. The results were astonishing.

City staff provided creative problem-solving every step of the way and provided the following assistance:

• Amended its zoning to permit a new use, “materials recovery enterprise,” in the mixed-use light industrial zone.
• Issued a use permit in record time.
• Provided a $100,000 low-interest loan.
• Waived permit fees.
• Provided a renewed salvaging license.

The Alameda County Recycling Board gave Urban Ore a $100,000 grant to spend as needed so they could either buy the property they had or move to a new site.

The CIWMB will execute a $200,000 service agreement with the city to make this resource recovery park a demonstration facility. Urban Ore now has a ten-year lease with two five-year options on the property. Construction costs to adapt the facility will be approximately $750,000.

The construction will be partially financed by the service agreement between the CIWMB and the City of Berkeley. The city will contract with Urban Ore to provide the demonstration facility and become a showcase for how to use recycled building materials in a large building. Urban Ore will include an educational display on the materials, provide a self-guided tour, and offer other information and classes.

The public agencies are providing the cash and loan guarantees for Urban Ore to use in adapting the facility. They are also helping the company obtain permits and make connections to other businesses.

San Leandro Resource Recovery Park

The 53-acre Davis Street Transfer Station owned and operated by Waste Management (WM) in San Leandro is growing. Throughout the 1990s, WM has been adding additional reuse, recycling, and composting services to its basic waste processing functions. WM has stated that it is their goal to transform this facility into the most innovative and largest recycling park in the United States.

Table 2. Davis Street Transfer Station Recycled Materials, 1999

* Tonnage recovered using a portable C&D screening system
** Tonnage recovered using a sort line for dry waste (rolloff loads)

WM also recovered 934 tons from a buyback center and salvaged 40 tons of reusables at this site.

WM has a 4.5-acre integrated yard and wood waste processing system on site. This facility runs at 40 to 70 tons per hour. Three-quarters of the materials it processes are from curbside collection programs in the area. The other materials received are delivered directly by the public (13 percent), brought in rolloffs (6 percent), or salvaged from the wood in the Davis Street Transfer Station’s public disposal area (5 percent). Materials are pre-screened (through Lubo starscreens and BHS Debris Roll Screens), contaminants are hand-sorted out; then materials are ground in a 500 hp electric stationary horizontal hammer mill with a spiked roll drum.

The facility has multiple “waterfalls” in its conveyors and belt and chute magnets to remove all metal contaminants. Equipment manufacturers used were Bulk Handling Systems, Processing and Recycling Machinery, Ptarmigan Equipment/
Krause, and Lubo USA. End markets for yard trimmings and wood waste are direct land application and/or on-farm composting agricultural uses (33 percent), alternative daily cover (28 percent), biomass fuel (22 percent), and compost products (17 percent).

WM has also been working with a number of other partners to increase the diversity of reuse, recycling, and composting activities in this area.

In May 1998, WM opened Northern California’s first tire recycling and crumb rubber facility. Bay Area Tire Recycling operates this facility under contract with WM. This is a 2,700-square foot facility on a 0.75-acre site that will be able to process 600,000 tires each year into “steel-free” ground rubber.

The facility is capable of processing passenger and light truck tires at the rate of more than 3,000 pounds per hour. The resulting ground rubber product will be used to manufacture a wide range of consumer, commercial, industrial, and farm products, including mats, fence posts, playground safety surfaces, athletic surfaces, mudflaps, roofing materials, bedliners and rubberized asphalt. This facility is partially funded by a $150,000 grant from the Alameda County Source Reduction and Recycling Board. Link Recycling Technology of Brisbane, Australia, provides patented machinery.

Another innovative business that opened in July 1999 is the Building Materials Exchange Facility. This facility is operated by The Reuse People of Alameda County at the Davis Street Transfer Station. They accept a wide variety of used items/materials for reuse. These items are all placed for sale at greatly reduced prices.

The Reuse People also provide collection service, depending on the quantity and quality of items involved. Materials recycled include: bathtubs, bathroom fixtures, bicycles, bricks, building materials, cabinets, cinder blocks, clay roofing tiles, doors, garage doors, garden tools, hardware, kitchen fixtures, light fixtures, lumber, nuts, bolts, screws, plumbing supplies, reusable plywood, stoves/ovens, toilets/commodes, water heaters, windows, and screens.

The Reuse People is a nonprofit corporation started in San Diego in 1994. The Reuse People will also provide "deconstruction" and dismantling services in the area. The Alameda County Source Reduction and Recycling Board provided start-up funding of $141,000 for this facility as well.

At the Davis Street Education Center, students learn about garbage and landfill history and why and how to practice the four Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle, and rot/compost). This 1,500-square foot center houses seven interactive museum-style exhibits and provides tours of all facets of the facilities described above. Two on-site demonstration gardens (raised bed and a portable garden in a rolloff box) use mulch and compost products.

More than 15,000 school children have visited the center since its opening in June 1995. The center provides a widely acclaimed teacher’s guide and garden guide to assist teachers in getting the most out of this experience for their children.

WM is also a leader in "closing the loop" at the Davis Street Transfer station through its own use of re-refined oil and tires. Any government agencies or nonprofit organizations providing tires for recycling to the Davis Street Transfer station are eligible for discount pricing on the purchase of the ground rubber product or crumb rubber produced by the tire recycling operation located there.

WM is also working to expand recovery of carpeting and film plastic throughout Northern California and to establish an integrated glass and electronics waste recycling plant in the San Francisco Bay Area.

WM also sells recycled-content products at the site, including retail sales of soil products and recycled-content landscape products. Twelve mulch and compost products are available by the bag and by the yard. Plastic lumber and bend-a-board landscape products are sold as well.

The development of this facility into a recycling park was the result of a five-year recycling master plan developed in 1996. WM staff met with the City of San Leandro economic development and planning staff to propose the recycling park idea. After an open house, several workshops and presentations, WM applied for a revision of their conditional use permit to the City of San Leandro. In February 1998, the city approved the five-year recycling master plan to guide the facility into becoming a recycling park.

In May 1998, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) awarded a $200,000 Jobs Through Recycling grant to the CIWMB to undertake a 24-month model effort to establish recycling businesses that use materials processed at the Davis Street Transfer Station. Included on the team were the CIWMB, WM, Alameda County Waste Management Authority, City of San Leandro, Oakland/Berkeley RMDZ, and several nonprofit organizations. The partnership is named "Alameda County Recycling Marketplace: The Davis Street Transfer Place for Sustainable Business."

In its advertisements, Alameda County Recycling Marketplace emphasized the elimination of red tape typically found in siting businesses. Instead of having to deal with multiple agencies or regulators individually, the marketplace brings them together ahead of time in a team to encourage recycling business development. Although the marketplace encompassed all of Alameda County, clearly it helped WM in promoting the reinventing of its Davis Street Transfer Station as a recycling park.

The marketplace offered the following assistance to recycling businesses:

• Lower transportation costs and central access to local and international markets located in a major hub.
• Access to low-interest loans, grants, and training funds.
• Access to a diverse labor pool, from entry-level trainees to highly educated technicians.
• Direct access to a steady supply of local recycled feedstock, both traditional and nontraditional, available from multiple sources.
• Help in developing business plans and product marketing.
• Manufacturing and technology research and assistance.
• Siting assistance and expedited permit processing.
• Partnership opportunities with existing recycling-based businesses and operations.

In April 1999, the CIWMB approved a new solid waste facility permit for the Davis Street Transfer Station that includes the five-year recycling master plan.

In addition, the Alameda County Waste Management Authority (ACWMA) is now working on a companion effort to attract additional resource recovery businesses to this area. The ACWMA has been recruiting tenants that are all resource recovery businesses. The ACWMA will provide some additional funding to assist this project. The ACWMA is also soliciting a developer to work with them, using a "developer request for interest" process. They have identified a site and are negotiating on the price.

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Last updated: November 01, 2007