GONZALES — Salinas Valley Recycles and Tri Cities Disposal reported that the City of Gonzales is under the state average of eight pounds of trash per person daily with a residential diversion rate of 42 percent.
Tri Cities Disposal is the hauler that collects materials from the city and is one component of the city’s solid waste management program. Currently the City of Gonzales has a franchise agreement with Tri Cities Disposal, which is a joint venture with the cities of Soledad and Greenfield.
“For residential, Tri Cities collected a total of 17,567 tons of material, the City of Gonzales contributed 694 tons of that material,” said Elia Zavala, contracts and grant analyst for Salinas Valley Recycles. “Achieving a 42 percent residential diversion rate. Overall, residential is doing very well, the goal is 50 percent diversion and reached 42 percent for the City of Gonzales.”
In comparison between 2015 and 2016, Zavala said there were overall increases in residential collection beginning with yard waste, which had an increase of 16 percent, 7 percent increase in recycling, 4 percent increase in trash.
In the commercial sector, Tri Cities collected 15,855 tons with the City of Gonzales’ portion at 8,361 tons, which achieved a diversion rate of 20 percent. In comparison, there was a significant increase in all the areas’ yard waste, recycling and trash.
“We didn’t have many increases in residential customers but we had five new commercial customers,” said Zavala. “One of them is a very large agricultural company so their numbers are going to make a very big impact in the overall numbers.”
According to Zavala, the state gives an average rate of eight pounds of trash per person daily of waste with a target goal of 50 percent diversion of that number.
“Overall, Salinas Valley cities diverted well under the target of 50 percent,” said Zavala.
The data is solely from the hauler through the collection services, so there may be other methods of recycling but those were not included in the Tri Cities Disposal and Salinas Valley Recycles report.
The City of Gonzales franchise agreement with Tri Cities Disposal will come up for a new contract in January. Among the changes are the 32-gallon pilot project or trash can cart and a bulky collection program that will have more collection days in the coming year, approximately 10.
