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Photograph by Douglas Rider
Gary Freitas attaches one of the recycling bends to the tipper on a new recycling truck. The new recycling program in Sunnyvale, now in its preview stage, will be citywide starting July 2.
Dirty Work
New Sunnyvale recycling program seeks to simplify process
By Gretchen Knaup
A new recycling program for Sunnyvale residents enables them to recycle more by doing less.
Currently residents are responsible for sorting their plastics, glass and newspapers separately into three small crates. A new, larger one-bin system will allow residents to simply open the top and drop the materials in, simplifying things.
Beginning in late May, Specialty Solid Waste and Recycling have started trying out the new system of collection in a preview program. In the preview program the trucks serve 853 homes in the area north and south of Homestead Avenue, as well as north of Cascade Drive, up to Wright Avenue.
Specialty has a contract with Sunnyvale making it the sole garbage and recycled materials hauling service for the city. Specialty works in collaboration with the sMart Station, which serves the cities of Mountain View and Palo Alto, as well as Sunnyvale.
"We've never been able to do this, because we didn't have the facilities at the sMart Station," said Jerry Nabhan, operations officer for Specialty. "The new facility is enabling this new system."
The sMart station, which stands for Sunnyvale Materials and Recovery Transfer, has been building a curbside processing system since January. According to solid waste contract administrator Debi Sargent, the curbside system will act as a counterpart in the new process. "The new trucks will dump the materials onto the new conveyer belt accordingly, already separated," Sargent said.
According to environmental outreach coordinator Dorlene Russell, employees currently have to carry and dump the crates by hand. "This new equipment allows us to do things more cost effectively, because we are having to use less man power," Russell said. According to Nabhan, the carts have a 10-year life span. "The new carts were $65 each, but rates didn't go up, because we were able to cut two routes using this system," he explained.
The current system has residents separating their recycled materials into three categories, using crates that sit on the ground. According to Russell, the new system will prevent people from having to bend over, from pick up and carry anything.
The new carts have lids to make them neater and wheels, so all residents have to do is lift the lid, drop the items in and then roll the cart out to the street. "The easier you make it, the more people will recycle," Nabhan said.
Not only does the new program call for new carts; it also includes new trucks. The new trucks pick up the bins, instead of the drivers. "This makes our workers' comp go way down," Nabhan said. "That is where we had most of our injuries."
Photograph by Douglas Rider
Gary Freitas and Abraham Calvetti move one of the new recycling bends to be lifted and dispense glass and plastic in one part of the truck and paper into the other part. The new recycling program is in the preview stage and will be implemented citywide starting July 2.
The new vehicle is called a split cart residential recycling truck meaning it has a mechanism to sort what is compliant with the split recycling carts. The cart is loaded onto the truck and in 15 seconds it is lifted onto the truck, its contents are dumped into two compartments, using a bar separating the two, and placed back on the ground.
The preview is designed to work out any kinks in the program. "It's not a pilot program, because we already know we are going to use it," said Specialty operations manager Chris Celsi. "We are just trying to perfect it with a preview using a small sample ... Our goal here is to get our equipment working in the right manner and get some feedback from the customers."
According to Celsi, eventually the new system will be integrated for the entire city of over 28,000 homes. The first carts will be rolled out on June 25, with additional sections following weekly. Service for those sections will begin continually starting July 1. The old crates will be picked up the week after new bins arrive for each residential section.
Nabhan said, at first, they started with older trucks, but then moved to these around the beginning of June. "The old ones lifted the carts up high and the process took 30 seconds," he added. "We've found a way to do it much quicker, using this technology."
Furthermore, all the new trucks are run on natural gas, instead of diesel. This makes the trucks much quieter than regular garbage trucks.
Since the use of these new trucks there has only been one minor problem, and, ironically, it is that the carts are now being lifted too fast. "The problem is that the drivers can now adjust the speed, and they want to do it fast. We need to make it to where it is on a set speed," Nabhan said.
He said when the carts are lifted too fast it can be dangerous, because the glass could break onto the streets as it is being dumped. "We can't have that happening," he added.
According to Celsi, on average, all the residents that have been involved in the preview program are happy with the new service. "The only group of people that might have a problem with it is mobile homeowners, because they don't have as much space between houses to roll the carts out," Celsi said. "But I hope they will see that the benefit outweighs the cost."
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
