Long Beach is working to expand its organic recycling program to all commercial accounts as it prepares to meet a 2024 compliance deadline for a new state law that requires cities to divert organic material away from landfills to reduce methane emissions. The City Council is scheduled to approve the purchase of eight new trash trucks Tuesday night to expand the commercial side of the program beyond the original 115 businesses that took part in its pilot program that launched in June.
The eight trucks the city is looking to purchase to service those commercial accounts are expected to cost $3.5 million. Expanding the program will affect thousands of accounts. But because of the time it will take to deliver those trucks to the city, business owners shouldn’t expect a change to their trash service until early next year. “Once the trucks are ordered it takes nearly a year for them to be built and delivered and ready for service,” said Diko Melkonian, the city’s deputy director of Public Works. “In the meantime, we’re going through and identifying what businesses will be required to take part based on the volume of trash they generate.”
Once the expanded program is operational, businesses will be issued a new green bin to collect organic materials like food scraps, landscaping debris and paper products that will be transported to new facilities to be processed separately from other trash. Some of it can potentially be converted into renewable fuel sources.