Community Corner
California Waste Solutions Marks America Recycles Day With 35 Years of Recycling Innovation
New Oakland and San José data will spotlight recovery trends, contamination, AI sorting and the people powering local recycling.
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California Waste Solutions, Inc. will publish an important industry report titled State of Recycling in Oakland and San Jose on America Recycles Day, November 15 this year. The report is comprised of data taken off from the company’s routes and sorting lines making it a potentially important source of new information for recycling companies, not-for-profits and local government.
The report comes months before the company celebrates its 35th year in the waste recycling business.
“In the past three and a half decades that we’ve been in business, we’ve always maintained that sharing information if better for us, our customers and the cities we operate in,” said David Duong, Founder & Chief Executive Officer of California Waste Solutions. “Our forthcoming report on the state of recycling in major northern and southern California cities where we have operations contains valuable insights gleaned from our daily operations, fantastic staff and with the benefit of the cutting-edge technology we have invested substantial amounts of money in over the years.”
For the report, California Waste Solutions will log valuable datapoints including pounds recovered, contamination rates, items that do not belong in a blue cart, early results from new EverestLabs AI scanners in Oakland and expanded Pellenc optical sorting in San Jose, customer participation and first-person accounts from drivers, sorters and mechanics. The aim of the report is to give operators, home recyclers and city officials valuable insights into the contents of everyday recycling materials being employed.
America Recycles Day falls on November 15, just before California Waste Solutions approaches its 35th year in business. During this time, the California recycling giant hasamassed a customer case including more than 343,000 people across Oakland and San Jose and established six Bay Area facilities.
The forthcoming report sets the anniversary year against the record of how recycling in this region has changed, from early trucks and hand-sort lines to optical sorters and AI on the belt.
“The data is on the line every day. America Recycles Day is where all we put it in one place for everyone’s benefit,” said Michael Duong, President of California Waste Solutions.
What’s In The November Report
The November release is intended as a floor-level account of two cities. Planned measures include recovered tons and commodity mix; contamination that still wrecks loads; batteries, bags, food waste and other items crews pull in a given week; how the new Oakland scanners count material headed for disposal; and whether San Jose’s added optical capacity is producing cleaner output.
California Waste Solutions installed EverestLabs AI scanners at its 10th Street MRF in Oakland and is increasing Pellenc optical-sorting capacity at the Timothy MRF in San Jose. The company has used optical sorting in its U.S. plants since the mid-2000s. The Oakland units watch the container line and count what they see while reporting what’s on the conveyor belts so operators can tell when a line is running too deep to recover what should have been pulled. San Jose’s upgrade is aimed at recognition, recovery and product purity.
Those upgrades land in the same season Oakland launched Aerbits, the city’s AI-assisted aerial program to find illegal dumping before residents call 311. California Waste Solutions already collects Oakland’s recyclables. The report will treat street dumping and plant contamination as one system comprised of three sections: material left on a block, material stuffed in a cart and material that reaches the belt.
Household batteries remain the sharpest safety problem. California Waste Solutions has collected them at the curb in Oakland since 2015 and plans curbside battery collection for single-family homes in San Jose in early 2027. The report will include what crews actually find when batteries ride in with the recycling.
A Collective Effort
California Waste Solutions recently announced a new five-year Teamsters agreement covering its San José operations. The America Recycles Day package will profile the workforce that agreement covers: longtime drivers, sorters, mechanics and employees who moved up inside the company.
“One of the things that is so important to recognize about this report is that it is only made possible by our wonderful team of hardworking employees who are tireless in their pursuit of quality goals in the recycling business,” said David Duong. “We say often that they are like a big family to us, and while this has become somewhat of a cliché these days, for us at CWS it’s the literal truth. We are a family company, with family values, and with all the company’s employees working in this way, which is to say, as a family together on a single problem, it creates a king of competitive advantage wherein we can often identify solutions much quicker than our competitors as a result. The new report will reveal a lot of the data points that our team have identified here and we see that as being really useful for the community.”
Grounded In History
The report will place the numbers next to the company’s own history. David Duong arrived in the United States as a Vietnamese refugee, started over with used trucks and built California Waste Solutions into a family-owned recycling operator serving two of the Bay Area’s largest cities. His son Michael now serves as president. The documentary The King of Trash follows that arc.
Forthcoming founder interviews planned around November 15 put David and Michael Duong together on immigrant entrepreneurship, family ownership and second-generation operating control.
Archival photographs of early trucks, early equipment and early crews sit beside the current plants.
“We really look forward to this report making an impact on the local waste recycling business overall,” said President Michael Duong.
California Waste Solutions will previous some data points as they become available ahead of the November 15 release.
For Reporters
Newsrooms that want a November story with real data can arrange plant access this fall: a representative load on the Oakland line, the new scanners, San Jose optical sorting, contaminant pull-outs, and interviews with employees and both generations of Duongs will be available.
About California Waste Solutions
Founded in 1992 by David Duong, California Waste Solutions provides recycling collection, processing, customer service, and material recovery for residential, commercial, and municipal customers in Northern California, including Oakland and San José. Through its subsidiary Vietnam Waste Solutions, the company also operates large-scale environmental infrastructure in Ho Chi Minh City. Headquarters: 1211 Embarcadero, Suite 300, Oakland, CA 94606, www.calwaste.com.
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