SCS to help Sacramento County optimize waste management system

The county of Sacramento, California’s Department of Waste Management & Recycling (DWMR) is contracting with SCS Engineers of Long Beach, California, to study and analyze how to optimize the routing, collection and disposal of municipal solid waste, green waste, organics and single-stream recycling. The analyses will help Sacramento control costs, provide quality services to residents, and lower its carbon footprint, SCS says in a news release.

Using a three-cart system, the DWMR provides weekly residential garbage collection, recycling every other week, green waste collection and other waste collection services to approximately 155,000 residents in unincorporated Sacramento County.

Currently, vehicles cover 71 routes and collect a total of 151,000 tons of municipal solid waste, 77,000 tons of green waste and organics and nearly 37, 000 tons of single-stream recycling annually. Materials go to appropriate locations, including the county-owned and operated North Area Recovery Station and the Waste Management-owned-and-operated Sacramento Recycling Center and Transfer Station.

Approximately 60 percent of residential collection activity occurs in the northern half of unincorporated Sacramento County and 40 percent in the southern half. DWMR will use SCS Engineers’ analyses and the current residential waste collection and disposal operations to identify options for charting a path forward that will optimize collection efficiencies and reduce collection costs. The analyses examine these areas:

• regulatory compliance, including comprehensive, cost-effective adherence to all applicable known and anticipated regulations and ordinances;

• infrastructure maintenance, construction and financial and contractual controls, such as long-term agreements with haulers, processors, contractors, key suppliers and vendors; 

• route logistics and vehicle controls, for example, the number of routes, type of vehicles, safety, carbon footprint reductions and workloads; and

• community satisfaction with clear communications, ease of disposal, overall convenience and other factors to continuously improve residential service.

The SCS analyses include a model for creating alternative collection scenarios for waste and recycling operations and performing cost modeling. The model gives the county the benefit of insight into many potential options while considering various technology, best practices of the operations staff and fleet crews, and rate structures. The SCS model is in use in cities and counties across the U.S.

“The data and the way it is analyzed and interpreted will lay the foundation for collecting waste and recycling in the unincorporated area of the county,” says Tracie Bills, the Northern California director of sustainable materials management for SCS Engineers. “The cost savings and environmental benefits are significant supporting Sacramento residents into the future.”