PRESS RELEASE
City of Woodland
300 First Street
City of Woodland Environmental Services is pleased to announce the launch of a new online Waste Wizard and Collection Calendar to help residents avoid contamination and provide information about their collection services. To keep up with changes in the recycling markets and assist with diverting materials from going to the landfill, the City of Woodland has launched an online search tool called the Waste Wizard. This tool allows residents to search for a specific item to find the best options for reuse, recycling, composting, or proper disposal. The Waste Wizard tool also includes alternative recycling options for items that do not belong in curbside collection carts, such as mattresses, clothing, household hazardous waste (HHW), medicines, and other hard to recycle items.
In addition to the Waste Wizard, the Collection Calendar tool helps to ensure you never forget your trash day or green waste street pile pick-up again. The Collection Calendar allows Woodland’s single-family residents to view, print, or download their personal service calendars, as well as set up reminders about their upcoming collection services. Reminders may also include alerts about service changes, and delayed or missed pickups.
In recent years, there have been many changes to the recycling market. According to the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle), prior to 2018, California exported an average of 10 million tons of recyclables to China each year. In 2018, China enacted its National Sword policy and stopped accepting most plastics, paper, and cardboard due to high levels of contamination and trash found in the recyclables. This policy with strict contamination standards pushed waste management companies to find other international or domestic recycling markets and provide greater education focused on cleaning up the recycling stream to meet these standards. This also means some items that were previously accepted for recycling may not be accepted in the future. The Waste Wizard will be able to provide updated information and reflect those changes as they occur. It will also provide reuse and zero waste options to support waste reduction efforts.
In addition to recycling, the organic waste program has also undergone some changes recently. In an effort to reduce transportation costs, keep our waste local, and reduce our carbon footprint, the Yolo County Landfill opened its anaerobic composting facility in October 2019 to turn our organic waste into soil amendments. This is especially important as California laws AB 1826 and SB 1383 require commercial organic waste, such as food waste, landscape material, and wood to be diverted from the landfill. As a result of operational changes at the new composting facility, cactus and palm material are no longer accepted as green waste, due to their fibrous nature. Clear plastic bags are also no longer accepted in organics bins and food waste must be placed in compostable bags instead.
With the changes to the recycling and organics markets in mind, we are launching the Waste Wizard and Collection Calendar tools to help keep residents up to date on changes to recycling and waste streams and collection services. Try the new Waste Wizard and Collection Calendar by visiting www.envirowoodland.org/WasteWizard.