Taking out the trash Taking out the trash (April 21, 2000)

Pleasanton company leads the way in recycling

by Jeb Bing

Tell your out-of-town friends that you toss cans, bottles and newspapers into the same trash can as your garbage and they'll think you missed the environmental revolution of the 1990s.

Yet, that's what Pleasanton does, thanks to an innovative centralized recycling program initiated nine years ago. Instead of relying on residents to sort out recyclable materials and possibly make mistakes, the Pleasanton Garbage Co. does it for us.

Every weekday, some 15 sorters pick through garbage that is dumped onto moving belts, an assembly line procedure that handles 100 tons of residential garbage each day. Separated out are mixed office paper (all grades), old corrugated containers, newspapers, aluminum cans, glass containers, tin cans, plastics, metals, so-called "white goods" (such as washing machines, dryers and refrigerators) and wood.

Anything that has a chance of being used again in some form is pulled off the belt and sent to recycling containers. Even tree branches, wood and other combustibles are sent to a chipper, where they are ground up and used as fuel by electric co-generation plants in Tracy and Woodland.

The rest - the so-called "wet" garbage consisting of table scraps not sent down the disposal, coffee grounds, eggshells, meat bones, even animal wastes - stays on the belt. This moves to trailer-trucks that take the non-cyclables to the Allied/BFI landfill on Vasco Road.

Pleasanton Garbage, in partnership with the city of Pleasanton, set up its Resource Recycling Center in 1991 in response to state Assembly Bill 939.

"That required cities to recycle refuse, with a 50 percent goal set for the year 2000," said Brian Storti, the garbage company's recycling manager. "The city and Pleasanton Garbage looked at different programs to see what would be the most efficient and economical way to do this recycling work. We decided it would be best to put in a material recovery facility - what's now the 'picking belt' - and have all of the garbage come into the facility and we would sort it."

While hundreds of California cities and counties are falling short of this year's goal, Pleasanton met the 50 percent objective in 1998 and keeps improving. Most other cities depend on residents to sort plastics, cans, newspapers and wet garbage into separate containers and then place these at curbside for pickup.

"In Pleasanton we have a 100 percent participation rate in our recycling program," he added. "Whatever goes in the curbside can, we pick it up, sort through all of it and recycle whatever can be recycled."

Just walk through the garbage company's spacious grounds on Busch Road to see the results. Stack upon stack of 1,800-pound, 30-yard, tightly bailed bundles of paper, plastics and tin cans stand ready for shipment, first to recyclers and then to their customers - the manufacturers who turn these materials back into useful products.

The clear PET-grade plastics are among the most valuable, Storti said. They can readily be reused for either clear or tinted plastic products, as well as made into fibers for manufacturing new carpets and nylon jackets. Milk bottles and other HDPE colored plastics must be reused for those types of containers.

The other five grades of plastics - ranging from CD packages to old Barbie dolls and discarded pails - go to processors who turn them back into buckets, laundry soap containers and plastic furniture.

"Some things you can recycle forever, such as aluminum cans and glass," Storti said. "It's a shame to see any of these materials go to a land fill."

Lately, worldwide shortages of paper products have intensified the search for quality recycled fibers, a trademark of the Pleasanton facility.

"Office stationery and other quality paper usually have very good fiber content, so they're high in demand," Storti said. "We're always looking for virgin paper. Their fibers generally start out at about 3 inches. Every time they're recycled, they lose about a quarter-inch. The shorter they get, the poorer the quality. Newspapers, on the other hand, are more like ground wood; there's no fiber to them and they often go back to the pulp houses. The key is to get it all!"

Pleasanton Garbage Co.'s owners, Bob Molinaro and Tony Macchiano came to Pleasanton in 1969 and acquired the company from John Pietronave.

At that time the garbage company consisted of a landfill operation on Vineyard Avenue and a single garbage truck. After pickup, the trash was dumped at the landfill site, where it was buried by tractor. Consisting of 4,500 accounts and serving a population of 12,000 people, Pleasanton Garbage was on its way to becoming an outstanding service provider to the citizens and businesses of Pleasanton.

The garbage service had its challenges over the years. Molinaro and Macchiano knew that they would eventually run out of landfill space and made plans for a transfer station, which they built in 1976. The first company to adopt this new technology, the company led the way in Alameda County, soon to be followed by the city of Oakland.

No longer was the mighty bulldozer digging and burying in the city. Instead, trash was picked up by truck, hauled to the transfer station, where it was dumped into a pit, compacted and hauled up to Vasco Road. In 1984, the garbage service introduced an automated collection service, with trucks sporting hydraulic lifts to raise and empty residential garbage cans. This also reduced job-related injuries, always a waste industry problem.

When Pleasanton Garbage and the city decided to build the Resource Recovery Facility, Molinaro and Macchiano recruited Brian Storti, a veteran paper mill manager and innovator. Besides his experience in utilizing recycle materials, Storti also is a firm believer in recycling.

"It's hard to meet the state's 50-percent recycling requirement," Storti said, " and there are efforts being made to increase that still further. That will require more environmentally friendly packaging on the part of manufacturers and more work at home. Maybe coffee grounds can be used in the garden and other wastes not thrown in the garbage."

While Storti praises his drivers and sorters for their good work in keeping Pleasanton ahead of the state's recycling goals, he worries that the garbage-company-does-all approach diminishes recycling education for children.

The company offers blue recycling bags free of charge at its Busch Road facility, City Hall, the police station and other municipal locations for those who want to help in the recycling effort. On weekends, particularly, several hundred parents with their children take blue bags to the recycling center to place in bins for cans, plastics and other materials. The bags can also be placed inside garbage cans.

"This helps reduce our time on the separation belt and the bags also give kids a chance to see what recycling is all about," Storti said. "They may not always live in communities like Pleasanton where the recycling work is done for them."

What of the men behind this successful effort? Bob Philcox, vice president of Mt. Diablo National Bank, has known both men over the years.

"Bob Molinaro came up through the business the hard way," Philcox recalled. "Working for his father in South San Francisco as a garbage collector, Bob had a strong work ethic instilled in him at an early age. In the early years here, he drove a truck and picked up garbage, and we can still find him working a route from time to time."

Molinaro's brother in law and partner, Tony Macchiano, came to Pleasanton from a San Francisco construction and plastering business. He worked on the refurbishing of the Palace of Fine Arts and on the new Bank of America building. "Tony married Bob's sister and joined in the purchase of the Pleasanton Garbage Co.," Philcox said. "While Bob was out on the trucks, Tony was over on Vineyard Avenue running the tractor at the landfill operation."

And, it's more than the two principles. Molinaro's wife Carol is company controller. Their daughter Gina is office manager. Macchiano's wife Shirley, their two sons, Anthony and Scott, and their daughter Michele also all work in the business.

Today, Pleasanton Garbage is one of the few remaining independent, family run operations of its kind. Serving a population of approximately 63,000 with 16,000 accounts, the company has 140 employees. <@$p>