Republic Services, Inc. announced a significant expansion of its organics recycling operations in California with the acquisition of North State Bioenergy, an anaerobic digestion facility north of Sacramento. California requires the diversion of food and yard waste from landfills as part of its climate strategy.This important infrastructure will help Republic customers comply with the law and meet their own sustainability goals.
The North State Bioenergy facility is the company’s first anaerobic digester, recycling food waste and other organics collected from across Northern California. The anaerobic digestion process breaks down this organic material and creates biogas, which can be used to generate electricity or converted into renewable natural gas to fuel vehicles in Republic’s fleet. The facility’s operations are fully circular, with biogas generating enough electricity to power the facility.
Republic has extensive operations to support organics recycling, including six compost facilities and three commercial food waste pre-processing sites.
In 2022, Republic recycled one million tons of food and yard waste. Diverting this organic material from a landfill provides a climate benefit equivalent to removing the annual emissions of 16,000 passenger vehicles. Organics recycling directly supports Republic’s sustainability goal to increase recovery and circularity of key materials from the waste stream by 40 percent by 2030.
