WM unveils LEED Gold organics processing facility

Waste Management of Alameda County (WMAC) has unveiled its $11 million, state-of-the-art LEED Gold Organics Processing and Transfer Facility at the Davis Street Resource Recovery Complex. Only the third Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) Gold building in San Leandro, it is the first industrial building designed to Gold standard in the city.

Among the building’s distinguishing features are:

• State-of-the-art biofilter to eliminate odor;
• High-speed rollup doors to contain odor and prevent bird entry;
• Daylighting via translucent panels and solar tubes;
• Mechanically stabilized embankment walls built with 100 percent recycled aggregate;
• Ninety-five percent of construction waste recycled;
• Forty percent of building materials sourced locally; and
• Twenty percent of building materials from recycled sources.

In addition, local contractors provided the majority of construction services and 92 percent were union jobs.

The 34,967 sq. ft. building includes 1,127 sq. ft. of office space. The balance is dedicated to the processing and transfer of 150,000 tons of yard trimmings and food scraps annually. Residential organics are sent to WMAC’s Organics Material Review Institute (OMRI)-listed composting facility in Marin County. Excess materials are sent to third-party composters and in the case of nearly 500 tons of Christmas trees to biofuel facilities.

A prototype natural gas collection vehicle, currently being tested in the City of Oakland, was on hand to inaugurate the building. Powered with biofuel made from landfill gas at the Altamont Landfill in Livermore, the truck drove into the new facility following the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Celebrants included representatives from Alameda County Board of Supervisors, City of San Leandro, the Oro Loma and Castro Valley sanitary districts and many others. They toured the new building as well as the $1.5 million Public Area Materials Recovery Facility (PAM) that opened last month and created eight new green jobs.

The PAM is designed to process 60,000 tons of construction and demolition material per year, diverting recyclables from landfills. Clean construction lumber is sent to WMAC’s mulch facility in Fremont. There the wood is ground into mulch for gardening. It is part of the closed-loop approach of WM EarthCare, a new landscape product line of locally sourced, 100 percent recycled compost and mulch available at WMAC’s seven Bay Area facilities.