City of Napa logoCalifornia Resource Recovery Association (CRRA) has awarded the City of Napa and Napa Recycling and Waste Services (NRWS) the Dave Hardy Leadership in Organics Award for the Napa Recycling and Compost Facility’s outstanding achievement in preventing waste, reusing materials, and composting.

The award, which recognizes a business, government agency, community-based organization or school that demonstrates excellence in the production, marketing and/or utilization of organic materials, celebrates many years of local investment in the City’s composting facility and expanded compost collection programs. These improvements allowed Napa and NWRS to implement a residential and commercial composting collection program in 2015 that expanded the range of compostable organics processed by the facility to include food and paper scraps, resulting in almost 10% less trash being sent to the landfill (residential) and 22,000 more tons of waste being composted.

“This award is a tremendous honor and is a testament to the amount of work that our team, along with Napa Recycling & Waste Services (NRWS), has done to improve and expand organics collection and processing over the last few years,” says Kevin Miller, Recycling Manager for the City of Napa. “In the nearly six-and-a-half years since its debut, the commercial food composting route has expanded to serve over 250 businesses and schools, and it is prepared to add more. I’m excited to see how we continue to innovate.”

Since 2014, the City of Napa and NRWS has made a number of critical improvements to its Napa Recycling and Compost Facility. Investments have included:

•    Construction of a $2.3 million organics receiving building in 2014;

•    Installation of a $2.8 million organics pre-processing system in 2015;

•    Installation of an $440,000 organics “de-packager” in 2018 (100% funded by a competitive state grant from CalRecycle);

•    Installation of a $3 million upgraded stormwater management system completed in early 2020;

•    And construction of an $11 million covered aerated static pile (CASP) covered composting system installed in 2019 becoming fully operational in 2020.

The CASP is one of the newest additions to the facility and provides a “closed” system that reduces air emissions such as odor and gases and also captures “contact” water and doesn’t allow runoff to leave facility and contaminate adjacent waterways. It became operational in January 2020, and after completing a full year of intensive air emissions testing, has been proven to reduce overall facility air emissions by over 90%.

“This facility, along with the full food composting collection and outreach program the City of Napa and Napa Recycling provides to customers, is a model for full spectrum organics diversion in California, and beyond!” said Tracie Onstad-Bills, Executive Director of CRRA.

“It’s an honor to work in close partnership with NRWS to become a leading force in composting and recycling,” remarked Steve Potter, Napa’s City Manager. “It is well-deserved following the time and energy that the Recycling and Solid Waste Division has invested to make all of the composting upgrades happen. I’m thrilled that Napa can serve as an example of what a quality organics program looks like.”

The award will be presented at the 45th Annual statewide CRAA conference, held virtually from August 16-19, 2021.