Joint press release from Humboldt Waste Management Authority, Humboldt Sanitation, and Recology Eel River:

(Eureka, CA) On June 22, 2020 Governor Newsom signed Executive Order N-70-20 which allows CRV Buyback Centers to remain temporarily closed, or operate at a diminished capacity, for an additional 60-days in order to protect their employees and the general public from potential COVID-19 disease exposure.

This order affects CRV redemption services, or ‘cans for cash’, offered by Humboldt Sanitation (McKinleyville), Recology Eel River (Fortuna & Redway) and Humboldt Waste Management Authority’s (HWMA) Eureka Recycling Center. These CRV centers closed to comply with Shelter-In-Place orders. As our local economy slowly reopens, we are now faced with making determinations as to how to ensure essential services and resume non-essential services as coronavirus cases continue to increase in our community and State.

Our core essential responsibility is to handle the collection and disposal of solid waste to protect public health and the environment. We each provide either garbage and recycling curbside collection services and/or operate transfer stations where approximately 170 tons per day of garbage is received to be transported to out of county landfills for disposal. Our priority is to ensure we have healthy and available staff to collect and properly dispose of our community’s garbage. Each of our transfer stations also provide recycling services and CRV buyback centers, co-located on the same premises.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we implemented protective measures to minimize threats to our core critical functions to handle garbage. During normal CRV buyback operations, there is a high volume of face-to-face customer interactions with direct contact with used beverage containers and a lack of social distancing. In order to safely re-open the CRV centers, additional controls are needed and at this time we simply do not have the staffing levels to ensure compliance with CDC pandemic guidelines to protect our customers and employees.

Prior to the pandemic, hundreds of recycling centers in California closed in the last year because the commodity market value for recyclable materials has declined and scrap sale revenue is not covering the operational and shipping costs. Costs to implement site improvements and new safety precautions to protect employees and our customers from COVID-19 have added a new factor to the dynamic.

We understand the buyback suspension presents complications and hardships to our customers and want to assure the community that our decision to suspend services was not made lightly. In the meantime, we encourage customers to place recyclable materials into their curbside recyclable collection bins or deliver the mixed recyclables to any of the transfer stations for automated processing so that materials are properly recycled.