BAR CODE TECH KEY TO GARBAGE COMPLIANCE

A barcode imprinted on the side of a City of Manteca residential solid waste cart is key to making Manteca green and ultimately saving green.

It will allow the city to:

*precisely pinpoint which household is contaminating recyclables and yard waste.

*determine who is gaming the system to get an extra cart pickup.

The barcodes — coupled with camera systems on solid waste trucks with global positioning — will be able to pinpoint what each household address is tossing into blue and green carts for recycling and yard waste respectively.

Those carts need to have minimal or no contamination in order for the city to recycle items and avoid expensive tipping fees for landfilling contaminated recycling as well as state fines.

A 2019 audit of a truckload of household recyclables the city had collected revealed a 68.9 percent contamination rate.

The contamination needs to be less than 10 percent in order for firms to take recyclable materials.

The city will be able to review video tied to addresses and carts using bar codes and the GPS camera system to determine if there is contamination.

Contamination will initially earn the household a warning. If contamination persists, the city will resort to leveling fines.

The system also allows the city to crackdown on what solid waste officials believe is fairly rampant — households claiming the city skipped a pickup of a cart.

The problem is manifested in two different ways.

*Carts being placed out late.

*People refilling garbage carts after they have been collected and then calling the city to say the truck driver missed their cart.

Deputy Director of Public Works Peni Basalusalu learned firsthand how the system works.

One day when he came home to find out that his garbage cart hadn’t been dumped, he called the City of Stockton to say that they missed it.

The solid waste office clerk used his address to quickly check the route video of that day and found visual proof that the cart hadn’t been placed at curbside. He was emailed a videotape time stamped when the city’s solid waste truck was at his house earlier in the day.

It turned out his son — who is responsible for placing the cart out at curbside — had forgot to do so.

The City of Manteca currently doesn’t question when residents say their cart was missed even though the driver is sure that wasn’t the case.

With the new system being put in place later this year, the city will have proof if it was or wasn’t. As a result, if the city makes a return trip to dump the cart it will result in the extra expense being charged to the customer.

Basalusalu said the city has also discovered a fair number of people take advantage of the city’s inability to track garbage as effectively as the new system will allow to have a double collection on weeks when they have too much garbage by claiming the driver missed their cart.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email [email protected]