Organics Recycling Capacity

Republic Services has opened an expanded compost facility at the Forward Landfill in San Joaquin County, California, adding processing space and upgraded infrastructure to pull more food scraps and yard waste out of disposal.

The Phoenix-based company says the extra capacity lets it recycle food and yard waste from homes and businesses into compost used across California’s agricultural heartland.

Six Years from Plan to Ribbon

Planning for the expansion began in 2019. In 2023 the project received USD 5.1 million through the CalRecycle Organics Grant Program, which helped cover construction, equipment and administrative costs.

The compost site now serves thousands of homes and businesses across northern California and recycles up to 147,000 tons of material a year, using technology intended to shorten composting cycles and keep pace with rising customer demand.

Chris Seney, director of sustainability innovation in organics at Republic Services, described each truckload arriving at Forward as material that becomes nutrient-rich compost for local farmers, landscapers and community projects, calling it composting at a different scale. San Joaquin County Supervisor Mario Gardea framed the investment as strengthening essential services and supporting local businesses.

The Methane Problem Behind the Project

According to the company, 48 percent of what Californians send to landfills is organic waste, including the equivalent of 2.5 billion meals of unspoiled food each year. When that material breaks down in a landfill, it generates methane.

CalRecycle Director Zoe Heller called the upgrade an example of local partnerships expanding organics recycling infrastructure, with food and green waste collected from the community returning as finished compost that supports soil health, drought resilience and local food production.

A Site Doing More Than One Job

Forward Landfill has served California’s central valley for nearly eight decades. Alongside the compost operation it hosts a renewable energy plant and has a renewable natural gas facility under development, which is the detail that makes this site interesting beyond composting.

The expansion sits inside a larger California organics portfolio of 17 facilities spanning green waste processing, compost sites and commercial food waste operations. Republic Services processed 884,000 tons of food and yard waste in the state in 2025, and plans to open its San Bernardino Sustainability Park later this year with capacity to recycle 300,000 tons of food and green waste annually at the start and room to double that.

Composting is the right answer for a large share of collected organics. But where a site already carries renewable energy and renewable natural gas infrastructure, the wet, high-energy fraction of that same food waste stream is worth a harder look as digester feedstock rather than windrow feedstock.

Add Biomethane Value to Organics Infrastructure

Operators expanding organics capacity face the same decision point: compost everything, or split the stream and send the energy-dense food fraction to anaerobic digestion for biomethane while the woody green waste goes to compost. The economics usually turn on gas offtake and capital certainty.

Klean Industries removes the capital uncertainty. Working with KBR, we deliver performance-guaranteed turnkey facilities where throughput, gas yield and availability are contracted obligations, which makes the project bankable and takes execution risk off the owner. Those guarantees are backed by commercial-scale references in operation, including the commercial recovered carbon black plant in Poland.

You can license the technology and operate it under your own banner, or have KBR build and commission the plant turnkey. Either route should begin with a feasibility study against your actual tonnage, contamination profile and gas or power offtake options.

Contact Klean Industries » GO.

Learn More:

• Feasibility Studies
• Solid Waste Projects
• Resource Recovery Projects
• Facility Efficiency Upgrades