What this is
An independent audit of Los Angeles’s RecycLA commercial waste franchise
— 8 haulers, 11 exclusive zones, January 2022 through December 2024. The
haulers’ required tonnage reports, obtained under the California Public
Records Act, were cross-checked against CalRecycle and LA County disposal records
and traced facility by facility. The result: the public records document reported landfill
destinations far more completely than they document recycling or composting outcomes.
Key figures
- 18.48% – 24.05%
- Under the audit’s evidence standard (D2/D3, below), only 18–24 of every 100 tons can be counted as diverted — and
counting only requires arrival at a recovery facility, not recovery. 18.48%
under the conservative definition (D2, all tonnage); 24.05% among classifiable
tonnage (D3).
- 86.0%
- A facility-level disposal scenario, not a load-level outcome: 58.3% was reported
to landfill, plus an estimated 27.7% when unresolved transfer-station tonnage is
scaled by matched facilities’ disposal-stream landfill shares. This is an upper bound,
not a count of RecycLA tons reaching landfill.
- 4,828,942 tons
- Total tonnage reported across the program, January 2022 – December 2024
(36 months). The rates above cover this window; see the 2025 note below.
- 8 haulers · 11 zones
- The RecycLA franchise scope: 8 hauler names as reported in the data, operating
11 exclusive commercial franchise zones.
- In noncompliance
- CalRecycle has placed the City of Los Angeles on a formal SB 1383
corrective-action pathway — a city-wide finding under state law, not a
finding about any hauler; no fines levied as of mid-2026.
- ≥90% promised · 76.4% last published
- The franchise contract defines Zero Waste as 90% or higher diversion by 2025.
The City’s last published citywide diversion rate is 76.4% —
computed in 2011 under the state’s since-retired accounting in which
every ton not landfilled counts as diverted (Zero Waste Progress Report,
2013); no citywide rate has been published since. That 2011 figure is
citywide and all waste streams, on an estimated generation base — a
different measure from this audit’s commercial-only range, cited here
to attribute the definition, not for comparison.
- Under 19% (2024)
- LASAN’s own figure for the share of RecycLA tonnage that reached a blue
or green bin in 2024 (of 1,586,948 tons collected) — a bin-capture
measure taken at collection, before any facility outcome, so it is an upper
bound on diversion. A different definition from the audit’s
18.48–24.05%, landing at the same scale.
Data obtained under the California Public Records Act; cross-checked against
CalRecycle (RDRS) and LA County records. Commercial franchise data only. The gap
this audit documents is a failure of the reporting system’s design, not
evidence of fraud: nothing here alleges misreporting or wrongdoing by any hauler,
facility operator, or agency.
2025 update — what the newest records do and do not show
In July 2026 the City released 2024–2025 tonnage under CPRA 26-12487. It does
not extend the audit’s verifiable range, because it is not the same kind of
record: the 2022–2024 data was load-level, carrying each load’s next
destination, while the 2025 release is a set of monthly pivot tables. The two
fields the 18.48–24.05% range is computed from — next destination and
disposition type — are not in it. The range above therefore remains a
2022–2024 finding.
- 1,562,590 tons
- Franchise tonnage reported in 2025, against 1,577,307 tons in 2024
— down 0.93%. Both figures cover the 11 franchise zones only; the
2025 release omits the four Studio zones the earlier data included, and the
2024 overlap between the two releases reconciles to the cent once those are
excluded.
- −5.14% organics
- Green-bin tonnage fell from 80,482 to 76,346 tons — more than four times
the rate of decline in the black (−0.65%) and blue (−1.02%)
streams, in the fourth year of SB 1383.
- 82.4% unresolved after the first stop
- Share of 2025 tonnage whose first reported stop was a transfer station or
sorting facility rather than a landfill — and for which the 2025 release
reports no onward destination. This is not a diversion rate: it counts only
what was not sent straight to a landfill, a weaker test than any of
the audit’s three definitions.
- 44.2% unattributed
- The same release includes, for the first time, outbound destinations from 21
processing facilities — 429 named destinations over 2024–2025, of
which 71.2% of processor outbound is reported to disposal. It still cannot
verify RecycLA diversion: 44.2% of tonnage arriving at those facilities is
booked to “Non-Specific” and RecycLA material is 14.3% of inbound,
so franchise tons cannot be told apart from everything else on site.
Full reconciliation, defect log, and per-facility detail:
docs/audit/2025_tranche.md. The implications of the new outbound
reporting for the audit’s central finding are under review and are not
reflected in the narrative pages yet.
Methods
Hauler reports are traced as far as they name a next destination, then compared with
facility-level state and county records. The outside records are not load-specific;
diversion is computed two ways: D2 (conservative, all tonnage) and D3 (classifiable
tonnage only). Full
methodology, findings, limitations, and re-run instructions:
the dashboard’s methodology & data
provenance section and docs/methodology.md in the repository.
Read the evidence
All figures are reproducible from the published files. The source records establish reported destinations; facility-level cross-checks add context but do not track individual RecycLA loads end to end.
Links & contact
Every figure on the explainer and dashboard is recomputed in the browser from the
published CSV files each time the page loads — none of the numbers are typed
in by hand.
