RecycLA Commercial Waste Audit

What this is

An independent audit of Los Angeles’s RecycLA commercial waste franchise: the required RecycLA Service Provider tonnage reports — 8 haulers operating 11 exclusive zones, January 2022 through December 2024 — obtained under the California Public Records Act and cross-checked against CalRecycle and LA County disposal records, then followed facility by facility to ask one question: of the waste LA’s businesses and apartment buildings set out, how much can actually be confirmed diverted from landfill?

Key figures (with their qualifiers)

18.48% – 24.05%

Audited diversion range: 18.48% under the conservative definition (D2, all tonnage) and 24.05% among classifiable tonnage (D3) — i.e. only 18–24 of every 100 tons can be confirmed diverted.

86.0%

Share of tonnage ending at landfill under the ceiling reading: 58.3% confirmed at landfill plus an estimated 27.7% more when unconfirmed transfer-station tonnage is read through each facility’s disposal-scoped state ledger. A ceiling, not a confirmed count.

4,828,942 tons

Total tonnage reported across the program, January 2022 – December 2024 (36 months).

8 haulers · 11 zones

The RecycLA franchise scope: 8 hauler names as reported in the data, operating 11 exclusive commercial franchise zones.

Data obtained under the California Public Records Act; cross-checked against CalRecycle (RDRS) and LA County records. Commercial franchise data only. Nothing here alleges misreporting or wrongdoing by any hauler, facility operator, or agency.

Methods

Hauler-reported first destinations are joined to facility-level state and county disposal ledgers to follow each ton’s second hop; diversion is computed under explicit, reproducible definitions (D2 conservative / D3 classifiable-only). Full methodology, findings, limitations, and re-run instructions: the dashboard’s methodology & data provenance section and docs/methodology.md in the repository.

Links & contact

• 2-minute visual explainer (what we found): /RecycLA/explainer.html
• Methods & recommendations (how we made this, and what should change): /RecycLA/methods.html
• Why it matters (climate, health, and the money): /RecycLA/why.html
• Full interactive dashboard: /RecycLA/index.html
• Share image: /RecycLA/og-card.png (1200×630)
• Contact: engineering@dyrt.co

Every figure on the explainer and dashboard is computed in-browser from the committed CSVs — the same artifacts cited above — and reconciled at load.