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Recycling Zones Promote Jobs, Economic Development: Sacramento expands to Regional Recycling Market Development Zone

SACRAMENTO—Recycling-based businesses and manufacturers got a big boost for economic development and assistance from the State when the California Integrated Waste Management Board voted to renew and expand the local Sacramento Recycling Market Development Zone (RMDZ) from 7.3 square miles (4,500 acres) in the Florin-Perkins area to more than 994 square miles (over 636,000 acres) encompassing industrial regions from throughout the entire greater Sacramento area.

The Enterprise Zone of West Sacramento (including land adjacent to the Port of Sacramento) and the entire County of Sacramento with the cities of Citrus Heights, Elk Grove, Galt, Folsom, Iselton, and Sacramento are now included in the huge new and redesignated Sacramento Regional Recycling Market Development Zone, one of 40 such zones established throughout California 10 years ago by the Board—the State's primary recycling agency and a part of the California Environmental Protection Agency.

"We could not be happier to approve Sacramento's request to renew and expand its RMDZ," said Board Chair Linda Moulton-Patterson. "This new regionwide zone will create economic opportunities for growth and jobs all over the greater Sacramento area, bringing increased prosperity and further enhancing local environmental protection efforts. Every time a reusable material like plastic, paper, glass, or green waste is reclaimed from the waste stream and manufactured into a new, useful product, that's a positive step in resource conservation that leaves the world a better place for our children and grandchildren."

RMDZs are set up similarly to the federally designated Enterprise Zones and provide State-sponsored support to recycling-based businesses in the form of low-interest loans, grants, streamlined permitting, technical assistance, help with siting a plant or company, and access to materials for manufacturing feedstock, to name a few services. In return, the businesses create jobs and economic development, and help cities and counties to divert usable materials from the waste stream in accordance with State law to reduce the amount of waste going to landfills in California.

Since the Sacramento RMDZ was established 10 years ago, the Board has provided three low-interest business loans totaling over $2.78 million to manufacturers working with recycled-content materials:

• Dynamic Concrete Cutting & Demolition, Inc. ($2 million) for working capital and purchase of capital goods.
• Fiberwood, Inc. ($150,000) for working capital to divert 24,000 tons of mixed paper annually.
• Philip Lionudakis, an organics composting operation, ($633,300) for real property and site improvements.

According to the City of Sacramento, the Board's business loans have generated nearly $6.2 million in economic activity to date, have created more than 60 jobs, and are responsible for diverting approximately 74,000 tons per year of usable materials from landfills.

The expanded zone will include more than 42 square miles (27,000 acres) of land currently zoned for industrial use. The Sacramento County Business Environmental Resource Center (BERC) will become the lead agency for the regional RMDZ and will continue to provide business development services, as well as technical, financial, and marketing assistance. The BERC will also coordinate with other programs that offer marketing and business assistance to companies eligible to locate within the new RMDZ.

The new zone will also facilitate increased partnership opportunities with other existing business assistance programs, such as special economic development loan programs and the Local Agency Military Base Recovery Areas (LAMBRA) program,  to provide additional incentives to manufacturers using recycled-content materials. For more information about the LAMBRA program, please contact Eve Silverman at the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency (916) 440-1399, ext. 1411.

The expansion project came about through a collaborative application effort by Sacramento County and the cities located with the expansion area and has support from a range of agencies such as the Sacramento Employment and Training Agency, the Solid Waste Advisory Committee, Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency, Sacramento Area Trade and Commerce Organization, the West Sacramento Chamber of Commerce, and local economic development entities.

The new regional zone will make RMDZ services available to more business enterprises in more areas of greater Sacramento and Yolo Counties. Incentives available to recycling-based businesses, industries, and manufacturers—through the RMDZ—will foster sustainable economic growth and help increase the amount of materials being diverted from the local waste stream, a mandate of the Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989 that requires cities and counties to keep 50 percent of their waste out of landfills. Five of the seven jurisdictions in the new RMDZ have already met or exceeded the State waste diversion mandate as follows: Citrus Heights and Sacramento County, a regional agency (51 percent); Elk Grove (51 percent); Isleton (50 percent); the City of Sacramento (52 percent); and West Sacramento (64 percent).

Information about individual city and county programs is available on the Board's local government Web site at www.calrecycle.ca.gov/LGTools/PARIS/jurpgmsu.asp.

In addition to the technical and business-assistance services available from the RMDZ, the Board reaches out to recycling-based businesses and manufacturers with other programs designed to help them succeed.

• Free advertising for the products that they create from recycled materials and recycled-content feedstocks (such as paper, plastic, glass, tires, etc.) is available on the Board's RecycleStore marketing Web site at www.RecycleStore.com.
• Companies are encouraged to take advantage of CalMAX, the Board's free materials exchange service. CalMAX provides classified ad listings of surplus materials of every kind-from feedstocks of glass, plastic, and paper to furniture, computers, lumber and much more at www.calrecycle.ca.gov/CalMAX/.
• The Board offers a no-cost, searchable Recycled-Content Products Database online where businesses can list their services and products (www.calrecycle.ca.gov/RCP/). This site is especially useful to recycling-based businesses and manufacturers who need help promoting and advertising their services and inventories.

For more information about the Board's RMDZ program in general, please visit www.calrecycle.ca.gov/RMDZ/ or call (916) 341-6600.

The six-member California Integrated Waste Management Board is responsible for protecting public health and safety and the environment through management of the estimated 72 million tons of solid waste generated in California each year. The Board works in partnership with local government, industry, and the public to reduce solid waste disposal and ensure environmentally safe landfills. California now diverts 48 percent of its solid waste away from disposal.

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