Date: September 8, 2025
Author: Becky Neal, Senior Strategic Manager of Compliance
When the City of Long Beach closed its last waste-to-energy (WTE) facility in early 2024, it marked more than the end of an aging incineration contract. The structural shakeup signals a much broader shift in how municipalities, waste managers, and sustainability teams need to think about Total Waste Management (TWM) going forward.
The move reflects the growing urgency to re-examine long-standing systems as new legislation, rising costs, community pressure, and ambitious climate goals reshape the waste landscape. For organizations navigating this space, adaptation is no longer a future consideration — it’s a current necessity.
Burn Notice
California has never been especially friendly to incineration, but a turning point came in 2022 with the passage of Assembly Bill 1857 (AB 1857). The law ended a long-standing incentive allowing cities to count 10% of waste sent to WTE facilities toward their required 50% recycling and diversion goals. Without that credit, many municipalities were left with little economic or regulatory reason to continue utilizing the incinerators.
Additionally, WTE tipping fees are generally higher than landfill fees. For cities dealing with tight budgets, this cost difference is significant. In communities like Long Beach, where concerns about air pollution and environmental justice have been prominent for years, the case for maintaining WTE facilities no longer stood strong.
As a result, Covanta, the operator of the Southeast Resource Recovery Facility (SERRF), exercised its option to end the contract early, citing financial and operational challenges. This left the City of Long Beach with no choice but to reassess its waste management strategy and explore alternative processing solutions.
TWM Impact
The closure of waste-to-energy plants doesn’t impact California alone; there are broader implications for the entire waste ecosystem. Landfills are re-emerging as a primary outlet for municipal solid waste, much of which has been rerouted to landfills in Riverside County, San Bernardino, and, in some cases, as far away as Arizona. This shift brings added costs, as longer haul routes, labor demands, and rising landfill tipping fees all contribute to higher overall disposal expenses.
The environmental trade-offs are also becoming harder to ignore. Increased transportation distances contribute to greater greenhouse gas emissions, and heavier reliance on landfilling only adds to methane output, making it more difficult for organizations to meet their sustainability and climate goals. Not to mention the loss of local energy generation that some municipalities counted on. Without them, cities are forced to look elsewhere to fill that gap, which may require long-term investment in new infrastructure.
From a Total Waste Management perspective, this transition is both a disruption and a chance to evolve. It’s prompting waste managers to take a closer look at how they manage costs, meet regulatory requirements, and deliver on sustainability goals. Organizations that act now will be better equipped to build flexible, future-ready systems that can adapt as the waste landscape continues to change.
What Comes Next?
We tend to follow momentum, and right now, cleaner, more scalable alternatives are leading the charge. For example, Anaerobic digestion is emerging as a preferred solution for processing organics, while modular systems are offering more localized, lower-emission ways to manage residuals.
Even technologies like gasification and plasma arc, though not yet widely adopted, point to a future where energy recovery can happen with far fewer trade-offs. Still, every alternative brings its own set of challenges, from permitting and public perception to infrastructure and investment.
Finding the right waste and recycling partner is key to navigating these changes with clarity and confidence. Now is the time to assess where your strategy stands and what it will take to future-proof it. Learn more about our Total Waste Management approach by visiting: https://www.envitainc.com/services/total-waste-management/