San Bernardino's 65% Construction Debris Diversion Rule, Explained

Most guides to renting a dumpster talk about size and price. In San Bernardino there is a more consequential question for anyone pulling a building permit: how are you going to divert 65 percent of your debris from landfill, and can you prove it? Get that wrong and your permit sign-off stalls.

The rule that surprises people

Homeowners and contractors new to a permitted project in San Bernardino are often caught off guard by it. You cannot simply fill a container, send it to a landfill and be done. The City requires that most of your construction and demolition debris be recycled or reused rather than buried, and it requires documented proof.

This is not a San Bernardino quirk so much as California law applied locally, but the City administers it with specific requirements, and the responsibility for compliance lands on the permit holder.

Where the 65% comes from

California's CALGreen building code requires that at least 65 percent of construction and demolition materials be diverted from landfill through recycling or reuse. The City of San Bernardino implements this through its own Construction and Demolition Recycling Program under the municipal code.

The requirement applies to covered projects - typically new construction, additions, alterations and renovations that require a building permit and are not specifically exempt. Work needing only a plumbing, electrical or mechanical permit is generally outside it, as are some small projects, but the threshold catches most real renovation and construction work.

The Waste Management Plan

The mechanism is a document called a Waste Management Plan, or WMP. You submit it to the City's Public Works Department along with your building permit application, before the project starts.

The plan estimates how much debris the project will generate, broken down by material type, and describes how each stream will be diverted - which materials go to recycling, which are reused, and which unavoidably go to landfill. It sets an anticipated diversion rate that has to meet the 65 percent threshold.

At the end of the project you submit the proof: weight receipts from the facilities, hauler diversion reports, and any reuse documentation, showing you actually achieved what the plan promised. Fall short on the documentation and you can forfeit a diversion deposit and delay your final sign-off.

What counts as diversion

Diversion means the material did not go into a landfill. In practice that means recycling or reuse.

The easy wins are the heavy, cleanly separable streams. Clean concrete, block and asphalt can be crushed into base material. Clean wood can be chipped. Metal is recycled and has scrap value. Cardboard and clean green waste are both readily diverted. Drywall can often be recycled at the right facility.

The enemy of diversion is mixing. A container of thoroughly mixed debris is hard to divert and often gets counted as disposal. A set of reasonably separated streams diverts easily. So the single most useful habit on a San Bernardino job is keeping your clean concrete, metal, wood and cardboard out of the general trash container.

How to actually hit the target

Sixty-five percent sounds daunting until you look at the weights. On most construction and demolition projects, the heavy materials - concrete, masonry, dirt - dominate the tonnage. Divert those cleanly and you are most of the way to the target before you have touched the light debris.

So the strategy is straightforward: run a dedicated container for clean concrete and heavy inert material routed to a recycler, separate your metal and cardboard, keep green waste clean for composting, and let the general container take only what genuinely cannot be diverted. Done that way, 65 percent is very achievable.

Documentation the City wants

The paperwork is where projects stumble, because it has to be gathered as you go rather than reconstructed at the end. Keep every scale ticket and weight receipt from every facility. Keep the recycler's documentation showing what was diverted. If you reused material on site, document that too.

Using a hauler that routes to permitted recycling facilities and provides those receipts as a matter of course removes most of the pain. The alternative - chasing paperwork across several facilities after the fact - is exactly the scramble the deposit is designed to punish.

Where a local hauler fits

This is where working with a company that knows the San Bernardino system earns its keep. We route your debris to permitted recycling and disposal facilities that document the diversion, we run a tarped truck, and we provide the weight receipts and diversion records your Waste Management Plan requires.

We cannot file your WMP for you - that is the permit holder's document - but we can make the diversion side of it work in practice, which is the part most projects find hardest. If you tell us it is a covered project, we set up the container mix that hits the target rather than leaving you to discover the shortfall at closeout.

The bottom line

On any permitted construction or demolition project in San Bernardino, plan for the 65 percent diversion requirement from the start. File a Waste Management Plan with Public Works, separate your heavy and recyclable streams, keep every receipt, and use a hauler who routes to permitted recyclers and documents it. Handled that way it is routine. Ignored until closeout, it is a delayed permit and a forfeited deposit.