The King of Trash Continues Bay Area Screening Run in Dublin, San Jose and Emeryville

Documentary follows the Duong family from the fall of Saigon and refugee resettlement in San Francisco to the founding of California Waste Solutions

SAN JOSE, CA, UNITED STATES, September 18, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- California Waste Solutions, Inc. and the producers of The King of Trash are continuing the documentary’s Bay Area screening run with events in Dublin, San Jose and Emeryville, bringing the Duong family’s story of war, displacement, rebuilding and entrepreneurship back to the region where much of their American life took shape.

The 72-minute documentary screens Saturday, Sept. 19, from 5 to 7 p.m. at Regal Hacienda Crossings, 5000 Dublin Blvd. in Dublin. The final VIP pre-screening will follow Saturday, Sept. 26, from 4 to 8 p.m. at AMC Eastridge 15, 2190 Eastridge Loop in San Jose. Although that event marks the final VIP pre-screening, the Bay Area public screening series will continue Saturday, Oct. 3, from 5 to 8 p.m. at AMC Bay Street 16, 5614 Bay St., Suite 220, in Emeryville.

Advance registration is required for the public screenings, and seating is limited. Event details and registration are available at www.thekingoftrash.us/festival-journey. Media inquiries and access requests for the San Jose event may be directed to info@thekingoftrash.us.

Directed by award-winning filmmaker and cinematographer Errol Webber and produced by Webber and Bobby Vu, The King of Trash follows four generations of the Duong family across China, Vietnam and the United States. The film examines repeated loss, migration and rebuilding, and how a family that once operated a recycling business in Vietnam eventually rebuilt from the ground up in California.

At the center of the documentary is David Duong and the family members who would later build California Waste Solutions and Vietnam Waste Solutions.

FROM THE FALL OF SAIGON TO SAN FRANCISCO
The family’s recycling history began decades before California Waste Solutions existed.

David Duong’s grandfather built a business in China before the family was forced to start over in Vietnam. There, David’s father, Jim Tai Thu Duong, established a recovered-paper business and became known among traders as “the King of Trash,” the nickname that would later inspire the documentary’s title.

The family’s work in recycling became more than a business. It reflected a practical belief that materials others considered discarded could still have value, a principle that later followed the family across countries and generations.

That stability ended with the fall of Saigon.

In April 1975, the family lost the business and property it had built in Vietnam. Jim, his children, including David, Victor and Kristina Duong, and other relatives fled the country by boat.

The documentary revisits the uncertainty of that journey through family testimony, archival material and dramatized sequences.

“We almost died out there in the ocean. We had only one choice: survive,” David says in the film.

The family eventually reached the Philippines and spent time in a refugee camp before being accepted for resettlement in the United States.

When they arrived in San Francisco, more than a dozen relatives shared an apartment in the Tenderloin. They had escaped Vietnam and reached safety, but rebuilding their lives would require starting almost entirely from the beginning.

REBUILDING IN SAN FRANCISCO
The family’s early years in San Francisco were defined by work.

At night, family members collected bottles, cardboard, paper and other recyclable materials from city streets and sold what they recovered. During the day, they worked, studied English, attended school and learned how to navigate a new country.

The scale was small, but the work brought the family back to an industry it already understood.

Those nights collecting material on San Francisco streets were not yet the beginning of California Waste Solutions. They were something more basic: a way for a refugee family with limited resources to support itself while building toward a more stable future.

That distinction matters in the documentary because the film does not present the Duongs’ later business growth as an overnight transformation. The story unfolds through years of ordinary work, shared responsibility and repeated attempts to build something more permanent.

The family’s experience also reflected a broader chapter in Vietnamese American history. Thousands of refugees who arrived in the United States after the Vietnam War entered unfamiliar communities with limited financial resources, often taking whatever work was available while their children learned English, attended American schools and adapted to a new culture.

For the Duongs, recycling became both a familiar trade and a path forward.

COGIDO PAPER CORPORATION AND A SECOND BEGINNING
In 1983, the family founded CoGiDo Paper Corporation, marking a more formal return to the recovered-materials business.

Over the next six years, CoGiDo grew from the family’s early recycling work into a substantial operation.

David also helped other newly arrived Vietnamese immigrants enter the recycling trade. According to the family’s account, he helped some obtain their first trucks, taught them how to identify and grade recovered material and provided a dependable buyer for what they collected.

That arrangement extended the family’s rebuilding beyond its own household. People who had arrived in the United States with limited capital could enter the recycling business through work, knowledge and access to a market for the materials they recovered.

By 1989, CoGiDo had grown enough to attract the interest of a larger U.S. waste company, which acquired the business.

David remained with the acquiring company and gained direct experience in a larger waste-management organization, including exposure to municipal contracting and the operational requirements of providing public recycling services.

That period became an important bridge between the family’s recovered-paper business and what came next.

Rather than beginning California Waste Solutions without industry experience, David entered the new venture after years of working at several levels of the recycling business: collecting material by hand, operating a family company, helping independent collectors build routes and then learning how a larger waste company competed for and managed municipal contracts.

CALIFORNIA WASTE SOLUTIONS BEGINS WITH EIGHT USED TRUCKS
In 1992, David Duong purchased eight used trucks and founded California Waste Solutions.

The company began in Oakland and expanded over the following decades into a recycling operation serving major Bay Area communities.

Today, California Waste Solutions provides recycling services in Oakland and San Jose. The company serves more than 343,000 customers in the Bay Area and processes more than 717,000 tons of material annually.

Its operations encompass collection, processing, customer service and the marketing of recovered commodities.

The scale is dramatically different from the family’s earliest years in San Francisco, but the documentary draws a continuous line between those periods. Recycling was first a family trade in Vietnam, then a means of survival in San Francisco, then a small business, and eventually the foundation for a larger municipal recycling operation.

David describes that connection in the film when speaking about the workers behind modern recycling systems:

“The people who collect and sort our waste are not invisible. They are the foundation of every city.”

For most residents, recycling is experienced at the curb. A container is set out, a truck arrives and the material leaves the neighborhood.

Behind that routine are drivers, mechanics, equipment operators, sorters, customer-service employees and facility teams whose work keeps the system functioning every day.

The King of Trash places those workers within a broader family history in which recycling was never treated as invisible work.

FAMILY LEADERSHIP ACROSS GENERATIONS
California Waste Solutions remains closely connected to the Duong family.

David Duong serves as Founder and CEO. His son Michael Duong serves as President, while Johnny Duong is Chief Operating Officer. Kristina Duong serves as Chief Financial Officer, and Victor Duong is Executive Vice President of Public Affairs.

The leadership structure reflects one of the documentary’s central themes: the company did not develop around one individual working alone. Different members of the family assumed different responsibilities as the business grew.

That pattern had existed since the family’s early years in San Francisco, when rebuilding depended on relatives contributing in different ways to the same household.

The documentary features David, Victor and Kristina Duong, along with other family members, and is dedicated to Jim Tai Thu Duong and Anh Thi Le.

The result is less a conventional founder biography than a multigenerational family history in which recycling serves as the thread connecting different countries, businesses and periods of the family’s life.

RETURNING TO VIETNAM
The story eventually returned to the country the family had fled.

In the early 2000s, David returned to Vietnam as an investor and became involved in the development of large-scale environmental infrastructure.

Through Vietnam Waste Solutions, the family developed the Da Phuoc Integrated Waste Management Facility, an approximately 341-acre site serving the Ho Chi Minh City region.

The return carried significance beyond the business itself.

The Duong family had left Vietnam after losing the recycling enterprise it had built there. Decades later, members of the same family returned with experience accumulated in the United States and invested in environmental infrastructure in the country they once had to leave.

The documentary uses that return to connect several stages of the family’s history: Jim Tai Thu Duong’s recycling business in Vietnam, the refugee journey, the family’s years collecting recyclable materials in San Francisco, the growth of CoGiDo Paper Corporation, the creation of California Waste Solutions and the later development of Vietnam Waste Solutions.

Seen together, those chapters show a family repeatedly returning to the same basic industry under radically different circumstances.

COMMUNITY WORK ACROSS CALIFORNIA AND VIETNAM
The family’s ties between California and Vietnam have also extended into community and humanitarian work.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, David and Victor Duong supported the production and distribution of masks and sanitizer, with millions of protective items donated in California, according to family and company records.

The family also sent 1,200 oxygen concentrators to hospitals in Vietnam during the pandemic.

Those efforts reflected the same cross-Pacific relationship that appears throughout the documentary: a family shaped by both Vietnam and California maintaining active connections to communities in both places.

David also serves as chair of the Vietnamese American Business Association, an organization with more than 2,000 members that connects Vietnamese American entrepreneurs, professionals and community leaders.

That work extends the documentary beyond the growth of two recycling businesses. The larger story includes the network of refugees, immigrants, workers, entrepreneurs and community organizations that developed around the family over several decades.

MORE THAN A BUSINESS STORY
Although recycling and entrepreneurship are central to The King of Trash, the documentary is not simply a corporate history.

Its larger subject is what happens when a family repeatedly loses what it has built and must find a way to begin again.

The story spans political upheaval in China, the fall of Saigon, a dangerous journey by sea, refugee life in the Philippines, crowded housing in San Francisco, nighttime recycling work, the growth and sale of CoGiDo Paper Corporation, and the creation of California Waste Solutions from eight used trucks.

Each chapter changes the scale of the story without changing its underlying subject.

The film’s title comes from Jim Tai Thu Duong’s nickname, but the idea behind it becomes broader as the documentary progresses. Recycling becomes a metaphor as well as a business: finding value where others may see only what has been discarded.

For Bay Area audiences, that history is also geographically close.

San Francisco was where the family first settled in the United States and began rebuilding through work. Oakland later became the headquarters of California Waste Solutions. San Jose became another major market for the company and remains home to one of the country’s largest Vietnamese American communities.

The current screening series brings the documentary into Dublin and the Tri-Valley, then to San Jose for its final VIP pre-screening, followed by another public showing in Emeryville.

DUBLIN, SAN JOSE AND EMERYVILLE SCREENINGS
The next public screening will take place Saturday, Sept. 19, from 5 to 7 p.m. at Regal Hacienda Crossings, 5000 Dublin Blvd. in Dublin.

The Dublin program is free and open to the public. Advance registration is required, and seating is limited.

The San Jose Final VIP Pre-Screening will take place Saturday, Sept. 26, from 4 to 8 p.m. at AMC Eastridge 15, 2190 Eastridge Loop.

The San Jose event begins with the VIP arrival and red-carpet program, followed by the screening program. David Duong, members of the Duong family and cast, and director Errol Webber are expected to attend.

The designation “Final VIP Pre-Screening” refers to the final event in the invitation-focused VIP series. Public screenings will continue afterward.

Members of the media seeking access to the San Jose event may contact info@thekingoftrash.us for arrangements.

The Bay Area run will continue Saturday, Oct. 3, from 5 to 8 p.m. at AMC Bay Street 16, 5614 Bay St., Suite 220, in Emeryville.

The Emeryville screening is free and open to the public.

The film is also scheduled to appear at the 2026 Red Rock Film Festival in Utah on Friday, Sept. 25, between the Dublin and San Jose dates.

Complete Bay Area event information and registration are available at www.thekingoftrash.us/festival-journey.

THE KING OF TRASH SCREENING SCHEDULE
+ DUBLIN SPECIAL SCREENING
Saturday, Sept. 19, 2026
5 to 7 p.m.
Regal Hacienda Crossings
5000 Dublin Blvd., Dublin
Free and open to the public.
+ SAN JOSE FINAL VIP PRE-SCREENING
Saturday, Sept. 26, 2026
4 to 8 p.m.
AMC Eastridge 15
2190 Eastridge Loop, San Jose
VIP arrival, red carpet and screening program. Media access by advance arrangement.
+ EMERYVILLE SPECIAL SCREENING
Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026
5 to 8 p.m.
AMC Bay Street 16
5614 Bay St., Suite 220, Emeryville
Free and open to the public.

Registration and event details:
www.thekingoftrash.us/festival-journey

ABOUT THE KING OF TRASH
The King of Trash is a 72-minute feature documentary directed by award-winning filmmaker and cinematographer Errol Webber.

The film follows David Duong and the Duong family across generations, from the family’s recycling roots in Asia and the fall of Saigon through refugee resettlement in the United States, the creation of California Waste Solutions and the later development of Vietnam Waste Solutions.

Filmed in California and Vietnam, the documentary features David, Victor and Kristina Duong, along with other members of the family. It is dedicated to Jim Tai Thu Duong and Anh Thi Le.

Official website: www.thekingoftrash.us
Media: info@thekingoftrash.us

ABOUT CALIFORNIA WASTE SOLUTIONS
Founded in 1992 by David Duong, California Waste Solutions provides recycling collection, processing, customer service and material recovery services for residential, commercial and municipal customers in Northern California, including Oakland and San Jose.

The company serves more than 343,000 customers and processes more than 717,000 tons of material annually.

Through Vietnam Waste Solutions, the family also operates environmental infrastructure serving the Ho Chi Minh City region.

California Waste Solutions is headquartered at 1211 Embarcadero, Suite 300, Oakland, CA 94606.
www.calwaste.com

Wendy Nguyen
The King Of Trash
info@thekingoftrash.us
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THE KING OF TRASH | A Vietnamese American Refugee Story