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SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Long before David Duong became founder and CEO of California Waste Solutions, his family's American story began in San Francisco, where Vietnamese refugees who had lost nearly everything started rebuilding their lives from an apartment in the Tenderloin.
The Duong family arrived in San Francisco after fleeing Vietnam and spending months in a refugee camp in the Philippines. They settled in the Tenderloin, crowded together as they adjusted to a new country, learned English, worked, studied and searched for ways to support one another.
At night, family members collected discarded bottles, cardboard and other recyclable materials from San Francisco streets. What began as a way to survive would eventually become the foundation of a family recycling business that expanded across Northern California and later back to Vietnam.
That San Francisco chapter is now receiving renewed attention as The King of Trash, a feature documentary about David Duong and his family, returns to the Bay Area for a new series of screenings.
Directed by filmmaker and cinematographer Errol Webber, the documentary traces the family's journey from the fall of Saigon and refugee displacement to the streets of San Francisco and the decades of work that eventually produced California Waste Solutions and Vietnam Waste Solutions.
After an eight-city U.S. pre-screening tour that drew more than 5,000 attendees in San Jose, Oakland, Sacramento, Orange County, Dallas, Houston, Washington, D.C., and Orlando, the film is returning to the region where the family's American life began.
Nearly 1,000 people have registered or joined waiting lists for the current Bay Area screenings. The production has also been selected for the 2026 Red Rock Film Festival in Utah.
The family's story began far from the Tenderloin.
In April 1975, as Saigon fell, David Duong led 23 family members onto a small boat and into the open sea. They left behind the family's paper-recycling business in South Vietnam.
David's father, Jim Thu Tai Duong, was known in Vietnam as "Vua Rác," or "the King of Trash." He had built the business around a principle that would remain with the family for generations: nothing should be wasted — not materials, not opportunity and not human potential.
"We almost died out there in the ocean. We had only one choice — survive," Duong recalls in the film.
The family eventually reached the Philippines, where they spent months in a refugee camp in Mandaluyong before receiving the opportunity to begin again in the United States.
They arrived in San Francisco in 1979 with little money and a large family to support.
Seventeen family members shared an apartment as they tried to establish themselves in the Tenderloin. For a family that once operated a recycling business in Vietnam, the work they found on San Francisco's streets was both familiar and dramatically different from the life they had lost.
At night they collected bottles and cardboard. By day they studied and worked other jobs.
Duong's father put the family's philosophy plainly: "There is honor in every kind of honest work."
Those nights on San Francisco streets became more than a means of survival. They were the beginning of the family's return to the recycling industry.
"We came to this country with nothing but hope. Everything we built came from hard work and faith," David Duong says in The King of Trash.
The documentary shows that California Waste Solutions was not created in a single moment.
Its roots reach back to the family's earliest years in San Francisco, when recycling meant collecting discarded material by hand and finding enough value in it to help support a refugee family starting over.
Over time, those small efforts grew.
In 1992, David Duong founded California Waste Solutions in Oakland with eight used trucks and a commitment to rebuild the family's recycling business in America.
The company expanded from those beginnings into municipal recycling operations serving Oakland and San Jose.
Today, CWS serves more than 343,000 customers across Oakland and San Jose and operates six Bay Area recycling facilities. Its Oakland operation processes approximately 1,000 tons of material each week, while San Jose handles approximately 1,300 tons.
Across its history, the company says it has managed more than three million tons of material, with more than 717,000 tons processed annually.
The company's first Oakland franchise arrived in 1993. The family later expanded into San Jose while building an operating network around collection, processing, customer service and the marketing of recovered commodities.
Yet the documentary repeatedly returns to where that growth started: a refugee family collecting recyclable material at night in San Francisco.
A May 2026 California Waste Solutions briefing, "Behind the Scenes: What It Takes to Keep Recycling Running Every Day," describes the daily work that continues behind the company's operations.
It is a much larger system today, but many of the principles are the same ones the family relied on during those first years in San Francisco.
Each day begins before most neighborhoods are awake. Drivers and operations teams inspect vehicles, check equipment and review routes.
Once trucks leave the yard, collection moves through traffic and changing street conditions. Facility teams receive incoming material, manage its flow through processing systems and coordinate their work with collection crews.
Mechanics keep trucks and sorting equipment operating. When weather, volume or street conditions change, crews adjust to keep the system moving.
"For most people, recycling is part of a routine they rarely think about," said Michael Duong, president of California Waste Solutions. "Bins are placed at the curb, trucks arrive on schedule, and materials are collected without interruption. It feels simple, and that is exactly how it should feel. But behind that simplicity is a system that depends on coordination, preparation, and consistent execution."
That daily discipline is one of the connections The King of Trash draws between the family's past and present.
The scale has changed considerably since the nights of collecting bottles and cardboard in San Francisco, but the film presents the work itself as a continuous part of the family's story.
Family leadership remains part of the company's operating structure. Kristina Duong oversees financial operations as CFO. Victor Duong, who started by driving trucks, works in operations and community partnerships. David's son, Michael Duong, serves as president, carrying the business into another generation.
For the Duong family, San Francisco represents more than a place they passed through after arriving in America.
It was where they learned how to start again.
The Tenderloin apartment, long working days and nighttime recycling routes became part of the family's earliest experience as Vietnamese refugees in the United States.
Their experience also sits within a broader San Francisco history shaped by generations of immigrants and Asian American families who established new lives, businesses and communities throughout the city.
For the Duongs, those first years meant adapting to a new language and culture while finding ways for a large family to survive economically.
Recycling became one of those ways.
The work was modest compared with what came later, but it gave the family something on which to build.
More than four decades later, The King of Trash returns to those experiences not simply as background to a business story, but as an account of what rebuilding looked like before there were municipal contracts, recycling facilities or thousands of customers.
The principles that developed through the family's experience in Vietnam and San Francisco were eventually carried back across the Pacific.
Vietnam Waste Solutions, founded by the family, developed the Da Phuoc Integrated Waste Management Facility and the Long An Green Environmental Technology Park.
VWS manages up to 7,500 tons of waste per day in the Ho Chi Minh City region and has introduced landfill engineering, leachate treatment and environmental monitoring as part of its operations.
"Recycling is not just about materials. It's about mindset, that nothing and no one should ever be wasted," Duong says in The King of Trash.
That philosophy has also extended into community programs in the United States and Vietnam, including scholarship support, assistance for cancer patients, Vietnamese language and cultural programs, disaster relief after Typhoon Yagi and youth organizations such as the Oakland Dynamites.
The King of Trash is not presented simply as a story about the growth of a company.
The film follows war, displacement, life at sea, a refugee camp, crowded housing, nighttime recycling work, used trucks and the years required to build something larger.
Director Errol Webber described the film as a portrait of a family rebuilding after profound loss.
"When I met the Duong family, I saw a story that reached far beyond business or success, a story about endurance, faith, and the quiet power of rebuilding a life from nothing," Webber said. "Their journey reminds us that the American Dream is not defined by what we achieve, but by the humanity we share and the legacy we choose to build."
For Bay Area audiences, much of that history happened close to home.
Before California Waste Solutions, before the company's recycling facilities and before its expansion into Vietnam, there was a refugee family living together in San Francisco and collecting bottles and cardboard from the city's streets.
"This is not just a refugee story," Webber said. "It's a story about the American Dream, about building bridges between nations, and about finding humanity in what the world throws away."
The current screening series continues across the Bay Area:
Dublin Special Screening
Saturday, Sept. 19, 2026
5–7 p.m.
Regal Hacienda Crossings
San Jose Final VIP Pre-Screening
Saturday, Sept. 26, 2026
4–8 p.m.
AMC Eastridge
David Duong, members of the cast and director Errol Webber are expected to attend the San Jose event.
Emeryville Special Screening
Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026
5–8 p.m.
AMC Bay Street Emeryville
The film is also scheduled to appear at the Red Rock Film Festival in Utah on Friday, Sept. 25, 2026.
RSVP and event details:
www.thekingoftrash.us/festival-journey
The King of Trash is a feature documentary directed by Errol Webber. It tells the story of David Duong and the Duong family, Vietnamese refugees who survived the fall of Saigon, rebuilt their lives in San Francisco and Northern California, and eventually founded California Waste Solutions and Vietnam Waste Solutions.
Founded in 1992 by David Duong, California Waste Solutions provides recycling collection, processing, customer service and material recovery for residential, commercial and municipal customers in Northern California, including Oakland and San Jose.
Through Vietnam Waste Solutions, the family also operates environmental infrastructure in the Ho Chi Minh City region.
California Waste Solutions is headquartered at 1211 Embarcadero, Suite 300, Oakland, CA 94606.
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