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TechnoratiSan Francisco OKs Toughest Recycling Law in US
Throwing orange peels, coffee grounds and grease-stained pizza boxes in the trash will be against the law in San Francisco, and could even lead to a fine.
![[(flickr photo by frankfarm)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/sanfran_recycling.jpg "sanfran_recycling.jpg")
The Board of Supervisors voted 9-2 Tuesday to approve Mayor Gavin Newsom's proposal for the most comprehensive mandatory composting and recycling law in the country. It's an aggressive push to cut greenhouse gas emissions and have the city sending nothing to landfills or incinerators by 2020.
"San Francisco has the best recycling and composting programs in the nation," Newsom said, praising the board's vote on a plan that some residents had decried as heavy-handed and impractical. "We can build on our success."
The ordinance is expected to take effect this fall.
The legislation calls for every residence and business in the city to have three separate color-coded bins for waste: blue for recycling, green for compost and black for trash.
Failing to properly sort your refuse could result in a fine after several warnings, but Newsom and other officials say fines will only be levied in the most egregious cases.
Fines for almost all residential customers and many small businesses - anyone who generates less than a cubic yard of refuse a week - are initially capped at $100. Businesses that don't have proper bins face escalating fines up to $500.
There is a moratorium on fines until at least July 2011 for tenants and owners of multifamily buildings or multitenant commercial properties to get people used to composting. Buildings where recycling carts won't fit can get a waiver.
"In any scenario there will be repeated notices and phone calls before we even start talking about fines," said Jared Blumenfeld, head of the city's Department of the Environment. "We don't want to fine people."
The proposal, hailed as an effective way to cut about two-thirds of the 618,000 tons of waste the city sent to landfill in 2007, drew resistance from some apartment building owners when details emerged about a year ago. And some residents were upset over the possibility of inspectors checking their garbage.
The ordinance calls for garbage collectors to leave tags on containers when they spot incorrectly sorted material, but those collectors are only going to view what's on top of the container and have no intention of going through them, said Robert Reed, a spokesman for San Francisco collectors Sunset Scavenger Co. and Golden Gate Disposal & Recycling Co., subsidiaries of Recology, formerly Norcal Waste Systems.
"Our role is to pick up the garbage and to make recycling as easy and convenient as possible for our customers," Reed said. "Our collection drivers will not become enforcers."
City officials would levy any fines, and the legislation doesn't provide funding for new trash inspectors.
"It doesn't create trash police," Blumenfeld said.
Support mixed
Newsom's proposal created odd political bedfellows at the Board of Supervisors.
It was co-sponsored by frequent Newsom critics, Supervisors Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi, while two of the mayor's most reliable allies, Supervisors Carmen Chu and Sean Elsbernd, were the only opponents. "This is a little too much big brother, even for me," Elsbernd said. "We've got a huge problem in my district and a lot of other parts of the city with people who go in and out of garbage cans at night scavenging. Who's going to be responsible for that? Are we creating a whole brand-new problem?"
Elsbernd also questioned assurances that fines would not be aggressively pursued against residents, saying similar promises were broken on legislation against leaving trash cans visible.
The San Francisco Apartment Association, a trade group for rental property owners, took a neutral stance on the plan after language was dropped that would have held landlords responsible for tenants' sorting.
Cities from Pittsburgh to San Diego have mandatory recycling. None, however, requires all food waste to be composted. Seattle passed a law in 2003 requiring people to have a compost bin but, unlike San Francisco, it did not mandate that all food waste go in there.
Reducing trash
Newsom floated the mandatory recycling idea in April 2008 as he faced the city's self-imposed goals of having a 75 percent recycling rate in 2010, with zero waste by 2020.
The rationale behind the move is clear. Material like food scraps and plant clippings that go into landfills take up costly space and decompose to form methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
A June 2008 report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a group focused on environmentally sound community development, said a zero waste approach is one of the fastest, cheapest and most effective ways to protect the climate. Cutting waste sent to landfills and incinerators would be like closing 21 percent of U.S. coal-fired power plants, the report said.
About 36 percent of what San Francisco sends to landfill is compostable, and another 31 percent is recyclable, a comprehensive study found.
By the city's count, it currently diverts 72 percent of its waste, best in the nation. If recyclables and compostables going into landfills were diverted, the city's recycling rate would jump to 90 percent, Blumenfeld said.
Only 22 percent of the city's 10,000 large apartment buildings have composting bins, but the number has tripled in the last year, Reed said.
"Once people start to compost," he said, "they find it easy to do."
One hang-up, of course, is the perceived yuck factor.
"It's a false phobia that things are going to smell," Reed said. "It's the same garbage you already had, it's just handling it differently, in a more environmentally responsible way."
Composting tips
-- You don't need a specially designed composting pail in your kitchen; a paper milk carton or a paper grocery bag work just fine.
-- With a paper grocery bag, put some newspaper in the bottom to absorb moisture.
-- Start with easy things - orange peels, coffee grounds, eggshells - to get the hang of it.
-- If you're using a paper bag, roll down the top to close it. Knot the end of compostable bags.
-- The composting bin has an attached lid. Keep it closed.
Source: Golden Gate Disposal & Recycling Co.
14 Comments so far
Show AllWell said, Oldtimer
Compost is just one part of a life cycle. Earth worms are great little composters and make all that stuff bio available. All you have to do is understand the process and let nature do its job. Appreciate the balance that is adapting to s rapidly changing environment.
Recycling? - Welcome to what the rest of the world has been doing for years.
It sounds a bit draconian but they're having to force a huge number of people to change from their lifelong unsustainable wasteful habits.
BTW, it's easy to have a camera mounted on a collection truck to inspect every bin that's lifted and emptied into it. It's not perfect but it can help to alert the driver/operater of a particular households batch of material and if they've done something bad they get a notice about it.
I wonder if Frisco is going to have some decent gasification plants operating as well using the material?
If you have any kind of yard you can compost a lot of organic waste anyway.
For others I recently I saw on a tech site an electric powered product about the size of a long esky that sits in your kitchen and automatically composts the food scraps you throw in it, churning it up, and eventually dumping the clean compost in a tray underneath to put on your plants. (even your indoor plants) - The machine was odour free and used pennies worth of electricity a month to run the churner blades.
EDIT: details added below.
(haven't tried the product but the concept sounds good)
"Stink-free compost right in the kitchen"
http://www.cnet.com/8301-13553_1-9881204-32.html
This is a good measure for folks that are relatively detached from thier use of resourcess and the level of waste they create.. It is a collective effort that may help change the way we look at consumption. It would be nice though if people could understand the benefits of a natural life.
Venice has mandatory recycling too....
the composting tips in the article are kind of strange seeing how San Francisco already has a composting program put into effect. A person doesn't have to compost at home. They can pay for the compost "green" bucket and throw a variety of things into it, including meat scraps and pizza boxes... two items which don't work in the a basic home compost set up....
Compost (green), recycle (blue) and trash (black) carts are already in place. But how does the city enforce code violators if the carts are set out on the street perhaps the night before pick up? Anyone could put anything in your cart. How does one prove guilt?
If I was fined and it was from a stranger in the dead of the night, I would contest the charge on, "unwittingly" in possession of article X.
Now that SF has their new green compost carts I imagine the new enforcement are acting as a form of incentive to get people to buy into the program....and if everyone buys into it, then the chances of my article X scenario above are greatly reduced.
Here's a link to SF Recycling. Our household just signed up for our own "green" cart last month. Very cool progam. Yard waste, pizza boxes, meat scraps, paper, sawdust, paper food stuff... it's pretty quick and painless. http://www.sfrecycling.com/
CD might just as well stop running any positive stories. Not only there isn't much interest, but somehow a good thing becomes bad, or at least suspect.
No problem doing it in Montreal? Well, Montreal is in Canada, and we are talking about the US, where EVERYTHING is a PROBLEM, as it either offends somebody, or limits somebody's freedom, or is just too hard. Can you even imagine how hard it must be to remember to throw your banana peel into a blue container, a soda can into a green one, and a candy wrapper into a gray one? You'd need hours (weeks, or maybe months - hey, this is the USA) of training, you'd need instructions, 1-800 numbers, disclaimers, liability insurance, penalties. . .
Yeah, you'll need penalties, because why would anyone do anything for the common good anyway? Just because it's the right thing to do?
I'm sorry, but the comments here depressed me. Yeah, you all have a point, yeah, corporations. . . politicians . . . , but in the meantime - before we make the whole world perfect - could this law just be good enough for now?
Dizi is correct in noting that corporate America is guilty of using too much packaging. However, in San Francisco, large chains such as Walmart, Walgreen and Safeway [which gives you a 3 cent credit for each reusable bag you bring] are already required to use reusable bags such as paper, and many locals already use their own fabric tote bags. The city already has a high recycle and compost percentage. Corporations who want to do business in the city are quickly becoming aware of this.
Let's hope this catches on all over the country.
Paper isn't as good as we might think.
The plastic film shopping bags are actually recyclable and secure top dollar in recycling world, but you need a recycler who participates and offers pick up services. Which are becoming more and more common as demand for a solution to plastic bags becomes front page. We have drop offs at all of our grocery stores in my area.
Paper bags actually aren't as "reusable" as everyone might think. That's the primary reason why "film" plastic bags were so effective in securing the market:they cost less to produce and cost less to transport. translation: less energy.
but anything helps
Put the burden on individuals and allow corporate America to sell us useless packaging. Re-use is better than recycling, IMHO. Ban plastic bags and packaging, because much of the South is covered in pine trees used to make paper pulp. Why not require reusable paper bags at Walmart, grocery stores, etc? Charge a 25 cent deposit per bag and few will trashed. And while I'm griping, pass a law that if something incorrectly scans a price, the store has to immediately pay the buyer $10. How often are we overcharged a fraction of a dollar and the only way to get a refund is to spend several minutes in the Customer Service department. A lot of people cannot afford to waste 30 minutes to get 25 cents, so the corporations get to make a little more profit at our expense. PUT THE BURDEN OF RECYCLING ON CORPORATIONS AND EASE THE LIVES OF TAXPAYING CITIZENS.
This is actually a good step albeit an inomplete one.
Montreal has a much tougher recycling code and they have little problem with compliance.
q
Montreal is a rather different place than anywhere in the US. It would make San Francisco's politics look like Topekas.
For example, all beer and most pop must be in refillable deposit-bottles, right?
Only if Madison Av. says it will enhance San Francisco's tourist economy. Green is good as gold!
Like, get them busy sorting trash and maybe they will quit bothering us about raping the planet?
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SOME people in this part of the country throw their trash in the food drive barrel. I even see trash thrown in the recycle bins and cardboard in the trash can. Unbroken-down boxes fill the cardboard dumpster, it's not an encouraging sign.
Want a Job? Sort trash and get paid with some of that Bail-Out money.
Anyone get the feeling that measures like this (which are fine things to do) are often done as a substitute for the really tough stuff?
Or perhaps, it's just the usual suspects, i.e., politicians polishing their liberal credentials so that they can move on to cushier, better paying jobs all the while finding yet another way to impose fines, fees and court costs.