San Francisco Leads the Way

[+ Lucky]

On a recent visit to San Francisco, I was surprised to notice that every store, I do mean every one, that I patronized offered only paper bags. There was no "paper or plastic" question asked. Knowing how much trouble plastic bags are in the long term, I wondered why every city, if not the whole state, didn't take up this measure with which the stores all seemed able to comply.

 

Now today I read that even coffee grinds and orange peels will no longer be acceptable as apart of the trash. Special composting rules now apply to these items. yes, only in San Francisco. Here's the article from the SF Chronicle:

 

 

S.F. OKs toughest recycling law in U.S.

 

John Coté, Chronicle Staff Writer

 

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

 

 

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.

 

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.

[edjames]

A recent tax initiative sponsored by Mayor Mike Bloomberg to charge a 5 cent tax on plastic bags was recently withdrawn here in NYC.

 

Many thought it a great way to raise revenue and help endose an eco-friendly agenda.

 

Alas, too many objections from businesses lead to it's demise, but personally, I'd like to see it come back again in another budget proposal.

 

Many stores like Trader Joes and Whole Foods no longer offer plastic bags. Most of the worst offenders do offer an eco-friendly reusuable tote but it must be purchased seperately, usually for 99 cents.

 

If you really want to see plastic bags being utilized at their worst take a tour of Chinatown and watch the Asian grandmas getting on the buses loaded down with produce in an abundance of plastic bags! Also, strangely, the Green Market vendors do not offer paper and rely solely on plastic.

 

Publix supermarkets in Florida are the worst offenders. They waste plastic bags.

 

ED

 

ED

[josephga]

I have 2 of those reusable totes that I got from publix

[seaboy4hire]

Plastic bags about 3 cents a bag paper I think it is either 5 or 10 cents a bag, I forget but I know it is one or the other. Just about everything in a grocery store goes out in a bag. That 5 or 10 cents a bag for a paper bag does add up when during good times the grocer is lucky to etch out a 2% profit. Not trying to justify it but just sayin.

 

Hugs,

Greg

[MsGuy]

What Greg is "just sayin" is just common sense. Unless SF is prepared to operate the world's largest compost heap it'll all wind up in the same landfill. Has anyone penciled out the carbon footprint of all the extra garbage truck runs? The cost in "free" labor to SF residents of complying with the ordinance? This kind feel-good silliness is wasteful self indulgence by the Greens.

[+ Lucky]

...easy to say when you have that green dot under your name!

[Lookin]

It's actually a pretty well thought out program, managed by the private company contracted to handle the City's waste collection. The company provides each resident with a regular trash bin (monthly fee), a recycling bin (free), and a compost bin (free). All the resident has to do is get the right garbage in the right bin, and I don't know of anyone who considers that a major burden. If you recycle enough, you can even get a discount on your monthly fee for regular trash.

 

The private company runs the composting operation, and sells the finished product to local gardeners and growers. It's a big hit with local wineries because the compost is so rich in nutrients. They also sell it to compost retailers, and once they let San Francisco residents come and pick up a free bag of the stuff. The fact that they make money on it almost guarantees that it won't end up in a landfill.

 

Don't know about the carbon footprint of the trucks they run, but I expect they did put a pencil to it in order to justify the program. I do know that they run all their trucks on LNG or biodiesel.

 

This isn't a new program. A couple thousand San Francisco restaurants have been participating for years, and many of them have already hit the 75% bogey. And my friends who live in the City have also been recycling for quite awhile. The new fines, or more appropriately the threat of fines, will just raise awareness and compliance. As with most changes, there will be some early adopters and some late adopters. But I think the direction of this change is pretty clear.

 

http://www.jepsonprairieorganics.com/vineyard/platescrap.jpg http://www.jepsonprairieorganics.com/vineyard/composteam.jpg http://www.jepsonprairieorganics.com/vineyard/compostspreader.jpg http://www.jepsonprairieorganics.com/vineyard/grapes.jpg

[MsGuy]

Lookin, if the waste collection guys can run the organic recycling operation w/o a subsidy from the city, more power to them. Sorry, but I'm still a bit skeptic about this kind of thing. I would think the problem with residential garbage would be at least an order of magnitude bigger than with restuarants.

 

Until folks are ready to belly up to the bar and choke down a stiff carbon tax, all this decorative greenery amounts to no more than switching around the sheet music on the Titanic's bandstand.

[+ bigjoey]

the plastic bags that the company where i work uses are made from recycled plastic. if the bags were cut out, a major use for recycled plastic would end and the plastic would pile up and/or drop in price and not be economically feasable to recycle unless other uses were found for it.

[MsGuy]

Both Greg and bigjoey are pointing to the fact that the market is a more supple & efficient way to allocate resourses than government ukase. If a plastic bag costs 1/2 or less than a paper equivilent, that's a pretty good indicator that it costs society twice as much in resources to produce the one over the other. The reasons for those costs may not be obvious but the market price is saying loud and clear that they are there.

[MsGuy]

A neutral piece on paper vs. plastic

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124473522987806581.html#mod=article-outset-box

[+ Charlie]

I read this article when it appeared in Europe the other day, and I was pleased to see that someone is pointing out the obvious: there is no such thing as the perfect ecological solution to any problem. You say plastic and I say paper (sung to the tune of "You say po-tay-to and I say po-tah-to...").