Last week I got to spend an hour immersed in the details of San Francisco’s waste collection system. If it had been another city, it would have probably been a depressing hour. But San Francisco (and Portland, OR and Seattle, WA) does things a little differently when it comes to garbage. The employee-owned company Recology handles all waste collection for the city and the entire city uses the same “Fantastic 3” system. Recyclables go in blue carts, compostables in green carts and anything that cannot be composted or recycled (which isn’t much) goes in a black cart.
Recycling is mandatory at all venues throughout the city and the widespread use of the same system makes it easier for people to keep track of what goes where. A large part of the success may be based in the city’s Pay As You Throw system which bills buildings based on the amount of waste they are sending to the landfill. Residents pay for the amount of trash that goes into the black bin but are not charged for the blue and green bins, giving people an incentive to sort their waste to decrease trash output. Businesses are charged for all three collections, but get a substantial discount (up to 75% off) depending on the amount of recycling and composting they divert from the landfill.
One of the amazing things, in my perspective, about the program is the variety of materials accepted for recycling and composting. Cincinnatians would be faced with a different set of bin labels when traveling out west. Oily pizza boxes or dirty takeout cartons: compost; any kind of plastic, glass or metal: recycle; dinner leftovers (even carnivorous): compost. The huge amounts of residential and restaurant waste generated in the gourmet city are composted and returned to California’s vineyards and farms, who then grow food for the city. It is a pretty cool loop! With this program, the city of San Francisco was able to divert 78% of its waste away from the landfill in 2009. The next step: meeting the goal of being a Zero Waste city by 2020.