SF Chronicle: S.F. OKs toughest recycling law in U.S.
Bruce England
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.
E-mail John Coté at jc...@sfchronicle.com.