Right now, San Francisco is at 72% recycling. They also just passed legislation to make composting mandatory. (Photo source: Tewy at Wikimedia Commons)
Recycling has become the law in
San Francisco. Residents who fail
to recycle and compost will face
warnings and, eventually, a fine.
It’s part of the city’s goal to
eliminate waste altogether. But,
as Amy Standen reports, recycling
and composting can only take us
so far:
Transcript
Recycling has become the law in
San Francisco. Residents who fail
to recycle and compost will face
warnings and, eventually, a fine.
It’s part of the city’s goal to
eliminate waste altogether. But,
as Amy Standen reports, recycling
and composting can only take us
so far:
(conversation in Chinese)
Janis Peng is a foot soldier in San Francisco’s war against garbage. Today, she’s going door to door in a San Francisco Chinatown apartment complex, trying to convince the mostly elderly residents to make better use of their city-provided compost bin.
In fact, Peng is part of a city-wide effort to eliminate waste altogether. In 1989, California passed a law, which was considered radically ambitious at the time. They wanted to divert away from landfills 50% of the state’s garbage by the year 2000.
For San Francisco, that wasn’t enough.
“We got to 50%, and we said, ‘well we’re here now, what are we going to do next?’”
That’s Jared Blumenthal. He’s head of San Francisco’s Department of the Environment. Today, he’s in the backseat of a Toyota Prius. He’s on his way to a recycling press conference.
“So in 2003, we set the goal of 75% by 2010 and to zero waste by 2020.”
Right now, San Francisco’s at 72% recycling. City officials say that mandatory recycling will bring that number up even higher. But can any city ever get to zero waste?
(sound of trucks and machinery)
“It’s almost 9:45 in the morning and some of the trucks that went out this morning are coming in with their first loads.”
Robert Reed is a spokesman for Sunset Scavenger Company, in San Francisco. Here at Pier 96, dozens of workers stand by conveyor belts, sorting out the contents of an entire city’s worth of blue bins.
“All these materials go to different places, the glass goes to a glass plant, the paper goes to a paper mill.”
Sunset Scavenger sells these commodities to buyers here and in Asia. That generates revenue that helps fund the program. But recycling is expensive, in part because some products – like many plastics – cost far more to recycle than they’re worth.
“We’re dealing with clear plastic and opaque plastic and medium plastics. And many of these containers have three types of plastics.”
Aluminum and glass can be yanked off the conveyor belts with magnets and other machinery. But plastic has to be hand sorted.
Mark Murray is executive director of Californians Against Waste, a Sacramento non-profit group.
“We have seven different types of plastic resins and manufacturers invent new ones every day. And I know it might make us feel good to put those number sevens into the recycling bin, the scrap value is insufficient. It’s not sustainable recycling.”
Murray says he hears all the time from residents who want to eliminate waste all together.
“They recycle everything, but they can’t get their city to take a certain type of number 6 or 7 plastic in their program. And they’re mad at the city. But it’s not just about recycling everything we get. That’s not gonna solve the problem.”
That’s because some things may never make sense to recycle. Like ballpoint pens and plastic razors.
Murray say that maybe if the costs for those items included what cities pay to take them apart for recycling or to dump them in the landfill, maybe people would use less of them, bringing us a little closer to the holy grail of zero waste.
For The Environment Report, I’m Amy Standen.
