RESIDENTIAL COMPOSTING FLYER FOR SAN FRANCISCO RECYCLING PROGRAM
Since the days of Woodsy Owl, my generation has started a rethinking of America as the "throw-away society". To my children, recycling cans and separated trash pickup blends into the background because they have always seen it. To my parents and grandparents, the thrift of the Depression era and World War II era remained a part of their character. My generation needed continuous reminders and retraining, and as our country's population has grown (growing by more than fifty percent since my birth), and our per capita consumption with it (from 3.25 pounds per person per day in 1970 to 4.72 pounds per person per day in 2000), we have come to realize the inherent instability of a lifestyle in which materials flow only from extraction to burial. Even though we have improved the per capita waste generation over the past 10 years, it has not been enough to offset population growth, so we remain at about 250 million tons of waste per year generated by Americans.
Against this backdrop, the City of San Franscisco has taken huge leaps in improving the manner in which citizens treat municipal solid waste as a resource and not as worthless material to be buried. The program is remarkable in several aspects, but the one that grabs my attention most centers around organic waste. In the US, approximately 14% of municipal solid waste comes from food waste or yard scraps. This poses three significant issues: 1. Much of that food waste comes from un-eaten food, posing a lost opportunity to feed more Americans, 2. The nutrients in the food, and the embodied energy in the material, go to waste when they have great value to future food production, and 3. The decomposition of the material produces methane gas which when burned adds to greenhouse gas emissions, and even more significantly when just released into the atmosphere. San Francisco has taken great strides to increase the rate of overall recycling (defined as total diverted material/total landfilled material), and as of 2010, achieved 77% diversion from landfill (by comparison, Chicago - in which I live - struggles to get to 15%). Hidden within this number, the city diverted about 210,000 tons of organic waste...about 10% of the total solid material for the year. This made up about 10% of the solid material stream, and with about 14% total organic waste, they have reached about 71% diversion of nutrient-rich organic waste. They have done as follows:
1. They require residents to recycle by city ordinance. Everyone must have three cans...one black can for landfill waste, one blue can for recycling, and one green can for organic material, and must use them.
2. To ease the burden of the ordinance, pickup of the blue and green cans costs residents nothing. Pickup of the black cans costs about $27 per month for a resident filling a standard 32-gallon black can. In addition, if a resident can reduce their landfill waste to the point where they can use a 20-gallon black can, the monthly cost drops to almost $20. By recycling, a resident can spend almost $90 less per year, providing a great incentive.
3. The city and the waste management company (Recology) have several toolkits, resources, and online guides to help residents, small businesses, and commercial real estate developers meet the requirements of the ordinance.
There is no question that the only way to a sustainable future follows a path that eliminates waste. We must use and package less, and reuse and rebuild more. Once we reach that point, the only form of recycling we will need, and must prepare to execute, is organic material. San Francisco has shown that even in a large city, we can show respect for the materials that support our life in a cost effective manner...as long as we have the political will to do so. Programs that charge fees proportional to usage, respect living matter, create jobs (Recology employs between 900 and 1000 people in its recycling operations), and improve quality of life without additional cost should have buy-in from all areas of the political spectrum. I hope you will take a look at what San Francisco has done, and work to make that change happen in your neighborhood. Zero waste by 2020 is not a dream, it is an achievable imperative...and San Francisco has proven to us all that we can do it.
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