Recology Answers

Photo by Artem Maltsev on Unsplash

During my early days of Sustainable teaching, I wanted to soak up the knowledge of those people and organizations that had taken big steps before me. One of those organizations was Recology where the mission is to, “represents a fundamental shift from traditional waste management to resource recovery. We seek to eliminate waste by developing and discovering sustainable resource recovery practices that can be implemented globally.” The answers below were to questions I received, and questions I had myself.

Where can we get rid of flourescent light bulbs and tubes?

• Fluorescent light tubes and bulbs are hazardous waste and cannot go in any cart.

• For small quantities from your home, you can use one of San Francisco's convenient neighborhood retail drop-off sites - visit Recyclewhere.org to find the site closest to you.

• SF residents can also either drop items off at the household hazardous waste facility (501 Tunnel Ave, San Francisco) or request a free home pickup. Click here for more information about the household hazardous waste facility

I found out that Cole Hardware in San Francisco takes them and plastic bags as well.

Here is another resource as well - Earth911.com/recycling-guide/how-to-recycle-fluorescent-tubes

Food Waste and the Green Bin
Placing food waste in paper bags or wrapping food waste in newspaper is less messy and will help with deterring fruit flies.
Composting is really important because it helps us combat global warming. When food waste is placed in the trash, they food waste is compacted with everything else, leaving no air to break down the food. Due to this the food waste will then produce methane gas which is 10x more harmful than carbon dioxide which is caused by cars on the road.

What Happens to the Stuff in the Blue Bin?

“Hi Natasha, Recology has recently upgraded the sorting capabilities at their Pier 96 recycling center. This included adding 11 Million dollars of optical sorting equipment. This has increased recoverable throughput while decreasing the contamination levels in the finished recovered resources. Additionally our international marketing team has long been traveling the globe to develop additional buyers of the SF products. This has allowed us to expand our buyer base to include Taiwan, Korea, Viet Nam, Malaysia, Indonesia while the tonnages consumed by China has dropped. Recology has been able to do this by increasing the quality of the delivered products.”

Chris Levaggi - Senior Account Representative, Recology™

Sort Into Three Bins

“We haven’t hit our targets,” said Guillermo Rodriguez, spokesman for the Department of the Environment. He called the zero waste plan a “big, audacious goal” that the city is still trying to meet, but admitted not everybody is doing their part.“ Really, we need our businesses and residents to do a much better job,” he said, pointing out that 50 percent of what San Franciscans put in their black bins could be recycled or composted instead.
San Francisco Chronicle: SF Is Not As Clean As It Thinks On Garbage

In SF we receive and transport 1400 tons per day of materials destined for landfill. A transfer truck will hold approximately 25 tons per load. So approximately 50 trips per day to the landfill. An important thought is that at least 55% of the materials hauled to landfill could have been recycled or composted if it had been properly sorted at the point of discard. Plus recycling, compost and reuse creates 10X more jobs than landfill.

Can we put biodegradable utensils and plates in the compost bin?

In San Francisco, we only take compostable items in our compost program. Compostable is a legally binding term that certifies that the item in question takes the same time as produce to break down. Biodegradable means that it breaks down but everything breaks down eventually including trash and plastics. We do not like the term biodegradable because a lot of manufacturers use the term biodegradable to green wash their products, this includes advertising products made of 50% corn and 50% recycled plastic as biodegradable. If that item was placed in the compost, that would be an issue, after the 50% of corn is composted, the plastic will remain in the compost and pollute the farms that they are used for.

Signs and Resources

You can learn more from Recology’s Signs and Posters at their website RecologySF

You can print double sided fliers for three bins and post wherever waste is sorted such as in you kitchen or work place for the Green Bin, Blue Bin, Black Bin, and so much more.
Learn about Recology’s new sorting program and routes!
Search for items and learn where they go! -WhatBin?
See the SF sorting program overview and print signage!

Chris Levaggi, Senior Account Representative, Recology™ Sunset Scavenger, Recology™ Golden Gate