Zero Waste

http://waste360.com/waste-reduction/secret-san-francisco-s-zero-waste-success

Is there a secret in San Francisco related to their zero waste success?

Yes, I think there is, and unfortunately it is rarely discussed.

I love San Francisco and the zero waste work they are doing. And I want to draw attention to what their “secret ingredient” is so that other cities can better understand what they don’t have but might want to pursue locally, even if in an altered form.

Last month, the New York Times wrote another admiring piece about the San Francisco zero waste program. And again, the reporter missed asking the logical question, “Why San Francisco?” What is different about Golden Gate City that makes it such a star when it comes to progressive waste management systems?

It isn’t a unique technology, as Jack Macy even admits in the article. That is an important point considering all the sketchy “new tech, one-bin” proposals we’ve been seeing lately as the way to achieve zero waste.

There is more than just one reason that San Francisco is successful. But I am going to focus on the one thing that is really special, and it’s the relationship between the San Francisco government and the private sector service provider Recology. The working relationship between these two entities is very unique and I think is the key to enabling their soaring success. So why are they such good buddies in pursuit of a common goal when elsewhere we see conflict and struggle, such as the recent Houston-Waste Management Inc. contract tussle?

I didn’t want to misspeak here, so I ran this column past a San Francisco insider to make sure I got this right. The company known today as Recology is, in fact, a very old company with deep roots in the San Francisco waste business dating to the early 1920s. They did something unique and remarkable many years ago. Two Recology predecessor haulers, Scavenger’s Protective Association and Sunset Scavenger Company, got written into the City Charter through a voter initiative ordinance as the exclusive official refuse haulers for the entire city. These exclusive refuse collection licenses could be overturned by the voters, but as long as voters were happy with the deal, it was forever. In Italy, this is called an “inside company” and is actually accepted as an option for providing public service. No surprise then that the original Recology was started by an Italian family.

This has created a sweet deal for Recology and they knew it. When the city staff approached the company in the 1990s and told them San Francisco wanted to become a zero waste city, Recology was in a good position to either fight the effort or join it. I don’t know what was said exactly. But I do remember having a personal discussion with a Recology manager back in the 90s. (When they were called Norcal.) This manager told me that the behind-the-curtain informal agreement was that the city would share the risk of this new zero waste path for long enough for Recology to learn how to transform their existing business model based upon primarily landfilling into a business plan that was based upon landfill diversion. By sharing the risk, the Recology would still be making profits during the transition. This sounded fair to me at the time, and it has proven to be a wise move.

But the remarkable part that I want to highlight here is that this sort of cooperation and planning between government and the private sector rarely happens in America. I think it must be due to Recology’s legally-protected status of being written into the City Charter that enables them to have a unique power within the relationship that can be used in partnership with the city to achieve community benefit and ensure a certain level of private sector profit.

I think this close relationship is similar to how my town “coordinates and plans the future” with our electric utility provider. This “public utility monopoly” approach for electricity exists in nearly every town in America.

So in some ways this special relationship that San Francisco and Recology have isn’t that unique. It’s just that other cities don’t use the public utility approach in the waste management industry. I think we should start doing so!

I don’t think the San Francisco City Charter approach is replicable across the entire country for many reasons. But I do think that many of the working elements that make their approach successful are replicable. At its core, the San Francisco zero waste program is run like a social enterprise, meaning that its primary purpose for being is to fulfill a mission (i.e. zero waste) and that the program is expected to make a profit while doing so. I know a lot about this approach since I created the nation’s largest nonprofit zero waste social enterprise here in Boulder, Colo., where our partnership success with the city came not from a legal protection like Recology’s, but from a civic mandate delivered to the city by a citizens army organized by Eco-Cycle.

This “double bottom-line (DBL) approach” to creating value for the community is an exciting new way of using the power of the marketplace in partnership with local government. The place to watch to see how far it can go is the U.K. right now, especially Scotland. We are watching new “legal vehicles” for the creation of DBL enterprises emerge with names such as “the CIC” (community interest company), or the “B” Corp (the for-benefit corporation), and my favorite, the “the L3C” (low-profit limited liability company LLC).

In the last few years we’ve heard the giants of industry, like Bill Gates and others, call for a more “compassionate capitalism.” The reason this topic is up for discussion is because there is a growing recognition that the current form of free market capitalism isn’t capable of addressing the serious social and environmental problems of our times. On top of that, our local, state and national government entities can’t do it either as their funding and public support is shrinking.

I say don’t mess with the existing single bottom-line capitalism—it has brought us Apple and Amazon—but that it is time for a new addition to the national economic operating system which I’ll call Capitalism 2.0, (as in two bottom lines), and that there are special needs in our world today, like clean energy and zero waste, that need a new marketplace approach that combines the leadership of government with the horsepower of business.

When more cities step forward and support the social enterprise approach, then maybe San Francisco won’t stand so alone as a national star in the race to zero waste.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/zero-waste-in-san-francis_b_9556380.html?section=india

One of the goals of a sustainable city is to effectively manage material flows into and out of the city. Garbage, or what environmental engineers call solid waste, presents some of the most difficult challenges to urban sustainability.

San Francisco may well be on the way to achieving their goal of “zero waste,” or to divert all of its garbage away from landfills. Currently, San Francisco diverts 80% of its waste away from landfills. According to New York Times reporter Matt Richtel: “San Francisco also has a world-class reputation for its composting processes, which turns food waste into fine, coffee-like grounds that is sent to farms as fertilizer.” And he observes that San Francisco is the “Silicon Valley of recycling.”

The city and county of San Francisco’s SF Environment department has set a goal of zero waste by 2020. That formerly future-sounding date is just four years away.

According to the department, about half of the waste now placed in non-recycle bins could be recycled, which would drive the waste diversion rate to 90%. According to the department’s website:

To achieve 100 percent zero waste, SF Environment will continue to advocate for state legislation and partner with producers to develop a producer responsibility system, where producers design better products and take responsibility for the entire life-cycle of a product, including take-back and recycling.

The city’s zero waste policy includes three goals: 1. prevent waste; 2. recycle and compost; and 3. safely handle toxics. San Francisco’s unique political and social culture must be seen as a major factor contributing to this program’s success. People in that city behave as if reducing waste and recycling are important social behaviors. In contrast, New York City’s waste diversion rate is 16%. The goal is to get to zero waste by 2030. It’s a little difficult to see how that goal will be achieved. The city’s target for FY 2016 is 19%, but according to the NYC Mayor’s Management report, the actual diversion rate is anywhere from 1.2- 2.9% below target.

Any casual look at New York City’s public recycling bins will provide a sense of the difficult road New York must travel to reach anything approaching zero waste. Paper bins are filled with bottles and the bottle bins are filled with a wide variety of unsorted waste. Northern Californians may be thoughtful about waste disposal, but New Yorkers can’t be bothered. It is not clear that New York is capable of a cultural shift deep enough to achieve the diversion rates already reached in San Francisco.

Each city is different, and New York’s pace, diversity, and size make comparisons to San Francisco difficult. Still, large-scale behavior changes can be achieved with leadership, strategy and creativity. New York City has eliminated indoor smoking in public places. New Yorkers have learned how to comply with alternate side of the street parking rules and some are even learning how to stop jaywalking. So it is possible that waste disposal behaviors could change. But it will take leadership and the sustained attention of the mayor and the media. It’s unlikely to happen because garbage has little appeal as a political issue. Climate change holds conferences in Paris and attracts attention at Davos.
Garbage gets a little less glamor.

In any case, behavior change alone is not sufficient. The recycled waste must actually be reused—a problem with the weak market for some recycled substances. The technology of waste sorting and the energy efficiency and cost-effectiveness of recycling also need improvement. A city’s system of recycling and waste management is as important as an individual’s waste disposal behavior. The technology and market will come to New York City, but probably not by 2030.

Zero waste is an element of the concept of a circular economy. In a circular economy, all waste from consumption becomes an input into new production. Inevitably there is some leakage in the tightest circular production process. But the goal is to move from a linear model of production-consumption-waste to one more closely resembling a circular model. I don’t think of zero waste as an achievable operational goal, but rather as a model and an aspiration. It is a way to think about resource use and waste management, rather than an absolute target.

It requires a paradigm shift or a new way of thinking about consumption and garbage. Instead of mindlessly tossing something you have consumed into a waste bin, you sort it or consider how it might be re-used. In the case of production processes, it includes the concept of producer responsibility. The producer includes in the price of a good an incentive to bring the good back to the place of purchase or to the manufacturer. The manufacturer, in turn, designs the good to be mined for resources or to be reconfigured for additional use. Of course moving the good or material through the production process requires energy and so the closed system works best when it is powered by renewable energy.

These ideas of closed systems of production and consumption are central to the concept of the sustainable city. As the mechanization of agriculture reduces rural employment and as the Internet communicates the appeal and seductiveness of urban lifestyles, more and more of the world’s population is moving to cities. This creates opportunities for more efficient production, distribution and consumption of goods and services and leads to the possibility of systems that approach the goal of zero waste.

While New York City may aspire to zero waste by 2030, at the same time the city was announcing that goal in 2015, it was also proposing a long-term deal with an upstate New York landfill to take the city’s garbage for the next several decades. According to Cole Rosengren of City Limits:

A new plan to send Brooklyn’s garbage upstate would solidify the city’s waste export strategy for decades, but also shows how impractical the system has become. Under a newly proposed 20-year contract with IESI—a major industry player owned by Canadian company Progressive Waste Solutions—much of Brooklyn’s residential garbage would be shipped to the company’s Seneca Meadows landfill at a projected cost of $3.3 billion…New York has struggled to deal with its garbage in a sustainable way since the Fresh Kills landfill closed on Staten Island in 2001. According to Department of Sanitation (DSNY) data, it cost $99 to dispose of a ton of garbage in 2000 versus $145 in 2014 when adjusted for inflation.

It is clear to most experts that a system of recycling facilities, waste-to-energy plants and changed public behavior would be a more cost effective and environmentally beneficial waste management system for New York City.

Unfortunately, New York can barely site marine waste transfer facilities and has been unable to build waste-to-energy plants or other elements of a more advanced waste management system. New Yorkers simply won’t accept construction of those facilities in their neighborhoods. In any case, as New York’s land prices rise, it becomes increasingly uneconomical to locate those facilities within the city.

The gap between San Francisco’s accomplishment of 80% landfill diversion and New York’s 16% is huge. New York was ahead of its time in building its water and mass transit system, but is far behind the times in dealing with its garbage.

When compared to San Francisco, the two waste management systems are truly a tale of two very different cities.