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Waste & Recycling October 19, 2017 07:30:56 AM

SF Fails to Meet Annual Reduction Targets to Reach Zero Waste to Landfill by 2020

Waste Advantage
ScrapMonster Author
The annual landfill reduction targets were established to ensure San Francisco becomes a zero-waste city come 2021. That was the vision announced back in 2002.

SF Fails to Meet Annual Reduction Targets to Reach Zero Waste to Landfill by 2020

SEATTLE (Waste Advantage): In a bid to reach its goal of sending no more waste to the landfill after 2020, San Francisco is shrinking trash bins by half while doubling the size of bins for recyclables — touted as the biggest change in The City’s recycling program in more than a decade.

But the San Francisco Examiner has learned the change comes after The City and trash-hauler Recology failed to hit the reduction targets for the hundreds of thousands of tons of trash going to the landfill each year. In fact, the amount of trash going to the landfill is on the rise.

The annual landfill reduction targets were established to ensure San Francisco becomes a zero-waste city come 2021. That was the vision announced back in 2002.

But that goal, the data suggests, may no longer be in reach.

In 2015, The City sought to reduce garbage hauled to the landfill to 320,520 tons, but the actual amount of San Francisco trash that ended up in the landfill was 386,854 tons, according to data provided to the Examiner by the Department of the Environment.

In 2016, the goal was to send 267,100 tons of garbage to the landfill. Instead, 404,022 tons ended up in the landfill — 137,000 tons more than the reduction target.

This year, San Francisco has already failed to meet the reduction target of only sending 213,680 tons of garbage to the landfill. As of July, Recology has already hauled 236,894 tons of garbage to the landfill.

The amount of garbage San Francisco dumps into the landfill is supposed to decline to 53,420 tons in 2020, followed by zero tons in subsequent years.

But San Francisco doesn’t appear on track to hit that environmental milestone.

Conditions have changed significantly since 2000, when The City was in the midst of the first dot-com bubble,” Gallotta said. “We have adapted and expanded programs, facilities and educational outreach to address shifting consumer behaviors, population growth, more employees, and the current construction and economic boom.”

He noted that, in 2000, when The City first launched the three bin system — black bins for landfill waste, blue bins for recyclables and green bins for compostable items — the amount of waste that went to the landfill was 729,717 tons.

The annual reduction targets are included in the controversial 2015 landfill agreement struck between The City and Recology, which has a trash hauling monopoly in San Francisco. In fact, the landfill was the last remaining piece of the refuse industry Recology didn’t control. That changed in 2015 when Recology beat out Alameda County’s Waste Management, which previously held the landfill agreement and sued over losing the contract.

The annual reduction targets in the contract are based on the 373,940 tons of garbage produced in San Francisco and trucked to the landfill in 2014. The contract contemplates imposing “certain fees on waste generators” to help The City achieve “disposal targets and other diversion and environmental goals.”

The announcement by The City and Recology on Oct. 5 about the resizing of the bins is an initiative meant to improve the zero-waste effort.

The size of the black bins, which is for waste that isn’t recyclable and ends up in the landfill, will shrink by 50 percent, from 32 gallons to 16 gallons. At the same time, the blue bins, where recyclables go, are being increased in size by 50 percent, to 62 gallons.

Consumers were also told that additional items can start going into the blue bins, like coffee cups and linens like jeans, if bagged in plastic bags.

“We maintain our commitment to zero waste, but we are realistic about the challenges,” Department of the Environment spokesperson Peter Gallotta said.

Courtesy: https://wasteadvantagemag.com

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