Food Scraps and Yard Debris Compost vs. Biosolids
The city of San Francisco is a dynamic place. On the one hand it’s an international city that attracts dreamers, business people, and techies from around the world. On the other hand, it’s a small community where people know their neighbors, say hello to the grocery store owners, garbage men, and dog walkers.
San Francisco is also a place where experimentation is welcome. Sometimes that experimentation results in positive innovation, and sometimes it ends up on the front page of the San Francisco Examiner. The controversy around the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s decision to comingle biosolids with food and yard debris and give it away to urban gardeners has caused a minor stir. The issues are the use and definition of the word ”organic” in this context, the standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency, and public perception.
What’s in sewage sludge? According to the Australia and New Zealand Biosolids Partnership:
Biosolids are mainly a mix of water and organic materials that are a by-product of the sewage treatment processes. Most wastewater comes from household kitchens, laundries and bathrooms. Biosolids may contain:
- Macronutrients, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and sulphur and
- Micronutrients, such as copper, zinc, calcium, magnesium, iron, boron, molybdenum and manganese
Biosolids may also contain traces of synthetic organic compounds and metals, including arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel and selenium. These contaminants limit the extent to which biosolids can be used, with all applications regulated by appropriate government authorities in each State and federally. Australia has one of the strictest regulatory regimes for biosolids production and application in the world.
Although sewage sludge or “biosolids” is technically organic (i.e. contains carbon), in the United States the sludge also contains pharmaceuticals that people ingest, and along with everything else, gets flushed down the toilet. Pharmaceuticals are often synthetic chemicals that have been manufactured to diagnose, cure, prevent or delay a disease. They may be persistent chemical compounds that don’t break down or decay during the total 151 days of high-temperature sludge treatment. The “organic” waste may then become a problem in the human food chain if the synthetics are absorbed by plants (such as tomatoes grown in urban gardens) that are then consumed by anyone participating in the “home gardening revolution“.
For many years, Recology has warned against the improper disposal of medicine, and has been very careful in this area. We do not comingle biosolids with the food scraps and yard debris we compost for this reason. Our compost comes from two sources: food scraps generated from restaurants, hotels, markets, and coffee shops in the Bay Area, and from yard trimmings generated north of San Francisco. Closing the loop on compost is a creative process, suitable for an innovative environment like one found in the city of San Francisco. Unfortunately, the SFPUC has taken it a little too far.
Recology Participates in Chinese New Year Parade
On Saturday, February 27, 2010, Recology celebrated the Year of the Tiger by participating in the San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade. The parade is the largest New Year parade of its kind outside of China, as well as the largest night parade in the United States.
The event is an annual favorite of Recology employees and their families. Daisy, a dragon made from recycled materials by artists Dana Albany and Flash Hopkins, headed the Recology contingent that also included two antique garbage trucks and the award winning drill team lead by Ramiro Alvarez. Participating drill team members were Quentin Booker, Ruben Candelario, Tony Falzon, Jaime Gonzalez, Alfredo Guzman, Joe Rattaro, Moises Reynoso, Manuel Vera, Jim Wile, and Luis Zuniga.
Gung Hay Fat Choy!
The green and sustainable landfill?
In December, 2009, BioCycle published an article on the amount of electricity that could be generated from the methane emitted from a Michigan landfill. The author corrected the misperception that there was enough landfill gas emitted from the landfill to generate 300 MW of electricity. 300 MW is a lot of electricity. In reality, the potential was closer to 4.5 MW. Wishful thinking and incomplete information have a lot to do with the public perception that landfills are ”green” and sustainable.
In general there are two hopeful stories out there about “green” landfills:
- The gas emitted from them can be used to generate electricity, and therefore they are green, and
- The long buried materials in their bellies can be harvested at a later time and recycled.
Landfills that are already in use generate methane as the organics that are buried there decompose. The US Environmental Protection Agency has a simple pamphlet explaining the link between climate change, greenhouse gas generation, and waste management. It also explains why recycling reduces the generation of greenhouse gases.
There are three quick points to make regarding the “green” landfill:
- Although landfill gas can be collected and used to generate electricity, the best collection systems still only collect 70% of the emissions while they are installed. The methane generated before installation and after decommission is still emitted into the atmosphere.
- The recyclable material in landfills (glass, metals, plastics, and paper) degrades and shatters or corrodes, reducing the reuse value of the materials and increasing the health hazards to the people tasked with excavating them.
- There is no such thing as a sustainable landfill. The materials that endup burried in a landfill are not returned to society as productive assests. For example, if the gas from a landfill is collected and made into a biofuel, the biofuel can be used as an alternative to gasoline or diesel fuel, but it cannot replenish the soil or be used to raise new crops.
While products and materials continue to be designed without consideration for their full lifecycle (raw materials extraction, manufacturing, transportation, installation, use, reuse, decomission and disposal), and we while continue to be a throw-away society, landfills will have a place. However, as the UK’s Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs posts on their website, “landfills should become the home of last resort for waste.” The US Composting Council, recyclers, and people everywhere understand this, and continue to push to find the best and highest use for landfill-bound materials. It takes a little coordination, a little communication, and minimal effort from consumers.
Thrown Out: Art from the San Francisco Dump at the Sanchez Art Center
Bill Basquin CaraCara Orange Peel, 2009
The Sanchez Art Center will present the exhibition, Thrown Out: Art from the San Francisco Dump, an exhibition of work from the permanent collection of Recology San Francisco. The exhibition will run from February 26 – March 28, 2010, with an opening reception Friday, February 26, from 7-9 pm.
Works by seventeen artists who have participated in Recology’s artist-in-residence program will be featured in the Center’s Main Gallery. Artists include Nemo Gould, Ellen Babcock, Noah Wilson and Susannah Webster.
The Sanchez Art Center is located in Pacifica and presents exhibitions by emerging and established California artists in its three gallery spaces. The Center has an education and outreach program, and provides affordable studio space for up to thirty Bay Area artists. Gallery hours are: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 1-5 pm. Admission is free. www.sanchezartcenter.org.
Nemo Gould Guzzler, 2007
Sanchez Art Center
Pacifica Center for the Art
1220-B Linda Mar Boulevard, Pacifica, CA 94044, 650.355.1894
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CRV Part 2: Unintended Consequences
This is part two of a two-part examination of the recent controversy surrounding the CRV.
What could go wrong with a program that incentivized citizens to teach their children about recycling and work? What could go wrong with a program that enabled many poor people to participate in diverting useful material from going to the landfill while helping them to make ends meet?
The CRV program, which boasts 85% recycling of bottles and cans, has become central to an underground economy with all of the unhealthy incentives that have created a spectrum of thieves in the last twenty years.
Theft from curbside bins
Recycling thieves have focused on the redeemable material put out in bins and collected by local recycling and garbage companies. In December alone, San Francisco received more than 1,500 complaints from residents of people rummaging through their garbage, making noise and stealing recyclables in the wee hours. In the morning, the littered sidewalks gave evidence to scattered garbage on the sidewalks–both an eyesore and a health hazard. And don’t be fooled. Sometimes it is an elderly person looking for a little extra income, but more often than not it is a junkie, desperate for another fix, or an organized group with a van looking for material to redeem at a recycling center across the Bay. Mike Mosedale wrote a news story about the same problem in Minneapolis back in 2006. No matter where it happens or how you categorize it, it is still theft.
Redemption of California funds from outside California
There are other unintended circumstances. People from states that border California make their way here to redeem their collection of recyclable containers. The result is that the CRV (Fund B) is drained and unsustainable for the Californians that paid, and then are taxed for it to exist. For example, Super Bowl XLIV weekend, a red truck with an out-of-state license plate stopped on the corner to let me pass. Squeezed in the cab were three men, and the back of the truck had been modified so that it held, from what I was able to glimpse as the car pulled away, two or three tons of flattened cardboard boxes. I’d seen other similar trucks, sometimes packed with cardboard, and other times with tin, aluminum, and glass bottles.
Shoddy accounting and fraud
The recycling centers themselves are under scrutiny for the many reports of fraud and faulty accounting leveled against them. For example, there are limits to the amount that a redeemer can collect at one time, so many have been turned away without full payment. They are told “we can only pay you $50 at a time, but leave your materials here.” Shoddy record-keeping practices, including jotting down only the redeemer’s first name only, and verbal promises to pay them at a later time, account for some of the “unclaimed money” that support the handling and processing fees paid to companies for collecting recyclables.
The economic inefficiencies of a program that some prefer to expand but is hard to fix are amplified by the budget crisis in California. Staring in 2002, the state “borrowed” over $500 million from Fund A for other purposes and has yet to repay it. As a result, about 160 of the approximately 2,100 recycling centers in California have closed since July 2009. Many employees of the centers have cried fowl, although the program’s relevance is now questionable. The program was started as a first step “litter control” measure. Other recycling efforts that have since been implemented have taken resource recovery much further, including curbside recycling programs, comingled (single stream) recycling, and composting.
The program’s economic sustainability is also questionable. What is the benefit of an artificially created economy that encourages theft and fraud, and that is entirely supported by the state? The CRV was created at a time when there were fewer curbside recycling programs across the U.S. The effect of an outdated program like the CRV has been to increase the costs of curbside recycling programs (imagine empty recycling trucks that have already been paid for by taxpayers driving down the street, while recyclables stolen from curbside collection are redeemed at a materials recovery facility, only to be sold back to the curbside recycling program.). What is the purpose of an unsustainable program that reduces the availability of legitimate, green jobs with benefits and attempts to replace them with haphazard, fraudulent operations? Needless to say, the value and recognition for doing the right thing should return to the communities where the materials are legitimately collected through curbside programs.
| RECYCLING BY THE NUMBERS | |
| 5 cents: | Minimum deposit required for cans and bottles covered by the California Redemption Value, or CRV, program |
| 21.9 billion: | CRV bottles and cans purchased statewide in 2008 |
| $1.2 billion: | Annual CRV money collected by the state |
| Sources: California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery; state Department of Finance; TOMRA Pacific | |
The Sacramento Bureau reported that Governor Schwarzenegger will continue to fund recycling centers for two or three more months. His long-term plan in December, 2009 was to increase the redemption value for glass and plastic containers. He also wants to increase Fund A by another $60 million this year, through accelerating the payments from beverage distributors and manufacturers.
Environmental Learning Center Open to the Public, Fridays 1-3pm at Recology San Francisco
The Environmental Learning Center at Recology San Francisco houses a resource center, classroom, and gallery. On Fridays from 1-3pm the public may visit to watch videos about the company and see artwork made by former Recology artists-in-residence in the Environmental Learning Center Gallery. The public also has access to the Environmental Resource Center, which provides books, teacher resources, and other materials about conservation and recycling. Come and visit!
Environmental Learning Center
Open Fridays, 1-3pm
Recology San Francisco 
401 Tunnel Avenue, San Francisco, CA
http://www.sfrecycling.com/AIR
(415) 330-1414
art@recology.com
CRV Part 1: Good Intentions
This is part one of a two-part examination of the recent controversy surrounding the CRV.
I don’t drink much soda. I grew up in a neighborhood full of former hippies who, whenever I would reached for a Pepsi, suggested I try water, juice, or tea instead. So it wasn’t till recently, when I bought a small computer in California, that I noticed the “recycling fee” dangling towards the bottom of my receipt. The environmental handling fee is like the California Redemption Value (CRV) program’s fee which comes with every soft drink and other beverage container at your local grocery store that should be recycled.
Actually, there are two “CRV”s. They are often confused.
The CRV was established in 1987 as an “anti-liter” program, and it was meant to achieve a social good. It was one part of the California Beverage Container Recycling and Litter Reduction Act. The program charged manufacturers a small fee for the disposal of the containers that they manufactured, like plastic soda bottles, or aluminum cans, tins of tuna, etc. In a way, the environmental handling fee helped manufacturers to recognize that “disposable” containers often end up along the highways and river ways of the country. The CRV fee was actually passed on from manufacturers to consumers in the price of the bottle, can, or tin, and therefore increase the amount we pay in taxes for the container. Let’s call the CRV pool of “anti-liter” money collected by the state from these fees Fund A.
The other CRV (California Refund Value) is what recycling centers pay for the bottles and cans that consumers collect and redeem at the centers. Recycling centers can range from machines at the supermarket where anyone can feed with leftover beer cans, to the fenced-in lots in the outskirts town where families unload the bags of glass bottles they’ve collected. The way that the California Refund Value was meant to be used was this: a person who happened upon aluminum can or plastic bottle that had been thrown along the side of the road could take it to a recycling center and redeem its value from the state. The program allowed people who needed a little extra money to find a way to get it. It also kept the recycling rate up for a given community, and the streets liter-free. Currently, the state pays consumers $0.05 or $0.10 per container, depending on its size. Let’s call this CRV pool of money made available to recycling centers for “buying back” containers Fund B. Fund B was paid into with the money the state collected from manufacturers of recyclable containers (aka Fund A).
The program was set up so that Fund A would pay for Fund B. Not a bad idea. From the social and environmental perspective, the program would give everyone the right incentives to do the right thing: manufacturers were charged for the externality created by their products, and families were given a little revenue for redeeming the products and returning them to manufacturers for their next production cycle.
According to CalRecycle, the CRV program has facilitated the recycling of ”more than 200 billion aluminum, glass, and plastic beverage containers… since the program began in 1987.”
Everyone is set up to do the right thing… Right?
Man to SWIM through Pacific Garbage Patch
There is a man out there that not only wants to swim the length of the Pacific Ocean but plans to chart his course directly through the North Pacific Gyre (also know as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch). His swim is an attempt to bring attention to a place heavily polluted by our trash.
The North Pacific Gyre area is North of Hawaii where currents are converging ocean debris into a trash heap. There are several of these floating garbage patches throughout the world and this one is roughly twice the size of Texas. In the gyre is an accumulation of floating and slightly submerged plastics debris. What kind of plastics? You can guess the regulars: lighters, bottle caps, decomposed bits of things we buy and toss without a thought. The scary stuff is the plastic that is so small we can’t even see it. Millions of tiny plastic beads, some smaller than our eye can see–like those found in some shampoo and skin exfoliators–are drifting with the currents into this waste land.
In trying to bring attention to this ecological disaster, Richard Pain plans to swim 5,590 plus miles across the Pacific ocean and pass directly through the Pacific Garbage Patch. He’ll swim within a towed, 6 meter capsule that will serve as a safety cage and estimates the journey will take 45 weeks to reach land. This ambitious swim is reminiscent of a 2007 through swim of the Amazon river. Martin Strel swam 3,274 miles down from the Peruvian mountains, through rainforests of Brazil and into the Atlantic. The dramatic trip was a first complete swim of the Amazon river and much of the world watched.
This Pacific swim, if it happens, looks like another one that shall not be overlooked. In the meantime, there are several other interesting projects under way to bring more light on the Gyres of the world. Take a look online, search some key words like gyre, clean up, ocean and learn more about efforts are being made. If you have an interest in some reading about the effect we have on our environment (i.e.: plastics in the ocean), check out The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.
No-Fuss Options for Separating Kitchen Scraps
San Franciscans have numerous options for separating food scraps for compost collection.
The keys to keeping your kitchen neat and clean are to place your scraps in a container that will not leak and transfer them to a compost collection (green) cart before they begin to break down. Usually that means taking them out once a day, such as after dinner.
Please place all food scraps from the preparation of meals and all plate scrapings from unfinished meals in a compost container. You can request a kitchen pail, at no additional cost, online at RecologySF.com, just click “order green cart.” You also can call Sunset Scavenger, (415) 330-1300, or Golden Gate, (415) 626-4000, weekdays between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.
Stores selling kitchenware offer countertop compost containers of different styles and price ranges. People typically rinse their countertop container with a little soap and water after use. Another option is to line the container with a little soiled paper, such as a paper napkin, to absorb moisture.
Source: Flickr
Paper grocery bags also can be used to hold kitchen scraps. To control moisture, line paper bags with a little newsprint or a few used paper towels. Then toss vegetable peelings, coffee grounds, and other leftovers inside. Once a day (before you go to bed) roll the top of the paper bag shut and toss it in a composting (green) cart.
Source: Flickr
A gable-top paper milk carton is another option. If you buy a paper carton with a plastic spout, which we do not recommend, split the top open and remove the plastic spout before placing food scraps inside.
Source: Flickr
Some people simply wrap kitchen trimmings in newspaper like a burrito. Newspaper and food soiled paper, such as paper napkins, mix with food scraps at the compost facility and compost well.
Please remember you should place all your food scraps, including meat and bones, soiled paper, and plants in the green cart for composting pickup.
Food scrap collection is easy; find the best method that works for you.
New data shows that composting is a highly effective way to help protect the environment. San Francisco residents and businesses have composted more than 620,000 tons of material, mostly food scraps, through the city’s green cart program. By composting all that food since the program was created instead of sending it to landfill, San Francisco:
- Avoided creating 137,000 tons of methane gas, which the Environmental Protection Agency reports is 21 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
- Sequestered, or put back into the soil, 18,400 metric tons of CO2. That is the equivalent of keeping nearly 3,600 cars off the road.
- Created a total CO2E benefit (methane avoided and carbon sequestered) of 155,000 tons. That’s equal to reforesting 35 square miles of sustainable forest for 23 years or offsetting emissions from all vehicles crossing the Bay Bridge for 311 days.
Quick Home Compost Tip
Source: Tiny Farm Blog
My family uses a small bin and stores it in the freezer. This keeps the decomposition of the compost to a minimum = no smell. We previously used empty ice cream jugs to store the compost and it works all the same.
If you are short on room in the freezer, take a good look at what you have in there. Chances are there is some food in there that should be tossed and additional space to be found with some focus on organizing.
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