Recology Wins Environmental Award
Last week Waste & Recycling News awarded Recology its 2009 Environmental Award (see Honoring innovators). Among past winners are great companies like HP and RecycleBank. While the award is a source of pride for us, we know there’s still a lot of work to be done. It takes a lot of dedication and effort for an employee-owned company like us to offer practical alternatives for resource recovery.
Since 1996, we have worked to expand the class of recycables to include food waste, and we’ve been successful. As of this past October, our city-wide food waste collection program in San Francisco exceeded 500 tons per day, and we have composted a conservative estimate of 620,000 tons of organics. Why do we do it?
We know that food and other biodegradable products generate greenhouse gases when they decompose in landfills. Landfill gas collection systems are one remedy to this, although the best estimates are that they capture 70% of the methane emitted at most. And, that is if the gas collection system is installed early in the life of a landfill. We also know that landfills are responsible for the largest part of human-created methane emissions in the United States.
Source: Soil Science, eHow.com
Food waste collection is a low-cost, viable solution to the problem. Through composting, we not only prevent sme of the methane emissions that would otherwise escape into the atmosphere, we also enhance soil quality and reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers. I recently heard a radio interview with one of the producers of Dirt! the Movie discussing the importance of soil health in preventing soil erosion and desertification. (E-how.com has a short summary on the causes.) Compost is often used as vegetative cover, which, in concert with other land management practices, can prevent soil erosion.
We are proud of what we’ve done so far, and look forward to creating viable resource recovery solutions everywhere we work.
Return your leftovers to the farm
A friend and I talk alot about “closing the loop”, and how important it is to our future. Talking about it so much though, I take it for granted that everyone knows what closing the loop means.
The closest definition on the internet that I’ve found is:
Completing the recycling cycle by buying products that were made with recycled materials.
Closing the loop is the idea that we can find the next best and highest use for everything we buy by making conscious decisions about where we buy it, where we send it, and the contents of what it is we buy.
Take your groceries for example. Let’s say you don’t really care whether you buy organic or conventionally-farmed oranges and avocados. You just eat them. Well, what do you do with that orange peel or avocado seed once you’ve made orange juice or guacamole? Most people throw those things in the trash, or, if they have a garden, they may put it in their dirt or compost bin to help their garden grow.
Last April, Recology took a major step in shaping the future of the resource recovery industry. The name change is not superficial. We are doing what we’ve always done–for example, we started the organics recycling program in 1996. Changing our name from Norcal Waste Systems to Recology was more than anything another example of our desire to change the way Americans think about their garbage.
The company has been pushing for people like you and me to realize that when we separate our leftovers from our regular trash, they can be composted. The compost can be used by farms throughout the country to grow more food. When you buy and eat food that’s been grown by farmers using compost, and then return your leftovers to them as compost, you have “closed the loop”.
A Fox News blog post about our food waste collection and recycling program nicely illustrates the concept of closing the loop.
Closing the loop is an idea that has to do with thinking systematically in terms of cause and effect. It also has to do with paying attention to the feedback we get from our environment through observation, the news, and data–whether scientific or operational. When we start o ask ourselves what will happen to the things we buy for Thanksgiving dinner, it starts to become clearer that putting food scraps in a landfill doesn’t make sense–not when there are farms out there waiting to fertalize the soil with the compost they need to feed you and me.
*There’s a closing the loop curriculum that the California Integrated Waste Management Board has put together for K-6 graders. Share it with your kids, young friends, or cousins.
Beat LA! Compost updates
With the Giants missing post season play once again, I am relegated to dwell on the past and dream of 2010 glory and accolades. The pitching seemed to outshine all other play. Jonathan Sanchez threw a “perfect” no hitter, Zito had his most promising season to date as a Giant, Brad Penny lit a late fire on the mound and management survived another 6 month season. We were missing bats to back up our arms, but all and all it was a solid season that I thoroughly enjoyed and know that we’ll have our time. We’re building.
The ball park looked good this year too. The gulls were on good behavior and the trash and recycling was well under control. Management started announcing recycling efforts in the late innings and fans responded. I read an entertaining article that reminded me of this. Some stats:
- LA has a diversion rate of 65%
- San Francisco is at 72%
- The national average is listed at 59%
The same article discloses that LA does not formally recognize SF as a “major US city” and therefore claims to have the highest diversion rate in the US. The subjective rationale for this assertion is addressed in the article and appropriately emphasizes that SF is leading the charge in trash diversion and reduction.
Our recycling and composting efforts are being noticed nationwide as cities and communities push to reach mandated diversion percentages. San Franciscans have embraced this necessary change and incorporated it into all facets of our local culture, including the ball games, and changed our standards of living for the better. Recology has complimented this effort with the curbside organics collection, state of the art recycling facilities and a roll out of community based programs anchored on a “Zero Waste” target. The successes of San Francisco’s efforts are reflected in the 72% measurement.
Hats off to you SF for keeping this place as special as it is! Let’s continue to push as a team towards maximum diversion and, of course, beat LA!
D&J
Candy, candy, candy
Halloween is a fun time of the year. Here in the Bay area, people tend to take it very seriously. I’m sure if you’re from here or if you’ve at least visited, you’ve glimpsed at the crowds of bike riders rolling along Market Street in their Halloween best. This year, I saw a head of lettuce in green leggings on his bike, followed by a ghost, a skeleton, and someone with lots of big red hair.
Although Halloween is always a good excuse to inhale every kind of candy invented, what’s left over in packaging is not. This year, I spent a lot of time looking at the empty plastic bags that had held all those bits of chocolate and nuts that we happily sprinkled into the little hands of trick or treaters.
The thin but strong plastic material used in the packaging of many consumer products beyond Halloween candy is incredibly hard to recycle. This is in part because of its chemical properties of the plastic, and in part because of the relatively low volume of material collected and its small mass. Once a year, however, this material becomes visible to us watching what goes into our trash cans. The question that this specific type of material brings up is at the crux of Recology’s work: what can we do with the excess materials we work so hard to produce and so easily consume as a society?
Recology has already pioneered food waste, yard waste, and more traditional recycling programs that are only now being replicated across the U.S. We will continue to lead the way in recovering materials whose next best use is serving as the valuable inputs to other processes and products. I look at the piles of one-time-use materials that have for so long been bound for the landfill, and can’t help but think of the other possibilities. In a place as creative as the costumes we think up once a year, we can find another use for materials that would otherwise sit burried in a kind of limbo for an indefinite amount of time.
A Banana Peel By Any Other Name…
Src: flickr.com
Shakespeare, although talented and prolific probably didn’t have banana peels, coffee grounds, and cardboard pizza boxes in mind when he wrote Romeo and Juliet, but I have to respectfully disagree with William’s historic metaphor. In the recycling, reuse and resource recovery world, labeling is everything.
For example: I was recently on an airplane where I observed a very interesting recycling experiment. As the plane was landing, a flight attendant announced to the passengers that he would be collecting all garbage on the descent into Oakland. Perking up at the sound of garbage (sad, but true) I watched as the jovial flight attendant received everything from peanut foil wrappers to plastic cups, half-eaten sandwiches, and worst of all… aluminum cans. Following him down the aisle was his partner in recycling crime, another flight attendant tasked to collect everything recyclable. I watched as 3 or 4 people handed her water bottles and newspapers. Presumably, these people are conscious of where their “garbage” will be going once thrown into that white plastic bag.
Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I couldn’t help but think how the passenger’s habits would change if the flight attendant announced he would be picking up all “recycling, compostable materials, and finally, if I really have to, any non recyclable or non compostable items you may have leftover.” Ok, maybe the last bit is a stretch, but I have to believe that the general, unassuming public would change their habits if we just broke the word garbage down a bit.
In this era of environmental consciousness, companies are making huge investments to become more “green”. Imagine the difference the airline industry could make in consumer habits just by changing the way they refer to what is left behind after the passengers leave the plane. This is a great way to show the public that a company cares about the environment, and it doesn’t cost them a cent.
So, let’s stop referring to our leave behinds as garbage, and start calling them what they really are: recyclables, compostables, and landfill destined materials. With 2 million people flying on a daily basis, I believe the words will travel fast.
Welcome to the Recology blog!
It is meant to be a resource for our customers and the general public to learn about our mission, operations, and community activities.
Last April we changed our corporate name to Recology from the Norcal Waste Systems to better reflect our company’s direction and passion. The new name, which draws from the “recycle, reduce reuse” waste reduction strategy that gained popularity in the 1980s and the word “ecology”, reflects our ambition to move away from a culture of disposal and towards a sustainable future.
Our future is focused on maximizing our resources and wasting less, with the ultimate goal of developing a system where we “waste zero”. Waste zero embraces and embodies the concepts of environmental, social and economic sustainability. So far, we have achieved a diversion rate of 72% in San Francisco (the highest in the country) and employed multiple strategies to go beyond this level. The most recent progress towards our local “waste zero” goal was the establishment of mandatory composting in San Francisco.
We hope to take this attitude to our other operating areas to help them achieve their sustainability goals. This blog will be an avenue to share information about Recology as well as to explore general concepts of sustainability, materials reuse and recovery, consumer practices and the like. The goal is to help employees, customers and community members develop a better understanding of the function of the waste and materials recovery industries, how the current systems work for you and your environment and things that you can do to help shape its course. The blog environment will be a neutral place to explore related links and resources, see what people are saying about various topics related to “waste zero”, and to participate in the ongoing dialogue.
We will be reporting on and exploring various topics including recycling, the environment, technology, our community inside Recology and beyond, and many other topics. We look forward to working with you to develop this blog to be as entertaining, informational and beneficial to you as it can be.
tulip
rachrecycles
cOLeCo7e
darbyandjoan
make art
slidetozero
wastezerosf
art at the dump
wedmorningpickup
recologysanmateocounty
iheartcompost
Sol
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