Plastics Part 6: Poly is Popular
Guest blogger, Jessica Connolly of Recology San Mateo County explores plastics and her relationship to them in this series.
Photo by Polycart via flickr
Polypropylene (PP) is one of the most versatile plastics available. It has a variety of uses and is made into many types of manufactured products. This plastic is used because it is very durable, has a high melting temperature, can be hydrophilic (be absorbent), and is relatively resistant to solvents and some chemicals.
PP is used in packaging, textiles, reusable food containers, electronic exteriors, automotive interiors, car batteries, and even the filling in baby diapers, and other sanitary products! Some textiles that PP is made into are carpets, ropes, synthetic thermals, and long underwear. Companies like Rubbermaid, Ziplock, and Tupperware use PP in their reusable containers, as they can withstand high temperatures in microwaves and dishwashers. The caps on PET soda and water bottles are made of PP as well.
PP is used as the exterior of car batteries because it is more resistant to corrosion from toxic materials and because the plastic can withstand high temperatures.
PP is also used as the main plastic in baby diapers because it can be manufactured to have high liquid-absorption properties, where the liquid binds to the plastic and becomes semi-solidified. It is also used for synthetic dish towels where the towel acts like a sponge, drying objects better than cotton or wool towels would.
PP is usually recycled into other hard plastics. However, it is not generally recycled into disposable or reusable food containers because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) deems recycled materials in food containers as unsafe. Many times electronic exteriors for computers, TVs or DVD players are made from recovered PP.
Because of its more durable and resistant properties, it is often reused much more than other types of plastic. It also has fewer chemicals and additives than other food ware plastic, making it safer for food to come in contact with. Compared to other plastic, PP is better for the environment, our health, and reduces our usage of disposable plastic, taking some ease off our consumption of petroleum.
Round it up and recycle that plastic!
What a dedicated group of people can do
John Darling wrote a nice article for the Daily Tidings on October 15, 2011 about the beginning of something good. In Ashland, Oregon, at the annual Jackson County Plastic Round-up at least three good things happen, he wrote. “You get to dump a big load of stuff from your garage, you feel good about helping the planet, and you run into friends — or meet new ones — and get to chat with them.”
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Jackson County is home of the Rouge Valley Earth Day, the Bear Creek Festival, Rouge Valley Bird Day, and the famous Oregon Shakespeare Festival. This last weekend, though, citizens of Jackson County dropped off their plastic (excluding PVC pipe, vinyl, rubber, polystyrene or plastic with metal in it) and with the help of six Jackson County Master Recyclers, who are trained by Recycling Partners, Recology Ashland Sanitary Service and others, had their plastic sorted, shipped and shredded for reuse.
“It feels really good to get rid of this stuff.”
The event only happens once a year. Therefore, gardners, hobbyists, and others have a chance to recycle plastic and be good stewards of the planet, although many already find reuses for the material. Many of them said it felt good. Last year, Jackson County residents rounded up about 25 tons of plastics.
Where does the plastic go? In this case, it goes to Portland. Our own Risa Buck, a Zero Waste Specialist at Recology Ashland Sanitary Service said that some of the plastic will be made into very durable railroad ties.
Risa emphasized that recyclers don’t make any money from the Round-up, but we do it “because it’s the right thing to do.”
California is moving the needle on recycling
By now you may know that California has a new state goal of diverting 75% of “garbage” from landfills by 2020. 2020 is a big year for the state. San Francisco and Oakland have their own goal of reaching zero waste by that year. The city of Mountain View has set the goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to 20% below 1990 levels by that year. Why is 2020 so important?
Over twenty years ago, the California legislature mandated that 50% of landfill-bound materials had to be diverted to other uses. San Francisco, with its growing population opted for the higher goal of 75% several years later. The year 2020 is the target year for proving what can be accomplished in three generations. The idea of zero waste has gained momentum here in the United States because, whether aspiration or not, the technology, know-how, public will and information is now available for us to make it happen. Yet, according to CalRecycle, although some places in San Diego County are on their way to meeting the 75% recycling mandate, there are many places within that county and throughout California where cities, towns, municipalities and unincorporated areas struggle to divert even 50% of their landfill-bound materials.
Percent Diverted from Landfills, San Diego County
So what is zero waste?
Zero waste is the perspective that no materials are sent to landfills or incinerators. At Recology we believe in WASTE ZERO, which means making the best and highest use of all resources. There is a slight distinction. It is not enough to aspire to send nothing to landfills. Rather, the idea of WASTE ZERO is that the materials that are diverted from end-of-life destinations should be used in smart ways.
Raising the bar on mandated recycling isn’t just about the destination of landfill-diverted materials. Governor Jerry Brown signed the legislation not only to save our natural resources, but also to create jobs. Assembly member Chesbro, who authored the bill, said that the original 50% mandate helped to create 125,000 new jobs since 1989 and provide $4 billion in yearly salaries. Members of StopWaste.Org mentioned that for every job lost at a landfill, three more were created in recycling. Here’s to more jobs! Let’s keep recycling!
Ask Gino: Why are garbage rates going up?
Gino Gasparini is the community affairs manager for Recology San Mateo County. He lives in Redwood City. His OP-ED piece appeared in the Daily News, San Mateo County, on October 17, 2011.
I spend a significant part of my day visiting with our customers, attending community meetings with neighborhood associations, service clubs, chambers of commerce and a host of other groups. In these meetings I get the same question from everyone — “Why are our rates going up again?” The common assumption is that our company, Recology San Mateo County (RSMC), is somehow allowed to charge whatever we want for our collection services.
However, the truth is very different from the perception. RSMC is simply the collection service provider to the 12 member agencies that make up the South Bayside Waste Management Authority (SBWMA or RethinkWaste) service area. We are not the rate-setting entity, we simply charge a contractually agreed upon cost to provide collection service. Moreover, while the percentages that rates are going up seem alarming, the actual dollar amounts are quite reasonable for the new and improved services being provided, in an area that has some of the lowest established collection rates in the Bay Area. The reality is that Recology’s cost is just one component of the collection rates set by the 12 agencies. For instance, within the rates set by cities, there are costs for disposal at the landfill and processing charges for the recycling and organics handled by a different contractor, South Bay Recycling, as well as the cost to close out the previous contracts with Allied Waste [totaling $10+ million].
To complicate things even more, a significant contributor to collection rates increasing for many cities this year is the impact of residents subscribing to smaller garbage carts — otherwise known as cart migration. Many residents have increased recycling and composting, which has helped them reduce their garbage service levels considerably, and since rates are lower for the smaller garbage cart sizes, they are able to reduce their monthly charges.
This cart downsizing is a very positive thing, and coupled with the amount of material we pick up, tells us definitively that the recycling collection programs are working well, since we have increased recycling and compost volumes across the board by more than 30 percent. This is a good thing and it is what RethinkWaste and the CartSMART program sought out to do when choosing a new collection system and Recology as its new collection services provider.
Though a bit counterintuitive, the effort or time spent and the cost to service a 20-gallon cart is essentially the same as the cost to service a 32-, 64- or 96-gallon carts. In all instances, the same number and type of trucks are used, the labor costs are the same and the same infrastructure requirements are necessary. Yet, the rates charged to residents are based on the size of their garbage carts, and they are significantly discounted when using a smaller garbage cart.
This rate structure was put in place for a good reason: it provides an incentive for recycling over disposal — a highly commendable and sustainable purpose, and it has yielded cost savings to people who recycle.
However, because of the success of the new CartSMART program, and based on the rates established, the balance of large carts to smaller ones has shifted and many of the RethinkWaste member agencies have found themselves collecting insufficient revenue through their rates to cover the costs of providing the service and are therefore in a position where adjustments are necessary to account for past revenue shortfalls and to help prevent future shortfalls.
This explanation of rate setting is not to suggest that Recology’s costs are not increasing. They are. Our collection service costs to the RethinkWaste member agencies have an average rate impact of 2.2 percent from 2011 to 2012. The reason for this increase is due to contractual adjustments based on consumer price index, fuel costs and labor costs. The truth is that Recology would prefer not to raise collection rates. But the fact is, based on our contracts, our costs rise and/or fall based on established indexes to cover adjustable items like fuel and labor. What is also fact is that while our cost increases are part of the rate increases, they are a small portion of them and they are not done on a whim, but instead are based on solid, nationally indexed, contracted and approved formulas.
We understand that rate increases are never easy. We also understand that the percentages being discussed are large. We ask you to keep in mind that the actual dollar amount is minimal and are only due in small part to Recology’s allowable cost increases. We also ask you to keep in mind that the new CartSMART program is providing great results and has been warmly received. It also is a critical step in meeting new state recycling goals established by Assembly Bill 341 that sets a 75 percent recycling goal for California by 2020 — the most ambitious in the nation.
Recology San Mateo County is proud to be a part of this successful program and is committed to helping our community and cities that we serve achieve the highest level of recycling through the new CartSMART weekly collection program.
Clean Economy Jobs: A Key in America’s Emerging Next Economy
In December of 2009, we wrote about green jobs in recycling–jobs that have a positive environmental impact. And so we are glad that yesterday, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson visited one of the Recology materials recycling facilities (MRFs) to promote President Obama’s jobs plan and sustainability . If you’re wondering what clean economy or “green” jobs have to do with recycling, you should read a report called ”Sizing the Clean Economy” written by The Brookings Institution. It found that:
In terms of its sectoral profile, the clean economy encompasses a wide variety of activities that extends far beyond high-profile renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors. In fact, the vast majority of clean economy jobs produce goods or services that protect the environment or reduce pollution in ways that have little to do with energy or energy efficiency. Nearly one-fifth of clean economy jobs, for example, involve agriculture and conservation, which includes a variety of land and forestry management jobs, as well as those in organic farming. Another 40 percent of clean economy jobs benefit the environment through greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction, the management of resources like air and water, and recycling. Businesses involved in renewable energy, by contrast, comprise just 5 percent of all clean economy jobs. Nuclear energy, considered clean but non-renewable, comprises 3 percent of jobs: roughly 75,000.
The Brookings-Battelle Clean Economy Database, which was a source for the report, also found that according to their data, 1.7 million people in 2010 held clean economy jobs. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont ranked #6 out of a 100 metropolitan areas, with 51,811 people working across sectors to create environmental beneficial alernatives. There’s an interactive map you can look at online that illustrates their findings.
The data on San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont shows that between 2003 and 2010, 15,784 new clean economy jobs were created–and over 6,000 of them were in the waste industry. In 2010, these jobs paid $59,856 per year on average. That’s not a bad deal in a country struggling to overcome an unemployment rate of 9.1%.
Meet Recology – Sharon
Sharon
Recology South Bay
Contract Administrator
Santa Clara, California
How long have you worked for Recology?
I started in 1977. I did take two breaks along the way for a total of 40 months. So if you deduct that from my 34+ years, I’d have to say a looooong time.
Can you talk about your career with Recology?
My first position was in customer service as a general office clerk.
I started with Los Altos Garbage Company, now known as Recology South Bay. Since then I have worked at the corporate office, Recology South Valley, Recology Silicon Valley, and now I am with the Recology South Bay Accounting Group. In between all those jobs, I’ve had the good fortune to work directly at and with a number of our other subsidiaries.
Photo by dyobmit via flickr
What kind of changes have you seen happen within the company during your career here?
The industry has changed dramatically over the decades, and so our company has had to as well. We have obviously had to incorporate a new methodology [for what we do] and we have benefitted from being on top of our technology. What has not changed is the feeling of family that we have and the way we work together as a community.
What do you think of the Employee Stock Ownership Plan?
I think it is incredible! It is inspiring and gives more meaning to what we do.
Do you or you family recycle?
Absolutely – my children were raised doing it. In fact, while my son was away at college I used to hear complaints constantly because that town in Kentucky didn’t recycle at all. Both of my kids have spent their entire lives with this company, because I was twenty years old when I started.
Have you participated in a company volunteer event? Is so which one?
Yes, the San Jose Rose Garden event. I was one of the team captains, so I made sure that my particular team knew what they had to do. I ran around getting them water, emptying containers, and did some of the weeding and pruning as well. My daughter, her best friend and her best friend’s fiancée also participated. They are getting married at the Rose Garden by the way, so they went around thanking everyone for making the Rose Garden pretty.
Sharon Bryan was one of over 150 Recology volunteers helped to
beautify the San Jose Municipal Rose Garden, which was later recognized as
A direct portal to a landfill
There was an article posted last week on tinygreenbubble.com about the semantics in the world of resource recovery. Jocelyn Saurini wrote “don’t think that I’m one of those girls on a bandwagon about how San Francisco does everything right. Believe me, I am not that girl. However, the city has nailed one thing fabulously: They’ve found a way to make residents think about landfill size every single time they throw things away.”
During her trip to SF, she discovered that landfill-bound material is collected in a container labeled “landfill” and not “trash” or “garbage”.
Semantics do matter in what we do because the materials that go into the green and blue containers ARE NOT garbage. According to one dictionary, garbage means: “any matter that is no longer wanted or needed; trash.”
But in the areas where we work, what diligent people do every day is make a decision to save our natural resources by recycling and composting. They are not “throwing away” anything except what there is no next best use for. The materials we recycle become the same or next use items. We convert the organics that we collect into compost. Let’s stop calling it garbage.
As for landfill size–yes, landfill space matters. In some communities people do not think about what they throw away and quickly use up the area available to dispose of true garbage. That means they end up having to find more land to use for landfilling “garbage”. But we see a more fundamental problem. Many useful resources are buried in the first place because no recycling alternatives exist.
As for everything that goes in the landfill container, yes its true that has no chance to be recovered. It doesn’t get sorted for usable material. So we depend on people to make the wise choice and minimize the amount of true garbage they put in that container. We know, like Jocelyn does, that “waste doesn’t just disappear.” That’s why we say WASTE ZERO.
The Story of Zero Waste
The 850,000 residents of San Francisco are what make it the country’s environmental leader. Read The Story of Zero Waste and of the hard work that the City and Recology do every day to support it in this month’s issue of Resource Recycling.
Menlo Park Connoisseurs Marketplace
Connoisseurs’ Marketplace: One Green Festival
Are you planning to attend the Connoisseurs’ Marketplace this weekend in Menlo Park? It’s their silver anniversary, and it’s going to be their GREENEST event yet!
Menlo Park’s Chamber of Commerce has pledged to make this a Zero Waste event while showcasing top artists, music, chefs’ demos, fabulous food and drink, fun for kids, artisan specialty food purveyors, a collector car show, home and garden exhibits, health and wellness displays, an organic and green products showcase, and the new Cuda Lounge.
July 16-17 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Santa Cruz Avenue.
Admission is FREE–don’t miss it!
Learn more about the event and how Recology is helping out with their greening efforts.
San Francisco Recycling Helps Make It Greenest City in U.S. and Canada
- Src: Edward via flickr.com
In a new study on the environmental sustainability of major cities, San Francisco ranked #1. The rankings were based on environmental policies that examined carbon emissions, energy, land use, buildings, transportation, water, waste, air quality and environmental governance.
SF Has a Perfect Recycling Score
San Francisco ranked near the top in six categories, but stood alone in one area–-recycling. In that category, the city earned 100 points out of a possible 100.
Mayor Edwin Lee said the achievement is “an honor for San Francisco,” which “is committed to working toward a greener, healthier future.”
The report, conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit and commissioned by Siemens Corp., credited San Francisco’s recycling and composting programs as the city’s “strongest” environmental area.
| Top 5 Cities Garbage, Recycling, Compost |
|
| City | Score |
| San Francisco | 100.0 |
| Seattle | 83.1 |
| Los Angeles | 81.9 |
| Toronto | 78.6 |
| Minneapolis | 72.6 |
San Francisco, in 2009, became the first U.S. city to require that all residents and businesses separate recycling and compost materials from normal trash. The report stated that for years San Francisco has been a trailblazer in partnering with the private sector on innovative green initiatives.
The study compared 27 major U.S. and Canadian cities on categories such as environmental governance and performance. In grabbing the mantle of greenest major city, San Francisco topped New York, Seattle, Denver, and Boston.
“The Green Cities Index demonstrates that America’s cities are the driving force behind the nation’s sustainability efforts,” said Eric Spiegel, president and CEO, Siemens Corp.
The study provided some important key findings. Notably, cities that performed best in the rankings are the ones that have comprehensive sustainability plans. San Francisco is working to achieve zero waste by 2020, a goal set by the Board of Supervisors.
We are proud that our good, hard work, in partnership with the city, has contributed to setting an example in the U.S. and Canada.
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