San Francisco, California has a long track record of reducing waste through recycling, composting and other innovative programs.

That’s why independent studies named the city the greenest in North America last year. That’s quite an achievement, but San Franciscoand its resource recovery partner Recology aim to achieve much more – zero waste by 2020!

To join in the tweet chat on sustainability on June 1 at 1pm ET, please join at #zerowasteIBM.

Currently, the city’s diversion rate (the amount of waste diverted from landfill disposal) totals 78%.  Improving that statistic will require a deeper level of insight about the city’s waste stream – what’s in it, where it comes from, where it’s going, and perhaps most importantly, how to encourage more people to participate in recycling, composting and other sustainability programs.

With advanced computing techniques, that information from a vast variety of sources can be collected and analyzed more comprehensively than ever before.

San Francisco, like any urban environment, generates huge amounts of waste and immense amounts of information about it.  IBM’s smarter computing approach to IT is enabling Recology to maximize the effectiveness of recycling programs, matching the most appropriate approaches and services to the right business districts and neighborhoods.

Already, in the past decade or so, these forward looking approaches have contributed to citizens and businesses reducing garbage sent to landfill by nearly half. It’s a remarkable record, and it’s the sort of accomplishment that makes us even more focused on getting to zero waste by 2020.

It will be a step by step process. For example, taking a look at diverse sets of big data to manage the routing and dispatching of trucks that handle 3,000 tons of material every day has already created a more efficient and flexible system. That’s saved time and money by reducing, among other things, wear and tear on vehicles and fuel consumed.

Or, even consider the simple garbage can itself.

When Recology shifted to larger bins in 2001, 1.2 million more tons of paper could eventually be recycled, preserving 20 million trees. Recycling 135,000 more tons of metal saved 19 million gallons of oil. 174,000 tons of recycled glass conserved enough energy to power the city’s cable system for nearly three years.

A little analytical insight can go a long way, And a lot of insight can go all the way to zero.

It’s been said that ignorance about oneself is the root of all evil, and that culture is essential to our human-ness. After all, where would we be without little red envelopes for kids on Chinese New Year, kilts at sport events, or marigold plants on the Day of the Dead? Where would we be without fireworks on the fourth of July or balloons on our birthdays?

These cultural anchors are the markers of time. They give us time to breathe, relax, reflect and enjoy other people. And San Francisco is one of those unique places where this happens in abundance.

Take Carnaval for example. On May 27th, 2012, Memorial Day weekend, thousands of people poured out of buildings, jumped on their bikes, and huddled together along Bryant and Mission streets in the Mission District to be part of the San Francisco Carnaval Grand Parade, California’s largest multicultural celebration.

Carnaval is an annual phenomenon attended by and honors cultures from around the world. In its 33rd year, the theme was Spanning Borders; Bridging Cultures.

Recology, featuring the Drill Team, the Compostables, and Green Toter was there, planting the seeds for a greener future.

One way that we’ve done this is to show people where their garbage goes, and what’s in it. We often take people on tours of our transfer stations, and show them what they think goes “away” after they leave their garbage on the curb.  Most companies would never show the public what the folks at the Recology transfer station in San Francisco call “the Pit”.

The Pit temporarily holds what goes into the garbage can before it’s transfered to a landfill. Most of it is recyclable or compostable. When we look at the pit, we feel the same sense of sadness that others feel when they’re exposed to it for the first time. There’s a lot of wasted material in there.

We don’t hide the Pit for a reason. What folks see in there is an important part of their education about recycling, composting and landfills. And we show it to them for another reason too: to show them what they’re not seeing when they look at the Pit. Fifteen to twenty years ago, the Pit saw about 3,000 tons of waste per day. Today, the number is 1,350. We’ve been able to do this through our partnership with every resident of San Francisco and the Department of the Environment, and the three-bin system that we created, which allows everyone to sort out their compostable and recyclable material from their garbage.  

We participate in coastal and city-wide clean up days to make sure what can be recycled is recycled during those events, and try to inspire people to see garbage differently through our Artist in Residence program in San Francisco and GLEAN in Portland.

Of course, there will always be garbage as long as products are made to be disposable after a single use, and as long as that is true, we will need landfills. But, we hope that the landfills of the future are “inert”–meaning no recyclable and no compostable materials go there.

Coming up with new ways to prevent usable resources from being wasted is part of the joy in our jobs. For example, one of the employees at the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) in San Francisco came up with the idea to recover BART tickets that still had some value and to use the proceeds to support Friends of the Urban Forest and the San Francisco Food Bank.

We love that we get a chance to make a real, positive impact on the lives of people in the cities and towns where we work, and on resource conservation and the climate. It’s a tough and dirty job, but we are glad to do it.

Join other Cupertino residents on May 5th to learn how to compost in your backyard! A free backyard composting workshop will help you get started.

DATE:                 May 5 from 10AM to noon

LOCATION:    Cupertino Community Hall, 10300 Torre Ave.

Src: Tim Patterson via flickr

Cupertino residents attending the workshop will receive a free home composting bin two weeks after attending class.

Limit is one compost bin per household.

To register, call Recology at 408.725.4020.

For information on future compost classes, visit www.reducewaste.org/classes.

Friday, May 18 & Saturday, May 19, 2012

San Francisco Dump Artist in Residence Exhibitions:
Work by Beau Buck & Karrie Hovey

Location: 503 Tunnel Ave. San Francisco, CA 94134

Date/Time: Friday, May 18, 2012, 5pm to 9pm
Saturday, May 19, 2012, 1pm to 5pm

Admission is free and open to the public, all ages welcome, wheelchair accessible. http://www.recologysf.com/AIR

The Artist in Residence Program at Recology San Francisco will host an exhibition and reception for current artists-in-residence Beau Buck and Karrie Hovey on Friday, May 18, from 5-9pm and Saturday, May 19, from 1-5pm. This exhibition will be the culmination of four months of work by the artists who have scavenged materials from the dump to make art and promote recycling and reuse.

Beau Buck: Honey

Beau Buck: Honey

Beau Buck has cited identification with animals as an important component in his art, so it is no wonder that the work of bees producing honey is a metaphor for his creative process while at Recology. He has likened the materials in the dump to a nectar, a raw material waiting to be transformed, and he has indeed performed a bit of alchemy turning disparate fabrics and metals into cohesive artworks. Buck’s work conjures up notions of an earlier era—before answers to everything were available at our fingertips—a time filled with lore and a reverence for the unknown, tinged with romanticism and mysticism. Working with bits of scavenged fabrics, leather cut from boots, antique fur coats, worn denim and tattered Persian rugs, Buck has constructed a grouping of life-sized jackrabbits. Each rabbit takes on a distinct character, and this collection of desert drifters, fading beauties, and wily explorers seems gathered to silently lament an earlier era or the passing of a friend, each imbued with the histories and stories associated with the materials assembled to create it.

“Each piece instructs me toward an understanding of what it means to be an artist, and where art belongs in our physical and digital world,” says Buck who moved to San Francisco from Philadelphia two years ago. Other work includes a romantic (or potentially claustrophobic), vine-covered structure made from windows and glass-paned doors which houses a small bench, and a series of cast lead feathers. Buck made molds of falcon feathers given to him by Recology’s falconer, Indigo, who uses birds of prey to scare away seagulls at the facility, then melted fishing weights and small pieces of pipe to cast leaden versions. The resulting silvery feathers take on atalisman-like quality as they are exhibited strung together, hanging in groups, like herbs drying to be used in an unknown ceremony.

Buck holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and has exhibited on the East Coast and in California.

Karrie Hovey: groundcover

Karrie Hovey: groundcover

During her residency at Recology, Karrie Hovey has made work that addresses the compulsion of humans to alter or manipulate the landscape, while also exploring her own interest in multiples and variations within multiple forms. From the deliberate clearcutting of forests and building of sprawling residential developments to the inadvertent melting of the polar icecap and creation of oceans of plastic resulting from our lifestyles and consumption practices, Hovey’s work alludes to this human urge to modify and meddle and its profound long-term impact on our natural environment.

Working with the term groundcover, she has created art pieces that do indeed cover the ground—in this case the floor of the studio—and which suggest landscapes viewed from the air. Hovey has used the glass kiln in the art studio to melt a variety of scavenged, broken glass and has produced forms in glistening, arctic-like colors which have the appearance of melting ice. Like glass, another material in abundance at the facility is atex paint, and Hovey has poured it on flat surfaces, then once it has dried, has peeled it up and sliced it up into shapes and strips.

lShe has woven the resulting new material creating grid-like forms that appear like pixels from our Google-mapped, manipulated landscapes. Working with discarded books, she has constructed a field of repeating chrysanthemum forms, and like the flowers which are sometimes associated with grief, this work can be seen as morning the loss of physical books while also suggesting the forests of trees used in their creation.

Says Hovey, “as a research-based, site-specific installation artist, I am interested in how a manufactured or created space can destabilize our customary expectations of and interactions with our environment. My investigations have led me to explore the symbiotic relationship between the human landscape and the natural environment. I am intrigued by the impact of global trade, patterns of consumer culture, and the aftermath of our consumption.”

Hovey received her MFA at San Francisco State University and has complete residencies in locations around the world, including China, Spain, the Netherlands, and France.

The Artist in Residence Program at Recology San Francisco is a one-of-a-kind program established in 1990 to encourage the conservation of natural resources and instill a greater appreciation for the environment and art in children and adults. Artists work for four months in studio space on site, use materials recovered from the Public Disposal and Recycling Area, and speak to students and the general public. Over ninety-five professional Bay Area artists have completed residencies. Applications are accepted annually in August.

Directions to 503 Tunnel Ave.

Directions from downtown San Francisco & East Bay
Go south on Highway 101 and exit at “Candlestick Park/Tunnel Ave.” After the stop sign, continue straight on Beatty Rd. Turn right on Tunnel Ave.

Direction from The Peninsula

Go north on Highway 101 and exit at the first “Candlestick Park” off-ramp. Stay in the left lane and take the first left toward the stop sign. Turn left onto Alanna Way and go under the freeway. At the next stop sign, turn right on Beatty Rd. Turn right on Tunnel Ave.

Public Transit

The “T” Third St. streetcar and bus lines 8x, 9, 9L, and 56 stop at Bayshore Blvd. and Arleta Ave. (three blocks away). The Caltrain “Bayshore Station” stop is directly across the street from our facility.

The Kindercourt Preschool serves children from ages zero to four years old. An introduction to recycling and composting is just one of the great activities they participate in. To the children’s surprise, after the presentation a driver demonstrated how he picks up recycling using his fully-automated truck.

“Thank you very much for coming out to talk to the children, it was a big hit they were talking about it all day, you guys made a huge impact on them.”

– Teacher Michelle

Remember, Recology San Mateo County is here to help educate the community on the importance of recycling and composting. If you are interested in scheduling a presentation at your school, or training your restaurant or office staff, one of our WASTE ZERO Specialists will be happy to help!

Call us today at 650.595.3900 or visit us at RecologySanMateoCounty.com

Spring in Ashland, Oregon
Photo by Carissa Rogers via flickr

Recology Ashland sees safety as their primary responsibility: the safety our customers, the general public and our employees. But don’t get us wrong—we work every day to protect the environment and to provide the best possible service in the most efficient and cost-effective way. We strive to do all of this without sacrificing good customer service.

At Recology Ashland we think believe everything starts with good customer service. That is why whenever there is a special request, or any unresolved issue, we always stand prepared to meet one-on-one when necessary to discuss your needs as our customer and to work towards a mutually satisfactory solution without penalizing other rate payers and without putting people or property in harm’s way.

What about requests for special services?

We go out of our way to evaluate special service requests because we know that’s at the heart of good customer service. We evaluate them on a case-by-case basis for safety, feasibility and cost. For example, if you request not to bring your can or cart to the curb, the staff here at Recology Ashland visit your service location and meet with you to determine if you are elderly, disabled, or otherwise unable to move your recycling and garbage to the curb by yourself. If this is the case, we gladly accommodate the request. If this is not the case, we offer special services for an additional fee. (Sometimes we are not allowed to do this by contract).

If you aren’t willing to pay for the special service, or we are not allowed to offer it in your service area, then the request may regrettably be denied. This is done to ensure that rate payers who do not require special services are not penalized by having to pay higher rates for the special services requested by others who are capable and able-bodied.

Why else might special services or exemptions be denied?

If a can, cart or dumpster is situated dangerously close to vehicles or other property, you may be asked to relocate your container to an area where Recology is less likely to damage anyone’s property. Similarly, we will ask you to relocate your containers if we are servicing them in close proximity to people or animals. We don’t want anyone to get hurt!

You may also be asked to relocate your can, cart or dumpster if our drivers have to move heavy containers over unreasonable terrain or distances, as this could injure them.

So what’s the bottom line?

Unsafe situations could lead to accidents or injuries that could be expensive, or worse, result in personal tragedy. These costs end up being absorbed by rate payers, so the safer we can be, the lower our rates can be.

We look forward to working with you to make our environment and our services safe for everyone.

Photo by Ann Larie Valentine via flickr

With spring cleaning around the corner, have you considered using one of your free Bulky Item Collections (BIC) options?

Recology provides each and every resident of San Mateo County two free collection opportunities every year. It’s your chance to get rid of that old couch, mattress, dresser or stove—for free! Your neighbors are already taking advantage of this service. One San Mateo resident thanked us for providing her the BIC service. She wrote:

“Today your workers picked up our bulky item collections (extras). We are very grateful for this service that Recology provides and I wanted to reward them this time with a sincere thank you”.

Call us at 650-595-3900 or visit us at RecologySanMateoCounty.com to schedule your pick up!

Recology San Mateo County—we’re working for you, and for a cleaner, greener environment… one stop at a time.

· We set a record-breaking Earth Hour at 8:30PM PST. (Asia took the lead.)

· SOLV, working with Western Oregon Waste (WOW, a Recology company) collected 44,000 pounds of trash from the coast.

· Despite the rain, around 3,000 San Franciscans came out with their buckets, bags, carts and coolers to pick up free compost at the Great Compost Giveaway.

Hayes Valley Farm was happy to host the Great Compost Giveaway, since it shares Recology’s values of zero-waste and community involvement. The farm employs permaculture–a whole systems design approach to growing food and restoring natural ecologies–to minimize inputs and upcycle local waste on its 2.2 acre site in the heart of San Francisco. The photos are from the Giveaway at Hayes Valley Farm.

Now, get ready!

Recology San Mateo County and the City of San Carlos will host the next Great Compost Giveaway event on Earth Day this month.

Saturday, March 31st from 8AM to noon is the Great Compost Giveaway in SF!

This is a bring your own bucket event!

Learn more and register on http://www.recologysf.com.

Join us at any one of the following locations:

ALEMANY FARM
700 Alemany Blvd. off 280 South

FERRY PLAZA FARMERS MARKET
Ferry Building at the Embarcadero

MCLAREN PARK
Jerry Garcia Amphitheater, John F. Shelley Dr. at Mansell St.

OCEAN BEACH PARKING LOT
850 Great Highway between Lincoln Way and Fulton St.

See you there!