San Francisco: 63% Diversion and Rising

The City and County of San Francisco is making great strides toward its 75% diversion goal, using a three-stream sort system for residential recyclables, compostables and trash, and an aggressive commercial and industrial program for food scraps. San Francisco is the only city in the U.S. that is fully committed to a three-stream sort program for residential waste and is a pioneer in source separated organics diversion.

Biocycle contributing editor Molly Farrell recently interviewed Jack Macy, Commercial Recycling Coordinator for the city and county of San Francisco, Department of the Environment.

Q: What led San Francisco to commit to this full scale program while other cities have shied away?

A: The California State Legislature passed a law in 1989 requiring municipalities to divert 50% of their waste from landfills by 2000 or pay a $10,000 daily fine once the deadline passed. By the mid 1990s it became clear that we needed to collect food scraps to get to 50% diversion because yard trimmings account for only 5% of the city’s waste stream, given the its density and small yards.

In 2002, the city and county of San Francisco Board of Supervisors adopted the goals to divert 75% of the waste by 2010, and 100% by 2020. San Francisco’s diversion rate was 63% in 2002 and is expected to be similar for 2003.

San Francisco has a population of nearly 800,000 in 47 square miles, with 40% who don’t speak English at home; daily commuters into the city increase increase that population by about 50%. While these demographics are challenging, we have achieved a lot in a relatively short time.

City officials and staff in partnership with the city’s exclusive trash service provider, Norcal Companies, made the commitment to diverting source separated organics from the landfill. We recognized that compost produced from diverted organics helps sustain healthy landscapes and agriculture. Moving toward sustainability is a key goal for the City and the primary mandate of the Department of the Environment.

Q: What are the highlights of the residential program known as Fantastic Three?

A: Each household receives three 32-gallon, colored carts that are collected weekly: a black cart for trash to landfill, blue cart for mixed fiber and container recyclables, and a green cart for all food scraps, yard trimmings and other compostables. Residents pay extra if they put out more garbage than fits in the black cart, but can put out additional recyclables or compostables free of charge.

This program has been completely rolled out to the city’s nearly 150,000 single family households, that is those with separate garbage accounts. In the Fantastic Three program, residents pay a monthly fee of $19.94 (about average for the Bay area).

Q: What determines the rate per household?

A: Residences pay for the volume of their black trash cart. The standard container size is 32-gallons, but some use 64-gallon containers. by separating their recyclables and compostables, they can go from a 64- to a 32-, or even a 20-gallon container, and thereby reduce their service costs.

Q: What is the participation rate?

A: San Francisco measured exact participation back in 2000. The average weekly rate for compostables was 40%, while recyclables were almost twice that. Over a month’s span, the average participation rate for compostables was nearly 60%. We believe these rates are similar now based on anecdotal observations. It varies by neighborhood and by week. In the Fantastic Three program, materials are collected from single and multifamily residences and small businesses on the same truck.

Q: What about multifamily buildings?

A: Multifamily is generally considered to be over five households in a building or those that do not have individual garbage service. The priority in rolling out the Fantastic 3 program was to first provide single-family households with the service, and for all apartment buildings to receive the recycling service. Composting services are provided on request in these situations. Special arrangements have to be made to coordinate distribution of kitchen pails and tenant participation, which adds another layer of difficulty.

At multifamily or apartment buildings with six or more units, information was posted about the availability of the food scrap program and that a building can sign up if someone (a tenant, building or property manager who lives on site) agrees to be the coordinator. Currently, there are about 200 buildings participating – the largest has 50 units.

We have been working with and provided a grant to the San Francisco Apartment Association to develop and distribute outreach material for managers and to identify and work with 15-plus buildings to set up composting and increase recycling. We’re planning to do more work in this area, including providing on-site technical assistance and training using our consulting team at Applied Compost Consulting, who has been doing composting training for commercial participants, and its subcontractor, Environmental Science Associates, who has experience in multifamily recycling.

European countries with many year’s experience in composting programs have found collecting separated food scraps at larger multifamily buildings the biggest challenge. For us, this is one of the city’s final frontiers to penetrate. We don’t expect everyone to participate.

Q: Have you considered making the Fantastic 3 program mandatory?

A: Yes, we’re considering pushing for it. If it becomes mandatory and some people decide not to participate, they would likely have to pay a lot more through their garbage rate.

We have the infrastructure to get to 75% diversion by 2010 but need to increase participation in our programs. We believe making it mandatory may be necessary to achieve that rate, including possibly the food scraps program. A combination of mandatory and good financial incentives would yield the best participation levels. It’s one of our policy goals to pursue in the coming year.

Commercial Programs

Q: What is the split between commercial and residential waste in San Francisco?

A: In San Francisco, the commercial sector generates about two-thirds of the garbage. Total municipal solid waste (MSW) generation in the city and county of San Francisco, using 2002 data, is about 1.8 million tons. Of that, we estimate that nearly 400,000 tons are compostable organics.

Q: What is the status of commercial composting?

A: Participation by businesses and institutions continues to grow and we continue to reach out and work with them, with a priority of getting all large generators on board. Large generators now in the program include hotels and most convention facilities, SF Giants ballpark, regional supermarket distribution centers, and high volume markets, restaurants and cafeteria meal programs. We also continue to get more small generators joining the program, including coffee shops, juice bars, delis, fire stations and others.

We now have nearly 2,000 businesses and institutions participating in the composting program, diverting over 300 tons a day – including residential – or about 80,000 tons a year through the Norcal companies.

Q: What is the next frontier for the commerical program?

A: Norcal’s Recycle Central facility (MRF) at Pier 96 in San Francisco has processing lines for recovering both the Fantastic 3 and for sorting more mixed office building or other commercial material with a high percentage of recyclables in it. When the cafes, restaurants or other food service operations at an office building are suc
cessfully added to the composting program, the building’s remaining waste is much cleaner and higher in paper for potential sorting of recyclables at Pier 96 – even without extensive source separation. This is happening at many office buildings in the city.

We’ve been working with Norcal to implement a number of programs to improve recovery of recyclables and increase the efficiency of sorting building waste. These include two stream desk-side programs with mixed recyclables going into the larger receptacle and nonrecyclables, including employees’ lunch leftovers, going into a small “trash for landfill” bin or caddy.

Recyclables can be loose and not in bags, especially if there is separate bottle and can recycling, while trash is in bags. While it is certainly important to keep bottles and cans out of the composting stream, it also can help in recovering paper to reduce the amount of bottles and cans that have to be sorted from the office paper grades. To help improve sorting efficiency and increase recovery of recyclables, customers are being encouraged to use clear bags to help identify and keep recyclables clean of wet trash. using clear bags facilitates co-collecting separated recyclables and trash in the same container, such as a compactor for a large building, which is often needed give space constraints.

A few buildings with motivated tenants and managers, have started collecting food scraps from offices. They are using either 3-gallon buckets or 32-gallon Slimlines that they feed into a composting collection for the building.

Q: What is the incentive agreement with Norcal?

A: In the last rate setting process, a Diversion Incentive Account (DIA) was created to “incentivize” Norcal to help the city reach its diversion goals. We set specific tonnage goals of how much could go to the landfill for each of the five rate years. Basing the diversion goals on the amount of tonnage Norcal delivered to the landfill made it simple to verify progress.

The DIA created two tiers of tonnage goals that resulted in providing either rewards or penalties on the amount of project profit that Norcal keeps. Meeting Tier 1 goals for a given rate year would result in a reward of an additional one percent of profit; not meeting them results in losing one percent of profit. Tier 2 goals are more ambitious.

This tiered diversion incentive made a real difference for Norcal in getting them to prioritize and really push hard for more rapid program and facility expansion. Norcal achieved the Tier 2 goals for some years, due to both a more rapid roll-out of programs that originally projected and to an economic downturn those years which decreased waste generation. Achieving the goals resulted in more than $2 million a year of additional profit for them. A new incentive structure will likely set goals to help the city achieve 75% diversion by 2010.

Q: If San Francisco didn’t provide incentives, would Norcal stay involved?

A: Norcal and its haulers would still do the program because the City approved rates to fund it. Norcal’s composting facility receives tipping fee and product revenues, and it provides great public relations and marketing opportunities for them. They have created a food composting niche and have been bidding and winning contracts to collect residential food scraps in other communities. They have a track record no one else has and are demonstrating the expertise to do a successful program from collection, to producing quality compost and marketing it well.

Q: What’s been San Francisco’s experience with contamination?

A: Film and other plastic from commercial and residential participants are still the biggest contaminants and the biggest removal cost in the composting process.

Q: What about using compostable plastic products?

A: We see a valuable role for appropriate compostable plastic products, especially waterproof liners or bags, in facilitating increased participation and addressing concerns about dirty containers and the need to clean them often. The City and Norcal allow and promote only those biodegradable plastic products for use in composting collection that are certified by the Biodegradable Plastics Institute.

Key issues for these products have been their availability and price. Both factors have been improving significantly in the last few years, with many more companies getting involved in their production and distribution and prices coming down. But they are still more expensive than regular plastic.

To help increase participation in the residential composting program, we launched an outreach campaign that is distributing sample packets of 3-gallon compostable bags to line the kitchen pails households receive from the program. We also arranged for two different brands of compostable bags to be sold in many of the city’s supermarkets and large drug stores. The bags have been well received and are selling well in the stores.

Q: Have you seen developments that could lead to lower prices for compostable plastic products?

A: Our office recently awarded a bid to purchase over $50,000 worth of compostable products, including liners, cups, cutlery, clamshells and straws from Nat-Ur Inc., a biodegradable resin converter. We wanted to provide samples to commercial and city department participants to help them evaluate and commit to switch from disposable to compostable bags and food serviceware. We offer them a month’s supply and then they purchase them after that.

We have been working with Cargill-Dow, which produces Natureworks PLA – a corn-based resin that can be made into compostable clear cups and other products – and Fabri-kal, a cup manufacturer, to help them identify potential interest in large-scale compostable cup use, such as at SBC Giants stadium (where we have set up food composting) and other ballparks and large venues. Their goal is to produce and market enough cups, about 30 million a year, so they can be cost-competitive with PET cups. Cargill-Dow says they are producing cost-competitive resin and now they need economy of scale production runs.

Our Department also works with special events coordinators to have their vendors use compostable food serviceware. This has often been successful with diversion upwards of 90% at a number of events, some with tens of thousands of people.

Q: Are there any other steps regarding plastic contamination?

A: We have been pursuing a policy measure to reduce the excessive amount of retail bags used, which are primarily plastic, given their litter and environmental impacts, costing millions of dollars a year in clean-up costs alone. Our Commission on the Environment just passed a resolution to encourage the Board of Supervisors to adopt a user fee of $0.17 for supermarket check-out bags of all types.

We are also evaluating policy options to reduce the excessive use of nonrecoverable disposable food serviceware by requiring that only durable, reusable, compostable or recyclable products be used. our Supervisors passed a resolution calling for City Departments to only use such serviceware at their food service operations and to participate in the composting program. It’s not mandatory, but it’s a step in the right direction and an opportunity to increase a
wareness.