San Francisco Watches Its Waste Line.By Matt Baume, Grist, 10/12/10. “In San Francisco, garbage is treated like a resource that shouldn't be wasted. And that means formulating a plan to reduce the city's garbage output to zero... thanks to the country's toughest mandatory recycling and composting laws, the amount of refuse that San Francisco diverts to recycling and compost is nearing 80%, and keeps on climbing each year… San Francisco's zero-waste quest was touched off by AB 939, a 1989 law that required California towns to divert 50% of their trash away from landfills. Inspired, San Francisco decided it could do even better.
"Randy Hayes, then president of San Francisco's Commission on the Environment, saw a unique opportunity. The city worked with its exclusive waste hauler, Norcal Waste Systems (since rebranded as Recology) to run a dozen experimental pilot programs, augmented by community outreach meetings and teams dispatched to train businesses and residents. In 2000, a three-stream system was established: blue bins for recycling, green for compost, and black for landfill… Hayes said, ‘The planet's survival depends on our ability to reuse resources… Waste is something we need to virtually eradicate from our society.’”
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