San Francisco’s waste management program is unique because they have an ambitious goal: no waste sent to a landfill.

Instead they want to “divert as much material that can be recycled or composted as possible.” The city has recycling and composting but their composting is unique — it includes food scraps. They’ll even take paper plates with food on it.

The city is an example to other cities and claims that they recycle up to 90% of what’s being thrown away.

They hope to reach their goal by 2020.

Part of that was getting buy in and passing a law to make composting mandatory. “The mandatory [composting] was a much bigger deal to pass, because that was a direct behavioral thing we were asking people to do. We went through a long stakeholder process, meeting with apartment associations, business associations, building manager associations, the chamber, to get their impact and support on how mandatory would work.”

They also put in economic incentives – businesses and people save money by recycling because the city charges them by volume of waste. The city claims it can save hundreds if not thousands per month.

There is also training. “From helping them to physically set up a program and providing stickers and signs and doing training of janitors, we have a whole team of people who do this training.”

The success is pretty amazing: “From the time that mandatory composting was passed in April last year, we’ve gone from 400 tons a day of compostables being collected to almost 600 tons. Within a year we saw an increase of about a quarter in the number of businesses participating.”

I wonder if we could implement this in our city…read more at http://www.grist.org/article/2010-10-12-the-city-that-said-no-to-garbage/

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Recycling programs are responsible for 80,000 jobs in Pennsylvania. The state has 1,600 municipal recycling programs. So Governor Edward G. Rendell has signed a bill to support the state’s economy by keeping valuable recycling programs.

The programs give manufacturers in the state raw materials to work with. The programs are funded by a “tipping fee” of $2 per ton on all waste managed at municipal waste landfills and resource recovery facilities in the state. This adds over $35 million a year for  recycling program.

It also saves the state in disposal costs and creates revenue – something that states need in this economy. The recycling industry in Pennsylvania also has a yearly payroll of more than $2 billion.

There is also a $1.25 million transfer from the recycling fund to clean up tire piles. Tires could also be recycled into products like rubber mulch and landscaping products.

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I’m in Las Vegas on vacation, so this story caught my eye. Nevada residents have sent about 2 million used tires each year to landfills. Now those tires can be recycled. A new state-of-the-art recycling plant opened in Las Vegas this past December.

The facility takes tires from Nevada and parts of Utah, Arizona and California. Phoenix Recycling Technologies said, “we’re producing commodities from the waste. For each ton we produce, it lowers the environmental impact of producing new materials.”

The end product produced is called “crumb rubber,” and is used as turf dressing on natural grass and on artificial playing surfaces. It’s also an ingredient for rubberized asphalt for roads, material for equestrian arenas (it reduces damage to a horse’s bones, joints, ligaments and soft tissue) and for playground surfaces (imagine what it can do to help children by avoiding injuries).

Other benefits for playgrounds include that the material will hold its color, last longer than other compounds and won’t cause splinters, attract insects or animals, or stain clothing.

Crumb rubber also can be used as a landscape mulch.

“All parts of the tire are recycled with 65 percent returned as crumb rubber, 25 percent scrap steel and 10 percent fiber.”

The company worked with Nevada state Sen. Allison Copening, D-Las Vegas, who introduced legislation to encourage tires to be recycled and ban their disposal in most of the state’s landfills. The legislation doesn’t require recycling in rural areas and bans dumping whole tires in municipal landfills.

While the cost may be higher up front, the recycled tire surfaces are a good value because they last. “Although crumb rubber blends often are more expensive than conventional asphalt, Copening said the durability of the finished product could make it worth writing into construction specifications.”

Source: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/apr/02/states-first-tire-recycling-plant-opens/

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