Solid-waste and recycling news in Alameda County

Garbage isn't going away on its own. Alameda County's garbage peaked about 1988 at 2.2 million tons per year and declined to about 1.5 million tons per year (about one ton per person) by the late 1990s, but has remained stubbornly stuck at that level, with some recent increases even. Recycling volumes, both residential and commercial, are growing only slightly.

Towards more effective
curbside recycling

A major innovation in the last decade has been the switch, throughout the county except for Berkeley, to letting home recyclers mix all recyclables in a single rolling cart. This has reduced injuries to curbside drivers (waste collection has historically been a very risky occupation) and it allows a single truck to service far more households (since there is only one cart per household instead of three separate bins for different materials).

After an uncertain start, the sorting factories are learning how to de-mingle what the public has mingled, and we are finding markets for the materials. Some old-time recyclers still miss putting each item into a separate container at home, but the new systems have collected record volumes of material. Apparently, though, most of this added volume is coming from the same folks who used the old system.

Unlike in Chicago and New York, where curbside recycling has been a political football, collection programs for residential recyclables remain in place throughout Alameda County, but they are not attracting many new participants. We need new efforts and ideas on encouraging more participants, especially among immigrants and the urban poor, who need to be sold on the importance of home recycling.

Off-shore buyers, particularly in China, allow the Bay Area steady markets at good prices for almost all recyclable materials. Since imports from Asia greatly exceed exports bound there, shippers have plenty of room in sea containers for scrap paper, metals, and plastics, which leave Oakland daily for east Asian ports to be reprocessed into next year's Christmas presents.

The county waste and recycling boards have recently adopted a policy to tighten up on waste disposal and gradually to ban certain commonly recycled materials from landfills in the county. This follows practice in Toronto, Seattle, San Diego, and other cities frustrated that participation in recycling programs tops out at about 60%.

Composting our garbage

Yard and food debris make up over 30% of the county's trash. Alameda County has more residents, on a percentage basis, participating in food-scrap recycling than any other urban county in the U.S.; nevertheless the participation is quite low compared with communities in Canada and western Europe. Too many organic materials are going into Alameda County landfills, materials (such as food scraps and cardboard) that when buried, over time, create emissions of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas. Current technologies do not come close to capturing landfill gas completely; according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), landfills accounted for nearly 30% of methane emissions (2002) in the U.S.

The county's efforts to advance composting lost a couple years due to a proposal by county staff to build a compost facility in Sunol, on a site where such development is prohibited by Measure D, the county's Urban Limit Line ordinance. Last year the Board of Supervisors scuttled this proposal, and the Alameda County Waste Management Authority is now entertaining a variety of other composting proposals.

• The East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) has a pilot program of adding food debris to its existing sewage digesters, and plans to increase this to 100 tons per day. (Does that sound like a lot? It's around 6% of the county's green waste, a little over 2% of the county's total waste stream.)
• Pellegrini Marin Disposal, a private firm, has proposed to haul green and food debris up the Sacramento River to an inland compost yard in 200-foot barges. This plan has the added benefit of reducing garbage-truck mileage.
• Several ranchers have offered composting space on their properties in the eastern part of the county.

Berkeley has declared itself for a zero-waste future, and the plan to accomplish that goal is moving forward through the city's Zero Waste Commission. In July Berkeley will start collecting food debris from homes and some apartments, and it is rebuilding its waste-transfer station to allow separate piles for all materials coming in.

Berkeley's Zero Waste Commission recommended recently to the City Council that the city begin a pilot program to evaluate the feasibility of coupling weekly collection of residential food scraps and other compostable materials with every-other-week collection of residential rubbish (dry refuse). Weekly trash collection would be available for an additional charge. (Today mixed garbage and rubbish is collected weekly.) The changed system would reward environmental behavior and would help contain collection costs. Officials within the city's Public Health Department do not oppose the pilot program; the department is interested in finding out whether residents can be successful in keeping putrescible materials out of the trash. The EPA (Region 9), which is conducting a study of best practices for residential organics, sees value in the effort.

Oakland also has developed a zero-waste plan and aims to cut garbage to 40,000 tons annually by 2020, down from last year's 400,000 tons. Oakland recently banned polystyrene-foam take-out containers in all food-service settings and is just starting enforcement of that ordinance; it's now the biggest city in the USA to ban polystyrene.

With the start-up of food-debris collection at homes in Berkeley, Piedmont (probably in mid-2008), and Hayward (in 2009), only the Oro Loma area (in San Leandro and San Lorenzo) will have no home-based food-debris collections. Oro Loma tells its residential customers to flush food debris down the drain; they'll let the sewer pipes do the transport and make methane at the treatment plant. Oro Loma does encourage its restaurants to sign on with a food-debris-hauling company that trucks the material out-of-county for composting.

In contrast, two miles away, EBMUD has a big sign up near the Coliseum: "Prevent Sewage Back-up in your house and the Bay - Recycle Your Cooking Oil." The Sierra Club has not analyzed the relative efficiencies of these methods of transporting wastes, but we are concerned in our water-scarce state about using water to move wastes.

Other concerns

Oakland and Berkeley are working together on an important statewide problem. California, as of this year, bans disposal of semi-hazardous materials such as fluorescent lights and alkaline batteries in landfills. Unfortunately the state has not developed a convenient alternative disposal system. Currently these materials are accepted at certain businesses, or at free-to-the-user household hazardous-waste drop-off sites, where the public indirectly pays the costs. Oakland and Berkeley are working to get the state to make manufacturers responsible for these disposal costs. For details about where to dispose of such items in Alameda County in the meantime, visit Stop Waste

For such information statewide see www.ciwmb.ca.gov/WPIE/HazSub

Another good resource on many aspects of Bay Area recycling is www.clutterfreeservices.com/resources.html

The biggest new building in the county for solid waste is the Fremont transfer station, run by BLT Enterprises, which will replace the Tri-Cities landfill on Auto Mall Parkway in a few years.

After 15 years in San Leandro, the county Waste Management Authority, now known as StopWaste.org, is moving to 1537 Webster St. in downtown Oakland. Numerous rehabs and improvements will make this the first LEED-platinum rebuild in Oakland. (LEED is Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, the green-building rating system developed by the US Green Building Council. Platinum is the highest level.) For more information on the building, visit www.StopWaste.org (click on "We've moved".)

Residents are welcome to drop by for a tour. Call first at (510)891-6500.

Arthur Boone is the chair of the Sierra Club California Conservation Committee's Zero Waste Committee and a member of the Bay Chapter's ExComm. He has been a professional recycler since 1983. He will answer any questions at arboone3 -at- yahoo.com