Date: July 21, 2011
Source: Recology
The City of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors approved a contract with Recology, Inc. (San Francisco, CA) to ship as much as 5 million tons, or 400,000 tons per year, of the city's waste over a 10 year period to Yuba County. Recology plans to ship the waste by rail to its 236-acre Ostrom Road Landfill in Wheatland, CA, 130 miles away. In so doing, it promises to save city ratepayers $100 million, reduce transportation fuel usage by 1 million gallons, and 10 million fewer truck miles on Bay Area highways by switching to rail haul, according to the company. The current 27-year agreement with Waste Management (Houston, TX) which takes the city's waste to its Altamont Landfill site in Livermore, expires in 2015.
The San Francisco Department on the Environment, which oversees the landfill contract, rejected Waste Management's bid to keep the contract amid criticism about Recology's 79-year-old monopoly on picking up the city's waste. San Francisco currently generates abut 5,600 tons of waste per day, with all but 20 percent or so diverted from landfill. San Francisco's goal is to have zero landfill waste by 2020.
PRESS RELEASE
July 26, 2011
Recology Issues Statement Regarding Landfill Agreement
Recology's President & CEO Mike Sangiacomo released the following statement today in response to Recology being awarded the landfill disposal agreement by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors:
"Recology would like to thank the Board of Supervisors for their thoughtful and comprehensive process that led to our contract award. The merits of the Recology proposal are definitive: more than $100 million in cost savings to San Francisco rate payers, a reduction of fuel usage for the transportation of waste by 1 million gallons, and 10 million fewer truck miles on Bay Area highways by switching to rail haul."
This landfill contract will manage the materials that are not recycled or composted. Thanks to residents and businesses participation in recycling programs designed and implemented by the City and Recology, San Francisco diverts more than 77 percent of the waste generated in the City away from landfill disposal.
Recology maintains its commitment to doing everything the company can to help achieve zero waste by 2020, a goal set by the Board of Supervisors. Toward that end, Recology provides 20 separate and distinct recycling programs in San Francisco, more than any other city in the Country. These programs give residents and businesses opportunities to recycle and compost at properties throughout the City and help property owners comply with the City's mandatory recycling and composting ordinance.
By reducing landfill disposal and returning nutrients and carbon to local farms, San Francisco's compost program has offset air emissions equivalent to all vehicle traffic crossing the Bay Bridge for more than two years. For details, see the Earth Day news release posted at www.RecologyMedia.com. Let's all be more attentive to recycling and send less to landfill. Please remember the call to action – reduce, reuse, recycle.
About Recology
Recology, formerly Norcal Waste Systems, Inc., is a 100 percent employee-owned company based in San Francisco. The company's mission is to become a leader in the transformation from waste management to a new world of resource recovery and optimization. Recology has adopted a new rallying cry – Waste Zero. For more information about the new name and what it means for you, the communities it serves and the planet we all share, please visit www.recology.com.
Recology provides residential and commercial recycling, materials recovery, construction and demolition debris recycling, large-scale composting of food scraps and organic waste, compost sales, waste collection, transfer, landfill operations, green planning and administration.
Review and download photos on media site www.GarbagePit.com.
For more information, contact:
Adam Alberti
Singer Associates
(415) 225-2443
adam@singersf.com.
Sign up to receive our free Weekly News Bulletin