Today was trash pickup day in my neighborhood, and the friendly crew from Recology was here on time, as usual.
It is a misnomer, however, to refer to “trash” or “garbage.” Thanks to early efforts of San Franciscans to recycle, we now have three separate bins – one for compost, one for mixed recyclables, and one for trash. My trash bin is half size because, thanks to the system, I generate less trash.
In the early days of recycling in the 1970s, individual community efforts enabled people to recycle glass. At that time, the glass had to be washed clean of labels, and different colors of glass could not be mixed. All clear bottles went into one area, green bottles in another, etc. Plastics were not recyclable at that time. We have come a long way since then.
When one has lived in the same place for a very long time, “stuff” accumulates. But what once filled basements, attics, and open spaces can now be recycled or donated. Very little needs to go in the trash.
Trash should not include hazardous materials, such as paint, drain cleaners, and batteries. Recently, I made a trip to the Recology site for hazardous materials in the southernmost part of the city. It was a bit of an adventure, crossing freeways into unfamiliar territory (thank you, GPS, for making this part easy!).
My destination was 501 Tunnel Road, which was clearly marked and easily navigated. That did not stop me from making a few wrong choices, despite the very visible signs leading the way to the hazardous materials drop off point.
Have I said how pleasant the employees of Recology are? For each wrong turn I took, a helpful employee would turn me around until I came to the correct place. Up a slight hill, my tires triggered a bell, and I was immediately joined by another staff person. The site only takes materials from San Francisco residents, so a moment passed while he recorded my address and license plate. He quickly unloaded the materials, and I was once again on my way.
Trash can be an interesting subject. My youngest grandson, now four years old, was fascinated at an early age by trash trucks. His favorite television series was (and still may be) titled Trash Truck. Perrin has since moved on to broader interests, such as excavators, cement trucks, and other construction-related vehicles as well as a perennial favorite, trains.
Thanks to an article in the New York Times by Dwight Garner, I recently bought a book called Trash! A Garbageman’s Story by French Canadian Simon Paré-Poupart of Montreal (translated by Pablo Strauss). Garner compares the book with Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential.
“Like Bourdain,” Garner writes, “he raises the blinds on his industry, noting for example the rude exploits garbage guys (the industry is heavily male) sometimes get up to when they go on their runs under cover of night, honking, driving too fast, scraping parked cars and high-tailing it out of there.’
“Like Bourdain, too, Paré-Poupart is in love with almost all of it: the battlefield camaraderie, the dark humor, the brutal physical demands, the renegade outré style of many of the workers.”
I only recently read Kitchen Confidential, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and can’t wait to read this new adventure into a colorful world.
For close to a decade, I served on a voluntary board in support of Leadership San Francisco, a ten-month-long leadership development program affiliated with the Chamber of Commerce. It was here that my positive impressions of Recology took root. One of my fellow board members, who served as chair, was a senior executive at Recology. Recology played a big part in the fundraising goals of the program, each year sending one or two people to attend the current year’s class.
Recology also hosted an annual dinner for all present and former program participants for a modest fee called “Dinner at the Dumps.” The dinner was actually held at Recology’s corporate headquarters, near the current Mission Bay neighborhood. It was a modest building for executives, but a far cry from a “dump.”
The last landfill site (aka dump) in San Francisco closed in 1971, but waste management practices are alive and well. Recently I took advantage of two of these programs, a bulky item pickup and hazardous waste recycling.
Recology will do a pick up of up to ten bulky items twice a year for San Francisco residences of five units or fewer. For larger buildings, residents can schedule a pickup once a year. This is a wonderful service for items like sofas and mattresses, old televisions and computers, and more, which was very helpful to me in removing some garage clutter.
It takes leadership to bring about change, which often brings conflict and resistance. I credit today’s efficiency to early efforts to reduce landfill by Recology, in partnership with former Mayor Gavin Newsom and the San Francisco Environment Department and its staff, formerly headed by Jared Blumenfeld. Kudos to them for their vision of a future with less waste.
