Follow the Trash: What happens to your recyclables?

San Francisco’s 72 percent recycling rate is the highest in the country, and with the new mandatory composting and recycling law, our goal of zero waste could be a reality. San Francisco’s new compost program, the first of its kind in the country, turns tons of food scraps into nutrient rich fertilizer for local vineyards and farms producing organic wine and vegetables sold at Farmer’s markets. Our waste company is now called Recology, our garbage men “recologists,” our trucks run on biodiesel, and even our bins, called the Fantastic 3, have a superheroic sound. It’s like an eco-fantasy come true. 

But on closer examination, it’s more complicated than we’d like to think. Our blue bin items, which make up a third of our trash, are collected and sorted at Pier 96 through a system of high-tech conveyor belts, magnets and chutes, and sold to companies who redistribute it to various recycling plants. Some of our aluminum cans, for instance, are turned into Budweiser at the Anheuser-Busch recycling plant in Hayward. Others are shipped to the Alcoa Group on the Mississippi river, returning as new incarnations on the shelves within as little as sixty days. Plastic food packaging, unlike glass and aluminum, is turned into different forms, due to FDA contamination regulations. Some of our number two plastics, like shampoo and milk bottles, for example are turned into imitation Mendocino redwood for garden landscaping in Lodi. 

A stunning seventy-five percent of our recyclables are sent overseas, largely to China. It’s not just San Francisco: nationwide that’s the reality. Glass and metals are processed domestically, but lower grade and mixed plastics, like those ubiquitous bags, are too costly to recycle, and most paper mills have closed. Ships reach San Francisco ports stocked with boxes stamped “Made In China” and instead of returning empty, are filled with trash, to be converted into more things for us to buy. Berg Mill, for example, closed their San Francisco paper mill in 1961 after thirty-years. Now they are resell San Francisco paper off to mills around the world. Exporting makes us dangerously reliant on international trade: if the Asian market dries up, our recycling program dies. “We don’t have the domestic market to protect our recyclers,” explains California Integrated Waste Management Board’s Brian Larimore. “If something happens overseas we’re at risk.” When prices dropped last year, many recyclers had to horde their trash.  

“If I had my druthers I wouldn’t export to China,” says Recology CEO Mike Sangiacomo. “Shipping anything half way around the world isn’t sustainable, but it’s the lesser of a couple evils.”  

The carbon footprint of shipping materials around the world is, however, miniscule compared to not recycling: according to a new study, aluminum for example would have be sent around the world twice before the carbon emissions of transport would be an issue. Small amounts of garbage can fall off the ships ending up in the great Pacific Garbage Patch, but in miniscule in comparison. (A team of environmental scientists and recyclers set sail from San Francisco last August to explore the possibility of salvaging and selling the maritime plastic waste.) 

The controversy over China’s e-waste hazards raises concerns about their recycling’s possible health and environmental violations. Their regulations were recently strengthened, but they’re still laxer than America’s. With so many facilities, national oversight is nearly impossible, and unlike with hazardous waste, there’s no international regulation. “Realistically you can’t monitor whether the facilities have adequate environmental and employee protections,” says Patty Moore recycling expert who has visited numerous facilities in China. “You can find the most up-to-date modern recycling facilities in the world, literally, and you can also find the lowest tech worst working conditions facilities.” 

Most of San Francisco’s paper is sent to the Nine Dragons, the world’s largest mill in Dongguam China, run by American Chung Nam, the single largest U.S. exporter owned by the richest woman in China. When Recology’s Leno Bellono examined photos, reports and plans about the factory, he was impressed by their state of the art technology. Yet, in 2007, hundreds of workers, paid an average of $150 a month, went on strike protesting working conditions. Chinese labor watchdog group Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, has made allegations that Nine Dragon workers are untrained, underpaid and lack proper protective equipment. Based on interviews with workers, they report that a popular statement at the factor is “injury happens monthly; death happens quarterly.”  

However, the Chinese plants generally do a better job of recycling our plastics. Working manually, they’re able to sort materials more carefully. By contrast, the conveyer belt at San Francisco’s Pier 96 moves so quickly that workers miss lots of material that should be pulled out. In fact, it’s our poor pre-sorting, which leads to us sending un-recyclable plastics to China, which is often burned or otherwise improperly disposed of, which creates the system’s largest environmental problem. San Francisco’s 72 percent is good, but there is still a long way to go.