30 Years of Curbside Recycling

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30 Years of Curbside Recycling
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Ecology Center administers grant to fund Ecology
Actions first drop off recycling program at the
University Avenue Coop Supermarket. This is part
of an emerging grassroots environmental movement
across the country.
1970 Ecology Action Starts Volunteer Recycling
Yard
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Recycling Roots. This is how it was done in the
old days- one can at a time. This can crusher
was made from a reclaimed truck axel. Nay Sayers
claimed that a bunch of hippies and Lincoln
Brigade grannies crushing cans in a parking lot
would never have any major impact on the waste
problem. They were wrong.
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Before the California bottle bill beverage
containers only value was materials scrap value.
Today there consumers pay two and half cents on
each beverage container which helps to fund
recycling efforts and reduce litter. In 1974,
Community Conservation Centers (CCC) emerges to
take over Berkleys drop off, and later buy back
centers. CCC now also provides sorting,
processing and resale for all residential and
commercially collected materials as well.
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Ecology Center publishes How to Start a
Recycling Program. The guide pulls together
Berkeleys grassroots recycling experiences,
furthering the goal of providing concrete
demonstration programs that serve an immediate
local need while offering viable solutions for
other communities.
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Ecology Center initiates one of the countrys
first curbside recycling collection program. This
program runs on volunteer energy and collects
newspaper on monthly bases. Now the longest
running curbside collection program in the
country. Also in 1973, the Ecology Center
sponsors the first national recycling conference
in San Francisco. The Convention spawns
conception of statewide organization of recyclers
now embodied in the California Resource Recovery
Association (CRRA).
1973 Curbside Recycling Begins
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It was the clear intention of the early recyclers
to institutionalize recycling. They knew that
drop off programs would only work for the truly
dedicated, and that consistent weekly curbside
collection of materials separated in the home was
the only was this kind of program could have a
major impact in the residential sector.
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As the program progressed the emphasis was on
getting solid consistent institutional funding
and good market process while continuing to
provide regular reliable service in the
community. In the early stages, newspaper bundles
were manually stacked in trucks and no magazines
catalogues, junk mail or other contaminants
were allowed.
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In an effort to promote reuse of materials as the
highest and best use, the Ecology Center starts
the Environmental Container Reuse program,
ENCORE!, providing a viable demonstration program
for wine bottle reuse. At this time glass was
still the most common beverage container and
there was a highly developed reuse infrastructure
through a bottle deposit system. ENCORE! was
seeking other ways to expand on Californias
glass reuse infrastructure and today continues
selling recycled and reused bottles to
Californias wine industry as a private business.
1975 Ecology Center Starts Glass Reuse Program
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Efforts to seat recycling in a solid policy
framework succeed in passing the City of
Berkeleys 1976 Solid Waste Management Plan that
calls for residents to separate their recyclable
materials from their garbage in the home, and
setting the first 50 recycling goal. Perhaps the
beginning of diversion based legislation, and
possibly the first municipal source separation
plan.
1976 Berkeley Solid Waste Management Plan
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Ecology Center adds weekly curbside collection of
tin and aluminum cans, glass, and cardboard to
the program with additional funding from the
California Waste Management Board.
1979 Curbside Collection of Cans and Bottles
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When the Bay Areas landfills began to reach
capacity, waste disposal would undoubtedly
increase providing greater opportunity to expand
and consolidate Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle as
the waste reduction mantra. With the dump right
out in front of the city residents saw more
directly the impacts of their waste. New
solutions were clearly needed and the cheap and
dirty solution of simply dumping waste in the bay
would not be an option.
1980 Landfills Fill Up
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Burning garbage as part of so called Waste to
Energy projects were being promoted across the
region. A solid waste incinerator plant was
proposed at current waste transfer station site
to solve the Citys growing garbage problem. The
Ecology Center and others fought the battle
against toxic incinerators helping pass Measure U
that blocked incineration and further cemented
recycling as a key part of the waste solution.
1982 Berkeley Measure U Bans Incinerators
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City leases recycling yard to Ecology Center and
supports Curbside program with small grant and a
truck. Planning for closure of Berkeleys
landfill intensifies as it reaches capacity.
Urban Ore becomes Berkeleys major salvage
operation removing reusable and valuable
materials from the garbage stream. Ecology
Center, CCC, and Urban Ore form the Berkeley
Recycling Groupto bid for City contracts.
1982 Berkeley Recycling Group Forms
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Paper baler operated by Community Conservation
Centers (CCC). Until curbside collection went
weekly the Ecology Center was collecting about
200 tons per month of news paper. In 1989, under
a new contract with the City of Berkeley the
Ecology Center began weekly collection. Several
years later magazines, junk mail, and other mixed
paper was added top the fiber stream. Today The
Ecology Center collects over 500 tons per month
of paper fibers.
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Berkeleys landfill (now Cesar Chavez Park)
reaches capacity and is closed, as regional
garbage crisis develops. The transfer station at
2nd and Gilman opens and begins trucking City's
garbage to Altamont Landfill. Residents pass
Measure G establishing goal to divert 50 of the
waste stream through reduction, reuse, recycling,
and composting, setting a precedent that the
state and county would later adopt as well.
1984 Berkeley Measure G Sets 50 Recycling Goal
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Ecology Center creates the Recyclones, a
musical recycling performance group doing shows
at schools, Berkeley Farmers Markets, other
public events, and even at City Council to
promote source separation and residential
recycling. This was a City of Berkeley funded
education program that prepared residents for
the scaling up of recycling into a weekly
collection program.
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The Recyclones worked with school age children to
teach the importance of recycling to help bring
recycling as a mainstream value in the homes of
all Berkeley residents. The Ecology Center
produced three comic books which were distributed
to schools and coordinated with performances by
the Recyclones.
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Californias Bottle Bill AB 2020, known to
insiders as Californias Compromise dismantled
the extensive reuse system of beverage containers
and effectively ended glass reuse in the state.
The compromise funded recycling programs across
the state while saving bottlers and retailers
hundreds of millions of dollars. It paved the way
for the invasion of disposable plastic containers.
1986 Californias Bottle Bill Dismantles Reuse
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The City contracts Ecology Center to do weekly
curbside collection of cans, bottles, paper, and
cardboard dramatically increasing participation
rates and tonnages collected. The recycling
operation increases its professional capacity and
signs a union contract with the Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW IU 670). The City
begins a public education program focused on
source reduction called PreCycling.
1989 Weekly Curbside Recycling Collection Begins
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1989 California AB 939

• Created California Integrated Waste Management
  Board
• Set Statewide 50 Diversion Goal for 2000
• Established Source Reduction, Recycling,
  Composting, Land Filling and Incineration as the
  Official Solid Waste Hierarchy
• Established Disposal Fees to Help Fund Reaching
  the Goal
• Established Penalties for Non-Compliance

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1990 Alameda County Measure D

• Created The Alameda County Reduction And
  Recycling Board
• Required a County Wide Source Reduction and
  Recycling Plan to Meet 50 Goal Set by State
• Set Long Term Goals for 75 Diversion and Beyond
• Required Curbside Recycling Programs for all
  County Residents
• Created Commercial Recycling Programs
• Created Source Reduction and Market Development
  Programs
• Established 6.00/Ton Disposal Fee to Fund these
  Programs
• Prohibited Incineration of Refuse in Alameda
  County

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The weekly program has been collecting
approximately 130 tons per month of glass, which
is color sorted by hand to ensure it is recycled
back into bottles. This closed loop recycling
system is more environmentally sound than systems
that do not sort their glass. Such programs often
use the mixed glass to cover garbage in the
landfill as alternative daily coverage or it
gets used in asphalt pavement wasting the
embedded energy and resources .
Berkeley Stays Committed to Closed Loop
Recycling
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Ecology Center adds mixed paper, phone books,
junk, mail, catalogues cereal boxes etc. to the
collection program. In order to make the most of
the less valuable mixed paper it is combined with
news and goes to make cereal boxes.
Ecology Center Adds Mixed Paper to Program
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City starts monthly yard waste collection and
composting program that later becomes bi-weekly
in 2000 diverting 6 percent of the Citys
waste. Weekly collection with residential food
waste could divert much more.
1992 City Begins Curbside Yard Waste Collection
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Current infrastructure at the transfer station is
inadequate for weekly residential yard waste and
kitchen waste collection.
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Currently, Berkeleys green waste which includes
residential yard waste, commercial food waste
from a limited but expanding program, and drop
off yard waste is trucked to the Central Valley
where it is composted at an industrial scale wind
row composting facility. Free compost from this
facility is available to community gardeners free
of charge through the Ecology Center sponsored
Berkeley Community Gardening Collaborative.
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Ecology Center releases the Report of the
Berkeley Plastics Task Force documenting the
many problems with disposable plastic containers
and the many regrettable impacts of collecting
them as part of recycling programs. Report has
been used by anti-plastics activists around the
globe, most recently in efforts to ban plastic
bags in South Asia.
1996 Report of the Berkeley Plastics Task Force
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City Council mandates collection of 1 and 2
plastic bottles. Proponents of plastics
collection argue that local markets will emerge
for post consumer plastic and that closed loop
recycling of plastic is possible. To date none of
Berkeleys plastic has found a market in bottle
to bottle recycling, and most of it is shipped to
China where it is reportedly downcycled into
carpet and textile fiber.
1999 Berkeley City Council Mandates Plastics
Collection
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City begins commercial food waste collection
pilot program composting food waste from
restaurants and institutional sources, this later
become an official program in 2001. As the the
program grows we hope that weekly residential
kitchen waste can be added to this program.
1999 City Begins Commercial Food Waste Collection
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Ecology Center recycling fleet begins to operate
on 100 Biodiesel fuel reducing toxic emissions
and promoting use of renewable fuel for heavy
vehicles. This paves way to City of Berkeley and
Berkeley Unified School District who converted
top 100 Biodiesel in January 2003, quickly
becoming the largest municipal fleet using
Biodiesel fuels vehicles in the country. City of
Oakland, EBMUD and others across the globe watch
with interest.
2001 Ecology Center Pioneers Biodiesel
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Ecology Center and the Global Alliance for
Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) sponsor the Zero
Waste Fellowship promoting the new Zero Waste
paradigm and sharing experiences with
international waste advocates from the Global
South. The three week intensive training and
exchange program hosted Zero Waste Activists from
India, the Philippines, and South Africa.
2002 Ecology Center and GAIA Host Zero Waste
Fellows
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2003 Alameda County Releases 75 Diversion Plan