Recycling and Disposal Center in SF

July 20th, 2007 Alex

SFGate had a pretty good article today about San Francisco’s recycling and disposal center. The Tunnel Road complex collects all of San Francisco’s garbage bins, green for compost, blue for recyclables, and black for trash. Norcal collects 82% of San Francisco’s trash and recycles 4 out of every 10 tons that passes through. Most of the Bay Area cities have a process that the bins go through before the waste gets disposed of.  All recyclables get shipped off to Recycle Central at Pier 96 where conveyor belts, machines, and people sort through more than 700 tons of paper, platic, glass, and other materials. The recyclable products get shipped all over the world to different processing plants. Paper could go to China, Indonesia, and South America but glass is shipped to a San Leandro facility that creates new wine bottles and other products. Compostable items get shipped to the Organics Annex. At Jepson Prairie Organics,  300 tons of compostable materials are processed daily.  The materials  take about 60 days to break down  into usable compost. The workers of the recycling and disposal centers all deserve great credit because it is not an easy job. I couldn’t imagine having to sort through garbage. The sorting site had sprinklers spray mist to keep down the dust and also has a strawberry scent added to keep the smell down but for anyone else other than its regular employees, that place must smell horrible. Cheers to those guys who are helping the environment.

Entry Filed under: Environment,Local,Recycling