San Francisco Stalls in Its Attempt to Go Trash-Free

In 2012, the voters of San Francisco were asked if they would like to switch to a competitively priced system and they soundly voted no (Ref: http://ballotpedia.org/San_Francisco_Competitive_Bidding_Req....

Soon after the competitive pricing measure was voted down, Recology asked the city if it could increase rates. Per Prop 218 (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_218_(19...), every garbage rate payer in San Francisco had a chance to shoot down the rate hike on this $228m contract. The process to do so was not simple. You had to write a letter to the Refuse Collection Rate Hearing Officer and send it via USPS. Fax, email, text, or Twitter would not be accepted in this modern electronic age. How many people do you think wrote a letter to reach the 50% +1 to overturn the hike? Probably a handful.

What SF rate payers ended up with is a 21.51% rate increase, ten times CPI, and formally free compost and recycle bins had to be paid for per bin and bin size. Ratepayers are no fools, yet Recology is going to get away with this program that claims to bring the City of San Francisco to “zero waste”, while the city of San Jose, with far more land mass and greater population, has done more for far less than the $228m that Recology charges SF ratepayers.

I don't think Recology will ever reach zero-waste until they've been ejected and a competitive market is put into place. This is unfortunate since SF really has made strong strides toward "zero-waste", but the open racketeering and corruption in the garbage pickup system makes the goal slide further away each day.

Edit: References and corrections

San Jose Diversion rate: 2013 71%, 60% excluding construction waste http://sanjoseca.gov/DocumentCenter/View/23309

SF Diversion rate: 2013 80%, but 60% excluding construction waste http://discardstudies.com/2013/12/06/san-franciscos-famous-8...

I used to be big on recycling and composting. When I moved in with my current roommate, he didn't do any of it. He just dumped everything into the closest bin, and dumped the bin in a random colored bin. After many arguments with him, I've come around to his way of thinking.

The calculation he had made was actually a very smart one. He wasn't careless, he was actually being very careful. He calculated that he makes on average $150 an hour. If he wastes about 20 minutes a month or more sorting stuff, he basically is already behind. Even worse, sorting adds so much mental stress that the cost of this actually much higher. Even for my salary range, which is about 1/3rd of my roommates, it is still a waste of time to sort trash.

Here is some dude optimizing his time by not wasting it on recycling and he already has a competitive advantage over me, while here I am struggling to get through some for loops. Why should I regress myself even more?

The system heavily incentivizes not bothering. I wish the world was designed where I could care about the planet, but we as a society have chosen to not reward that.