Trashing local recyclers
Safeway evicts the San Francisco Community Recyclers – and perhaps the jobs, revenue, waste reduction, and other community benefits it provides.

By Matthew Hirsch

IT DOESN'T TAKE much thought to figure out why Safeway would want to evict the San Francisco Community Recyclers from its property at Market and Duboce Streets in the Castro District. The recycling facility attracts cash-hungry junkies, creates lots of noise, and smells of stale beer, spoiled dairy products, and the other pungent aromas you'd expect to emanate from used food and drink containers.

Of course, Safeway didn't spell out these, or any, grievances in the eviction letter it sent the SFCR in September. The grocery giant simply provided written notice that the nonprofit had to remove its equipment from the parking lots of three locations – its stores on Market Street, Webster Street, and Seventh Avenue – by Jan. 1, 2004.

There will be recycling in San Francisco whether or not the SFCR operates at Safeway, but the eviction could change how recycling works in the city – especially if Safeway contracts with a for-profit recycler. It would likely mean fewer jobs for recycling workers, shorter hours of operation at recycling centers, a loss of revenue for the local economy, and smaller quantities of materials that actually get recycled.

Worst of all, evicting the SFCR would take money away from the people who recycle the most: homeless folks who collect bottles and cans by the shopping cart.

In Safeway's defense, at least the company typed the SFCR's eviction notice on recycled paper. Safeway assistant vice president Chad Otten failed to return repeated phone calls from the Bay Guardian for comment on this story.

"It's your basic 'we don't want homeless people near our facility' situation," SFCR executive director Andrew Pugni told us after unsuccessfully trying to arrange a meeting with Safeway CEO Stephen Burd. Despite being given a one-month extension to stay in business, the SFCR now expects Safeway to carry out the eviction Jan. 31 – unless it can generate enough public pressure to block Safeway from shutting the recycling centers down.

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Beverage retailers in California's big cities are required to have recycling facilities within a half-mile "convenience zone" of their place of business unless the company is already providing its own service on-site, which few grocery stores do. But state law draws no distinction between local nonprofit recyclers, like the SFCR, and their profit-maximizing competitors.

In the past few years, two for-profit firms have begun to dominate the state's recycling industry, and they're driving out independent, community-based recyclers in droves, mostly through agreements with big chain stores like Safeway, Albertsons, and Vons.

To turn a profit in California's regulated recycling industry, companies usually operate the minimum 30 hours a week required by state law, and they keep a tight cap on labor costs. One company, Tomra – which has more than 400 recycling centers in California and others in Asia, Europe, and North and South America – meets the requirement by using a machine that collects containers and spits out a refund at its automated recycling centers.

Compare that with the SFCR, which stays open 44 hours week, is open every day, and employs 10 people to handle tons of aluminum, plastic, and glass. "Most of the people who work here came up through the ranks. They began as recyclers, and now they work here full time," the SFCR's Maurice Drunsfield told us. In the case of the recycling center at Market and Duboce, it's not uncommon for the SFCR to receive 8,000 or 9,000 pounds of recycled materials a day.

In addition, the SFCR takes in paper and cardboard, which it isn't paid to handle and is something most profit-driven recycling ventures don't ordinarily do. And those are just a few of the advantages Pugni thinks San Francisco would lose if Safeway evicts the SFCR, because he suspects the store will bring in a for-profit recycler in its place.

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Two likely candidates to take over Safeway's recycling service would be Tomra and Nexcycle. Both are growing rapidly, and together they represent more than 55 percent of the nearly 1,200 recycling centers in California. Tomra has six San Francisco locations, including one at a Safeway in the Richmond District, and Nexcycle operates 26 recycling centers in Alameda County, many of them at Safeway stores.

Mark Oldfield, public affairs officer for the California Department of Conservation, told us he has a pretty good idea of what Safeway is planning to do, but either for lack of evidence or to maintain confidentiality, he wouldn't spell it out. The department has a policy of neutrality toward competing recycling firms, Oldfield said. So as long as aluminum and glass are getting recycled, state officials don't care who's handling the exchange.

But based on public response to Safeway's eviction notice, city officials do have a preference. Sups. Tom Ammiano and Jake McGoldrick introduced a resolution last month calling on Safeway to suspend its eviction process. The resolution will be heard Jan. 22 by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' City Services Committee, just one week before the eviction deadline.

Jared Blumenfeld, San Francisco Department of the Environment director, also urged Safeway to retain the SFCR. Blumenfeld questioned if a corporate recycler without ties to the community would match the SFCR's services. "Recycling centers that only meet the minimum requirement of the California redemption law will not help the city reach the 75 percent goal set by the Board of Supervisors," Blumenfeld wrote in a letter to Safeway two months ago.

In recent weeks SFCR employees and customers told us they didn't believe they'd be evicted, because Safeway would then have to either handle the recycled materials itself or face a fine of $100 a day from the California Department of Conservation. In theory that's right, Oldfield said, but the $100-a-day penalty is rarely applied and, in Safeway's case, it could be months before the company is forced to make a payment.

Taking in the sights and sounds of the recycling center, Drunsfield said he understands that the place can be a nuisance for neighbors, but more staff and better equipment could bring a drastic improvement. He said a change in ownership won't do any good.

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Traffic at the recycling centers is expected to increase substantially over the next few years because of a state law that went into effect Jan. 1 increasing the redemption value of beverage containers. Containers under 24 ounces, which used to be redeemed for 2.5¢ apiece, are now worth 4¢, and containers 24 ounces or greater jumped from 5¢ to 8¢. Redemption values will go up again in three years.

So what will SFCR employees do if Safeway pushes them out of work? John Serresseque told us he wouldn't apply for a job at Safeway, that's for sure. Serresseque said he likes working as a recycler, but he doesn't expect a new management firm would hire anybody from the SFCR. That's just as well, he said, because they won't be able to handle the workload anyway.

"If [Safeway replaces the SFCR and] they bring in their own crew," Serresseque said, "I would just sit out there with a six-pack of beer and laugh, because I know what they are going to have to deal with."

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