Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Local Garbage and Recycling Company to Cut Carbon Footprint by 15% by 2010


The South San Francisco Scavenger Company has been on the forefront of recycling and has been addressing climate change issues for some time now. “We started testing biodiesel a few years ago, and have just installed solar panels on top of our Recycling Center,” said Doug Button, President of the company, “We’ve already reduced our carbon footprint by 7%, and have plans to reduce our carbon footprint by a total 15% by 2010. “We have been using biodiesel successfully on some of our fleets over the last two years now,” said John Rossi, Fleet Manager. “Seeing the importance of climate change, we have plans to use biodiesel in all of our fleets next year.”

In addition to using cleaner fuel and renewable energy, recycling also reduces greenhouse gas emissions as it takes less energy to manufacture products using recycled materials than virgin resources. Recycling one ton of garbage reduces greenhouse gases by about 1.8 tons according to California Air Resources Board Fact Sheets.

“South San Francisco Scavenger Company is better than just being carbon neutral,” said Evan Edgar, Greenhouse Gas Inventory Engineer from Sacramento.” The benefits of recycling far outweigh the fuel and energy to collect and process the material, and in the case of the South San Francisco Scavenger Company, the greenhouse gas reduction benefits are 9 times greater that their carbon footprint. The more recycling, the better the climate and the economy.”

“Back in 1989, the state passed a law to require 25% recycling by 1995, and 50% recycling by 2000”, South San Francisco Scavenger Company President Doug Button reflected. “We’ve done that with the support of the cities and the County, and the great participation by the residents and businesses, and now we are supporting a new law to boost recycling to 75% by 2020 to further address climate change issues.”

SSF Scavenger Co. has said that at some point in the future, they'd like to come to a City Council meeting to make a short presentation of their progress in reducing their carbon footprint through the use of cleaner fuel, renewable energy, and recycling. We will definitely keep you posted as to when that will be.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

For many businesses, recycling has proven to be cost effective--using less energy to
obtain and process materials, and reducing
pollution
and waste management costs.