Showing the Way in San Jose: Curbside Recycling Plan Proves to Be a Hit

Drive down a residential street in San Jose on any given day and you’ll see them--brightly colored plastic containers sitting on the curb. They’re not toys or some garish new landscaping fad. The shallow, rectangular gizmos are actually an integral part of this Silicon Valley city’s highly regarded curbside recycling program.

A sprawling bedroom community of 719,000, San Jose was a stranger to recycling just a few years ago. Today, a private waste hauler under contract with the city uses specially equipped trucks to provide weekly pickup of cans, bottles and newspapers for 100,000 homes. By Thanksgiving, the program will serve 180,000 households--all of the city’s single-family homes.

Such statistics make San Jose’s the largest such program in the nation. It’s also a resounding hit among residents, with 60% of the households participating.

“People always said this couldn’t be done on a large scale, and they were afraid to try it,” said Richard Gertman, San Jose’s recycling programs coordinator. “The City Council here took a leap of faith on the staff’s recommendation, and it worked.”

But officials did not exactly sit back and pray the idea would catch on. The formal debut of the program in 1986 came only after a pilot program showed that residents would take part, especially if they were given containers for materials and if recycling day coincided with trash day.

Moreover, a blitz of publicity--spread through doorknob hangers, special events and door-to-door volunteers--accompanied the program’s inauguration, at a cost to the city of more than $1 per household. Once the program was under way, the city followed up with a letter from Mayor Tom McEnery, who thanked those residents already participating and urged others to join in.

One rather unusual factor enhanced the appeal of recycling in San Jose from the start: Residents actually saw their trash bill go down when trucks from Recycle America, the city’s waste hauler, began coming by to gather cans, bottles and newspaper.

By using competitive bidding to obtain new contracts for garbage collection and disposal, city officials were able to save ratepayers a total of $65 million over 30 years. Residential rates dropped 80 cents to $10 a year for the average household.

“Our slogan was more service at lower cost,” said Gary Liss, solid-waste chief for the city.

Despite such success, officials realize that curbside pickup alone will not help San Jose reach its goal of reducing the waste stream by 25% by 1990. Estimates show that residential recycling will, at best, account for about 8%.

So in the coming years, a bevy of other programs will be brought on line, including one targeting commercial businesses and industry. A composting program similar to one used by Marin County also is high on the priority list; yard waste is a significant part of the waste stream, accounting for about 20% of the total amount generated.

Under this program, prunings, grass clippings and other greenery will be collected on curbside rounds and ground up. The remaining wood chips will be sold for fuel while the residual sawdust will be sold to firms that process it into a soil additive.

Also in the works is a trash sorting and recovery facility, dubbed the “Recyclery,” that a garbage company plans to build at one of the city’s landfills. It is modeled after a $10-million center in Marin County that includes a wood grinder and a sorting system manned by workers who pluck cans, bottles, cardboard and other recyclable materials from trash loads passing on conveyor belts.

Officials also plan to develop a curriculum for schools designed to get children in the recycling habit at an early age.

“We’re trying to come at this from a whole bunch of different directions,” said Gertman, who founded Davis’ widely lauded recycling program in 1970. “You’ll always need a landfill, but we plan to do as much as possible to reduce the amount you ultimately bury there.”