You would think that overcharging SF residents by $95 million would lead to Recology losing its monopoly on local trash collection. It has not, and now it appears Recology will keep that monopoly after a competitor dropped their bid.

Recology has been the trash collector in San Francisco for more than 100 years, albeit under different names or organizations like Scavenger’s Protective Association, Golden Gate Disposal, Sunset Scavenger Company, and Norcal Waste Systems. A 1987 merger (and a 2009 rebrand) created the local trash-collection monopoly we now call Recology. But you figured Recology’s monopoly would not survive being ensnared in the Mohammed Nuru scandal, in which it was found that Recology overcharged SF residents by $95 million.

And so Recology’s long-held monopoly contract was put up for a competitive bid. The Arizona-based company Allied Waste Services put in a bid was named the “top scorer,” and was brought to the SF Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Finance Committee for consideration on February 28. Recology, naturally, brought up all manner of concerns like union representation and the number of trucks being their competitor might use.

But one of Recology’s concerns appeared to be legit. The Examiner reports that Allied Waste Services dropped their bid, amidst allegations that they intended to raise rates higher than what their bid indicated. And Allied Waste's statement to the Examiner indicates that may have been the case.

“With the city’s advisement that no changes to the rates can be accepted, yes, we confirm that we are withdrawing our proposal,” Allied Waste’s parent company Republic Services’s regional general manager Kathryn Tekulve said in a statement to the Examiner.

The SF City Administrator 's Office was not pleased with this result. "We are deeply disappointed by this outcome,” that office told the Examiner. “Significant staff resources were spent getting to this stage in the process with Allied so that we could present a contract to the Board of Supervisors for approval."

This may indeed be frustrating. But reading between the lines, one sure wonders if Allied Waste truly intended to stick with the rates they’d submitted. And of course, Recology is popping the champagne bottles.

“We applaud City leadership for taking the time to give this contract careful consideration,” a company representative said in a statement to the Examiner. “Recology’s proposal is better for the environment and will keep unionized jobs in the City, both of which align with San Francisco’s values.”

Recology is certainly tarnished by the Mohammed Nuru scandal. But they are not as despised as, say, PG&E. And now it may be in the can that they'll keep their monopoly on local trash collection.

Related: Recology's SF Companies Charged With Fraud In Nuru Scandal, Agree to Pay $36M In Penalties to Feds [SFist]

Image: Recology via Facebook

The City of Oakland has a contract for their waste removal and recycling that is being passed along to consumers at a far higher rate than other Bay Area cities. As the Chronicle reports, bills for monthly composting have recently shot up, and that's greatly affecting restaurants who both produce a lot of compostable waste, and are required to compost that waste. In the case of Maria Alderete, co-owner of Luka’s Taproom, her bill just went from $900 to almost $1,600 a month for compost alone (that's $19K a year), leading her to write to the city council and say she'll be getting the smallest compost bin possible and throwing the majority of the waste into the trash from now on, because trash collection is much cheaper.

In San Francisco, composting fees are far lower, because Recology provides credits for "diversion" of recycling and compost out of landfills. The Chron talks to one business owner, Chris Hillyard, who operates coffee shops in Oakland, SF, and Emeryville, and he says he only pays $77 a month in SF, $0 in Emeryville, and $500 a month in Oakland, just for composting services.

The price hike — up from an already exorbitant rate — comes as a result of a contract with garbage titans Waste Management, and the rising cost of union labor. Also, the city has required the company to use emission-reducing vehicles, and it's clear that the composting requirement is being treated as something above-and-beyond normal service. You'll see that the compost service, listed on WM's site as "Organics," is buried among their other "green" services. And they claim that they are "working with customers in the food industry to develop innovative programs that are cost-effective." Obviously that's not the case in Oakland so far.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf says she'll be working with Waste Management to come up with "a thoughtful resolution."

Nate Silver's swell number-crunching blog FiveThirtyEight just did an exposé of sorts about San Francisco's long-held status as the nation's mecca for trash diversion — specifically the oft-cited figure that, as a city, we successfully began diverting 80 percent of our waste to recycling and compost as of 2010. We remain ahead of most cities in the nation when it comes to this, and we're one of the only ones with a citywide composting program, yet the amount of waste that S.F. sent to landfills in 2013 was about 6 percent higher than the year previous at 456,764 tons, ending 12 straight years of consistent declines in this number.

This could be explainable because of the major population boom we've experienced that's yet to be precisely quantified — it's thought to be somewhere in the vicinity of 30,000 to 40,000 new people since 2010. But it's also likely that amidst this glut of new residents we have some people who don't really know their way around the green and blue bins — I have some new-transplant neighbors who regularly throw clothing and other misguided items into the recycling, and they don't even bother with the compost.

The biggest thing in the new piece is that FiveThirtyEight gets the city’s zero waste manager Robert Haley on the record saying that the announced goal of sending zero trash to landfills by 2020 is probably not realistic, but "we want to get as close as we can to that."

Also, that 80-percent diversion figure is kind of a PR trick — San Francisco counts construction waste like rock and crushed concrete in that figure, bumping up the number above what most cities who don't count that stuff can claim. If you don't count construction waste, S.F.'s diversion rate is more like 60 percent, according to Samantha McBride, an assistant professor at New York's Baruch College School of Public Affairs. The SF Bay Guardian has also gone after the city's waste management company, Recology, noting that the 80 percent figure was fudged, and that other figures have been fudged as well in order to win the company some incentive payments totaling $1.36 million.

Also interesting: There's an explanation of how exactly the composting process works at Recology's Vacaville plant.

We're fast on our way to playing second fiddle to Seattle or Portland in the recycling game if we don't turn things around. So educate your neighbors! Get annoying about composting! Or don't if you prefer not to embarrass yourself.

[FiveThirtyEight]

In addition to having the filthiest streets in the nation, San Francisco has just been anointed the greenest city in the United States and Canada, according to a study by Siemens. The report assessed and compared "27 major U.S. and Canadian cities on environmental performance and policies across nine categories - CO2 emissions, energy, land use, buildings, transport, water, waste, air quality and environmental governance."

“It’s certainly an honor for San Francisco to be named the ‘greenest’ city in North America, and it’s great to get recognition for the good work San Franciscans have done,” said Mayor Lee. “San Francisco is committed to working toward a greener, healthier future for the City, and I think there’s nowhere else on earth where you will find more environmentally involved residents, businesses and visitors than in San Francisco.”

This is great news, obviously. Seeing as how most of us are now forced to recycle and compost (and with good reason!), San Francisco absolutely deserves the honor. It's been a lot of hard work.

San Francisco scored 83.8 out of 100. Other cities trailing behind? Vancouver, New York City, Seattle, and Denver complete the Top 5. Landing with a resounding thud in the Top Bottom are Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Cleveland, St Louis, and much to no one's surprise, Detroit.

According to the city's Department of the Environment, you cannot compost sperm or blood in the green bins. Nope. You can, however, compost snot. Read all about it. Please excuse us as we need to find a safe spot to pass out. [SFW]

Mayor Gavin Newsom took his message about mandatory recycling programs to the Op-Ed page of the Sacramento Bee yesterday, aiming in particular at so-called "high temperature disposal technologies" which he calls "just glorified incineration" and not sustainable. Newsom also takes the opportunity to tout the new, large-scale, mandatory composting programs in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Newsom's op-ed follows on the approval of a draft ordinance by the California Integrated Waste Management Board that would allow local governments to fine businesses who were not in compliance with local recycling laws. Also, the ordinance would require local municipalities across the state to enact compulsory commercial recycling programs by 2013.

Meanwhile in San Francisco, curmudgeonly apartment managers and landlords citywide are still trying to figure out which grocery bags are compostable and where to put their take-out containers. [via NBC Bay Area]

It's time to haul out those handy, dandy slop buckets, boys and girls. Starting tomorrow all residents and businesses in San Francisco will be required to start composting or face fines for improperly sorted garbage. Keep an eye open for the arrival of green bins alongside your blue and black bins in which you can dump "anything that used to be alive" along with coffee filters, greasy old pizza boxes, yard trimmings, and a plethora of other fine compostables that will be rotted down into "nutrient-rich soil that helps produce the organic food and wine that San Francisco is famous for." Blessed be!

Don't have a slop bucket of your own in which to dump the scraps you'll be hauling out to the all-you-can-eat rat buffet out back? No problem. SF Recycling is offering free decorative kitchen pails to all SF residents. Contact them to get one of your very own. Happy composting!

Thank God for garbage disposals. Seriously. On your knees. Because Mayor Gavin Newsom just signed a ruling calling on all San Franciscans to compost their eggshells, coffee grounds, apple peels, dead roses and other food rubbish and garden clippings. While city officials will give residents time to adjust to storing their waste in a green bin, they "could eventually start levying fines of $100 on rubbish recidivists." (Thankfully, many residents are now too cash-strapped to afford real, non-prepackaged food, so many of you don't have to worry. Yay, hunger!) If you recall, the Board of Supes OK'd the country's toughest composting law earlier this month.