San Francisco gets smart with green technology
San Francisco is using advanced technology – and the strong arm of government – to turn the city into one of America's greenest.
By David Ewing Duncan
Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco
On Pier 96 on San Francisco Bay, a dirty, smelly leviathan of a machine roars and vibrates as it organizes 750 tons of refuse each day into neat cubes of plastic, paper, and metal.
It may look crude, but this three-story-high knot of conveyors, computers, bins, and gears is a central part of San Francisco's growing effort to use technology and ingenuity as the most innovative companies do: to cut costs, solve problems, and improve life for customers (or in this case, citizens).
Communities that embrace technology in this way are increasingly branding themselves "smart cities" — a fancy marketing term describing a place that strives for efficiencies in mobility, construction, energy, and transportation, usually with the help of the latest digital or green technology.
Stockholm uses sensors, software, and computer networks to monitor traffic during peak periods. Shanghai boasts the world's first low-pollution magnetic railway that transports passengers at more than 100 mph. Massachusetts plans to install 300 wind turbines in its towns and cities.
Green tech
San Francisco's major push has been the deployment of technology — high and low — to address environmental issues.
For instance, residents of this green-conscious city can hop onto a low-carbon-emission bus tracked by a GPS system; the buses wirelessly feed data to a central computer. Analytical software sends estimated bus arrival times to low-power LED displays found at a handful of solar-powered bus stops. (The city plans eventually to build these solar shelters, designed by local architect Olle Lundberg, throughout the city.)
Riders can check e-mail at bus stops with free Wi-Fi. Even rubbish has gone high tech: San Francisco, with local media design company Haku Wale, built an application for Apple's iPhone that gives users information on the nearest recycling or trash disposal facility.
San Francisco's techno-savvy — guided in part by neighboring Silicon Valley — has helped burnish its standing as a smart city. (The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, ranks it as the nation's second-smartest large city, after Seattle.) But attacking urban inefficiencies also requires aggressive lawmaking — and shrewd political skills to win citizen support.
Under Mayor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco has enacted some of the nation's toughest regulations for recycling: Non-recyclers face fines, while those who recycle get breaks on their trash pickup fees. As a result, San Franciscans now recycle 72% of their trash.
The city also has targeted a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to 20% below the levels in 1990 — stricter than the levels called for in the year 2012 by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol — by reducing carbon dioxide output in city vehicles, enacting ultra-green building codes, and encouraging less driving.
The city has plans to expand a pilot program with rental service Zipcar, which has made hybrid vehicles available in the city. (For more on Zipcar, see "The Best New Idea in Business".) Newsom also ponied up for a scattering of charging stations for electric vehicles.
The city plans to introduce smart cars, smart scooters, and motorized bicycles in a joint project with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab. These electric vehicles can supplement public transit by helping get people from their homes to bus stops and train stations, says Ryan Chin, a co-founder of the smart cities project at MIT's Media Lab.
Private partners
Going green isn't cheap. San Francisco is offsetting some of its expenses by partnering with corporations: Outdoor-advertising giant Clear Channel is covering some of the costs for the solar bus shelters. But the city also dedicates ample tax dollars and city resources to green efforts.
Jared Blumenfeld, director of the city's Department of the Environment, credits residents with giving the city the leeway and funds to experiment. "We are being asked to do these things by our citizens," he says. Still, not all of Newsom's grand plans have panned out. A public-private scheme to outfit the city with Wi-Fi flopped two years ago, partly because of political infighting.
Back at Pier 96, plant manager John Jurinek is greeting a new shift of workers arriving to operate the great recycling machine. It runs 16 hours a day — the rest of the day is devoted to cleaning and maintaining the mechanical gears and computing equipment that sort and package the recyclables.
Jurinek walks on catwalks high above the machine, checking mechanisms that separate paper from glass and tin from plastic. San Francisco sells those items to help recoup the cost of the program, and Jurinek says a major part of his job is to keep track of the shifting markets for the city's refuse.
Right now he uses the usual tools — phones, e-mail, the Internet — to find customers and set prices. But if there's a smarter way to sell trash, there's a good chance San Francisco will find it.
While I can honestly applaud the efforts of Mayor Newson in enacting tough regulations for recycling and and reduction of greenhouse gasses in his community, there is a grievous error in this article.
If you are an environmentally conscious citizen of San Francisco, you may have gone online (as I have)to calculate your carbon footprint and in turn evaluate where you can tighten up so that you feel like you are truly doing everything you can to protect the earth and our environment.
What I have learned about, "if there's a smarter way to sell trash, there's a good chance SF will find it", in the last several weeks should leave anyone who cares about our global future shaken to their core.
Your footprint is not diminished by your independent efforts or those of your city and state.
It has simply been set down HARD on the backs of the men women and children of a small Nevada town.
Recology as your "innovative leader" in refuse disposal has duped local leaders in the belief that 8 million lbs of post recycling household waste per day can be fed into our virgin desert without any impact on the wildlife, watershed, or population of the town 25 miles down the road.
Green cities simply don't exist if they use others as dumping grounds. Personal responsibility is the key to reduction of greenhouse gasses and to dealing with the dangerous waste that humans produce.
Please be independent minded responsible citizens and ask Mayor Newsom to take a look at what his creativity and shrewd political skills have done to impact Recology and its strategy for disposal of your garbage.
Green my a&^!! I can't (Well, I can, but the cops will bust me) even ride a bicycle across the Bay Bridge! Connecting Green San Francisco to Green Oakland and even Greener Berkeley. And how come I can't park a bike without imminent fear of it getting stolen, with the thief risking not even a slap on the wrist, even if caught?
Being Green requires enabling people to make "green" choices with minimal risk and inconvenience. A good start would be setting aside one lane of the BB for bikes (And Segways and wheelchairs and such), or at least not banning them from riding there on equal terms with cars. And to punish theft of means of transportation equally, whether that transportation be a car or a bike.
Peacocking around, bragging about gizmos at bus stops, does exactly nothing for the environment anywhere, beyond making the rest of the country take our city even less seriously than they already do.
I find it incredible that Humboldt County might permit a Class 1 landfill to be developed in an area with so many potential problems because of its geography. We have prevailing and dominant winds that come from this area directly into Winnemucca, Playa drainage towards Rye Patch, possible impact to artifacts in the area, and impact to recreation the Playa.
Not only the physical impact to the area but there is no way to evaluate the impact to future growth in the area, both commercial and residential. We can look at other communities and get somewhat of an idea of the negative impact that large regional landfills have on those communities.
My last point deals with possible revenue for the county. My research shows reasonable Host Community Fees are from $3.68 per ton to $16.00 per ton. Why would we want to agree to anything less?
I agree it's hypocritical for San Francisco to call itself green by shipping their waste to another state. This is typical Frisco mentality "we're not burying it in our back yard, so pat us on the back".
First off, I do want to congratulate San Francisco on their advances in being green. Also, I do want to ackowledge that none of the friends and family I have in the bay area would be supportive of the fact, that, while they are all focusing on being green, the bay area's trash company, Recology, is looking to move 4000 tons a trash a day from the Bay area (not just San Francisco), 5 days a week, for 95 years to a small community in Nevada: Winnemucca. Jungo Road, part of the Black Rock, to be precise. While it is a different location of the Black Rock Playa, it is the same Black Rock that Burning man organizers and participants so neatly leave 'no trace behind' after their annual event.
This trash ('landfill'):
-Is near a water source and seismic activity
-Near homes, where cattle graze and people recreate
-Will include abestos, waste sludge, and tires
-Is being proposed to Winnemucca at a low-ball rate of $1 a ton while they will still, apparently, pay the state of CA a $1.85 a ton for the privelege of managing their garbage (even tho it will be in NV). According to reports, Recology pays much more for landfill hosting in CA AND is required to follow stricter rules to get a landfill approved.
-May or may not create 25 jobs in this community. 25 jobs in a community surrounded by some of the top producing gold mines in the country isn't significant.
-Is being placed near a community with only a volunteer fire dept…not a formal, fully-staffed department.
-Has been condemned by Senator Reid in a letter to Govenor Gibbons on 9/9/09.
-Will get more trash from the Bay area in 3 days than Winnemucca produces in a year
Recology also touts the fact that moving this trash by train is 'greener' than moving it by truck. So, better for all. Also, that this helps them help SF achieve a 0% footprint. Not so.
Again, congratulations to San Francisco on truly leading us in green technology and recycling. However, I don't know anyone in the bay area that would be proud of Recology's approach to moving Bay Area trash.
Get aware and get involved. Nevada is not the US dump for any type of trash, nuclear or un-recyclable. Many people choose to live in smaller communities due to clean environments. Because they are small and remote, doesn't mean they can be or should be used as dumps.
San Francisco may be at the front of the green revolution, but they will be mortgaging their futures to do so. The gamble might just pay off in 50 years when the government artificially raises the prices of carbon based energy above the price of clean energy.