Going, Going. . .Green

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GOVERNMENT

Mandatory Recycling on the Horizon

SAN DIEGO generates more trash than any other city in California, a consequence of the industries located here, tourists who visit (and don’t recycle) and affluence (we buy a lot of stuff). Yet until now, we were never required to recycle. That will change over the next two years as the city phases in mandatory recycling, after the San Diego City Council’s decision last November to require it at most homes and businesses.

Today, about 253,000 residential units and multi-family dwellings have bright blue recycling bins, and about 40,000 residences are eligible for the bins but have declined them, either because they don’t have the space or just don’t want to re cycle, says Stephen Grealy, recycling program manager for the city’s environmental services department. Although the new recycling ordinance has an exemption for lack of space, it also provides for two technical specialists and an enforcement officer to visit as many of those 40,000 residences as possible to figure out how to squeeze in a blue bin.

“These specialists will go out to their home and find a place where the container can fit,” he says. San Diegans recycle 52 percent of their waste; mandatory recycling will add another 2.5 percent. That may not sound very impressive, says Grealy, but 2.5 percent equates to 100,000 tons of garbage.

Getting a mandatory recycling plan in place has taken several years and a bit of political drama. Councilwoman Donna Frye, who chairs the Natural Resources & Culture Committee, which handles recycling, says the council directed the city manager in 2003 to come up with a mandatory recycling plan and to look into building another recycling facility at Miramar, to handle construction and demolition waste. When the city transitioned to a strong-mayor form of government in January 2006, the city manager’s office was eliminated. Although Mayor Jerry Sanders’ staff continued to pursue options for improving recycling, Frye wasn’t aware of it, so she called meetings with the mayor’s staff to come to agreement on a timeline. By late September, she had a proposal in hand. Bill Harris, spokesperson for the mayor, says the reason for the delay was that Sanders “wanted to make a concerted effort to include all stakeholders—business owners, apartment owners, residents and environmentalists.”

Although residential recycling is critical to waste reduction, 35 percent of the city’s garbage is actually construction and demolition waste. Rather than build a new C&D recycling facility in Miramar, the city has decided to use an existing facility in Lemon Grove, just 20 feet outside the city line. “It is $2 million a year cheaper to let this facility in Lemon Grove do the work,” says Grealy.

For developers however, recycling can be expensive. It is cheaper to bury C&D trash than to recycle it, says Frye, and her committee is looking for ways to address those cost concerns.

Ultimately, recycling plans and facilities are an attempt to manage our prodigious output of garbage. Grealy says about 1.9 million tons of trash from the city goes into landfills each year. The Miramar landfill—the only landfill where fees are controlled by the city—is slated to close in 2012. Mandatory programs and a proposal to raise the height of the landfill 20 feet could extend its life to 2018. That may seem far off, but to city officials like Frye, it’s right around the corner.

“Recycling programs allow us to comply with the law and do the right thing environmentally,” she says. “But we will soon be faced with a landfill we can’t use anymore. We are running out of space, and that needs to be addressed real soon.”
—EILENE ZIMMERMAN

HOUSING

Green Homes on the Boom

THE SUSTAINABLE FEATURES list displayed at the 2007 GreenBuilt Tour read like chapters of an eco-building manual: Forest Stewardship Council–certified sustainable lumber. High-performance, low-emissivity glass. Low-VOC (volatile organic compounds) paints, wood and concrete sealers. And that’s just at the Bankers Hill Condominiums, one of 17 sites presented during the tour.

“Last year, we had 212 participants,” says Chris Klein, chief financial officer for San Diego Earth Works, the volunteer group that organizes the tour and also puts on the San Diego EarthFair each year. “This year, we had 407. And whereas in previous years, the number of sites each person visited averaged 3.1 to 3.8, the average this year was five. People are definitely showing more interest in building alternatives.”

It’s a welcome change for San Diego, which Klein says is far behind the rest of California when it comes to sustainable building practices. “The building boom has been so strong here, contractors haven’t had to present options,” he says. “But the market slowdown, the cost of energy and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth are encouraging people to seek alternatives.”

Eric Fuillon agrees. As sales director for Green Housing Guild, the developer of Bankers Hill Green, he says they aren’t just committed to creating sustainable building, they are determined to also make green housing affordable. The 900- to 1,500-square-foot units start at $560,000.

“We don’t want green to be elitist,” he says. “It should be affordable for everyone. Of course, going green means there’s an increase to our building costs, but we’re still listing the units at the same prices as condos down the street.”

Edible landscaping and a “living wall” (a two-story wall of plants and a water feature) are two sustainable features that garnered a lot of attention during the tour. Wind scoops, water-reclamation technologies and sound-reduction methods are others.

Tour-goers were mostly builders, developers and architects. But it’s the homeowners who left highly motivated. “They were impressed with the completeness of our project,” Fuillon says. “They want to be able to move into a green environment without having to swap everything out and get contractors to finish the job.”

The Green Housing Guild has been contracted for two more projects in Hillcrest, but green-minded San Diegans won’t have to wait for those to be built. Other sustainable practices can be found at Del Sur, where the Ranch House has received the state’s first platinum LEED certification for a private-enterprise new building. In downtown, eco-roofs are turning rooftops green at Strata and Cosmopolitan Square. And in North County, Oceanside Terraces is being built with numerous eco-friendly alternatives, such as the use of concrete and steel structural studs to ensure natural products aren’t sacrificed.

“This is the kind of synergy we like to see,” says Klein. “If potential buyers know there are alternatives, they will force contractors to implement them. We may not have big numbers to support the fact that this kind of growth is going on, but we do have more and more anecdotal evidence.”
—ROWENA KELLEY

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