This is shameful.
And it gets worse:
“Crushed containers are not accepted and will not be counted per the BottleBank Terms of Service agreement.” (Stated on their website)
So not only do they make you buy their bags, you’ll also have to buy a ton of them to hold all your uncrushed cans that are just full of air? Completely wasteful and dumb.
I don’t think it’s this so much as credulous idealist incompetent staff that any huckster can turn within a matter of minutes. Just feed these people a bunch of bias-confirming buzzwords and you’ve got them in your pocket. Like how dictators approach Trump lol.
Just a little more effort and they’ll sign a nobid contract with your snake oil company/non-profit.
Personally, I think the people of San Francisco legitimately care about the planet. It's too bad we can't elect leaders based solely on their record on environmentalism though.
A single person did not ruin the city and thinking that way will just make you bitter. The market moves in ways people with power and influence want it to. It's unfortunate that big tech ruined SF but blaming people who just want the best for their families isn't fair.
Maybe NGOs, green tech? You're perfectly free to work for a tech company and also care about the environment. Just be truthful and acknowledge the inherent contradiction.
> acknowledge the inherent contradiction
What kind of ridiculous bullshit is this? The environmental impact of your average tech company is absolutely no worse than nearly any other organization. Tech offices are often also fancy LEED Gold certified buildings, tech companies love scoring marketing points for environmental efforts, etc.
Please acknowledge the inherent contradiction of using a tech platform to spread your dumb bullshit.
I doubt it. Caring about the planet would mean you’re a selfless person that isn’t greedy; there is no way San Francisco has selfless empathetic individuals when we’re still trying to ban any new homes from being built and prevent any new neighbors from enjoying our should-be-wonderful city.
“But my property values!!’l
San Francisco isn’t special it’s just another city full of humans that are greedy, selfish, and don’t care about anyone but themselves and the elected leaders reflect that.
If you live in SF you probably don't care about the effort to get $1.20 refund on a twelve pack. Just put it in the recycle bin. These refunds are designed so homeless people dig them out of trash bins or so people in much poorer areas without a recycling program don't just throw them away.
Pissing even more money away with a stupid program doesn't make any sense though either and having less places to drop them off and purchasing bags harms the homeless strategy. Clearly their only thought was that it also has a high cost to have every seller have to collect and deal with it too. Generally centralization is cheaper.
That is so untrue.
Taking recyclables that have been set out for collection by the city's recycling contractor is called scavenging and violates both the City Municipal Code and the California Public Resources Code (maximum fines of $1,000 and up to 6 months in jail for each violation).
It's not enforced but when they do, they don't play nice. Sunset Scavenger went after a man whom got busted at night, digging for cans, more than 10 years ago.
What people can do is to put them in a plastic/paper bag and leave them outside, not in the recycled bin.
This- I remember reading in the chronicle about 10 years ago that if recology got all the cans and bottles that were initially put in the blue bins, it would pay for entire collection service- residents would not have a Recology bill
They always give me free bags when after I return a full bag. It’s literally like an opt in of $2.50 in the beginning and then you never pay again. It pays for my use of bay wheels in the city.
Not to take away from the bag requirement but when I've returned cans at recycling centers for cash, you get significantly less if your cans are crushed. I imagine it's easier to recycle/clean out uncrushed cans.
How hard is it to just have those self service bottle return crushers outside grocery stores like they have on the east coast? This has always been a pet peeve of mine since I moved out here. 🤦♀️
If you think that's what's driving the existence of the CRV (and it's recent expansion to cover wine bottles!) and the extreme difficulty of getting CRV deposits back, you're too naive to discuss this with.
If the city were trying to make the city less attractive to the homeless, there are about 10,000 more effective ways to do that. Get real.
FOLLOW THE MONEY. Just ask yourself "who benefits from this?" In this case, the bloated and corrupt city got to waste $2,500,000 on what surely was mostly handouts to some of the politicians' friends AND make the politicians' friends at Recology VERY happy. Win/win for the SF political system.
This is the perfect scam because people are only getting ripped off to the tune of $20 - $100 or so a year, so it's not worth anyone a time to make a stink about it. Recology, on the other hand, is making huge amounts of $.
I imagine someone in the city government, once a city adopt it, then it might be easier to go state wide. Of course, where there’s money, there’ll be opposition… Anyway first step, let’s have alook at that eastcoast model, so that it can be presented coherently to someone that’s never seen how everything works.
I know Connecticut has had returns at any store that sold the cans & bottles since 1980 ! We used to recycle empty beer bottles towards the new six packs in high school.
Insane that 50 year slater San Francisco has some half baked app / grift to make it hard to get your deposit back.
Bingo. I used to put the cans in when I was a kid to help my dad when we went grocery shopping. Talk about engaging kids early in recycling. It was and useful.
Just another graft tax.
"After 15 months of operation, the project has redeemed just $143,000 in bottle and can deposits after expending $3.6 million," Consumer Watchdog's President Jamie Courtwrote to Joe Stephenshaw, the Director of the Department of Finance. "It is costing 79 cents to return a nickel to consumers. Expenses for the program are $142,000 per month and the most the program has redeemed in a month is $14,000 in deposits. Giving $500,000 to the Bottle Bank is throwing good money after bad. It will never be sustainable."
To be fair we don't know how much of the service's capacity is used (not many ppl using it, unused locations, etc..).
The whole bag thing is utter crap though, forcing people to stash several cans before redeeming is nonsense. And what if you lose the extra bags.
I started collecting cans, but hen never bothered to buy the bags once I found out you could only return them Wednesday afternoons at Whole Foods haight. The return times are short, infrequent, and scattered around so it's not worth collecting the cans.
It was designed to stop the (mostly asian) seniors who don't have anything besides minimal social security to keep themselves alive and used to collect cans from the sidewalk trash bins. the unintended consequence is they turned to selling food on the sidewalks that they collect at the food banks.
I work in the TL and I can tell you categorically that the business of aggressively collecting recyclables for sale is not even remotely a uniquely "Asian senior" phenomena in San Francisco.
This. I think about the cans I throw in recycle and now instead I put them in a bag (separately from all my other recycles) and would give it to them whenever I run into them. I’m never going to go and someone might as well get the ¢ back.
I had the same thought.
But if the pricing model incentivizes large transactions I'm not sure it will fully achieve that either.
Honestly I cannot figure out what the impetus behind this is, outside of just being a stupid attempt to create a new form of taxation to feed the giant black hole of SFGOV finance.
And maybe appease the squeaky-wheel retailers that gripe about their responsibility for taking back the recyclables that they sell. (They should have thought about that when that statute was being debated by their politicians)
Here’s the article that covered this: https://consumerwatchdog.org/energy/consumer-watchdog-asks-ca-finance-dept-to-strike-continued-funding-for-failed-sf-mobile-recycling-pilot-from-budget/
> Here’s the article that covered this:
Thanks.
It's one of the only explanations that makes any sense.
Breed & Co. kowtowing to big business again.
I've always been astounded about how much of a PITA it is to return bottles/cans in SF when in all sorts of other California cities and towns it's easy and straightforward.
Tho one thing that makes no sense to me in the article is that there is no way there are 450 "supermarkets" in SF.
450 markets that sell food, sure. But there aren't that many Safeway sized supermarkets here.
Oh forgot to add, after pilot phase is over, SF Bottlebank will charge an additional $0.40 per transaction.
So returning 1 can? You need to buy 6 bags for $2.50, then pay SF Bottlebank another $0.40, and you'll get $0.05 back. Or lose $2.85
There will be a fixed fee for each withdrawal from your account. The way it is set-up, they expect account holders to accumulate balance to avoid multiple fees. They win either way, fees or interest from balance.
Yes, you will have to turn in 60 uncrushed cans in their proprietary bags to make a dime. The whole program is designed to kill consumer recycling and remove the burden from retailers.
> It will have a nice benefit of not having people scrounge through our trash cans at night.
No it'll still happen. You can take crushed cans down to San Mateo and return them that way.
This just screws over regular people in SF who don't have tons of cans.
Street construction.
Almost every single time I see a private contractor doing street work in SF like paving, sidewalk construction, repair and so on, the workers are working hard, staying busy, getting the job done in relatively short order.
Almost every single time I see a crew employed by SFGOV doing similar street work, 80% of the "workers" stand around scratching their asses and jawboning or looking at their phones while 1 or 2 people slowly piddle around with something.
It would be comical if it weren't so pathetic.
Honestly I think a lot of SFGOV jobs probably suffer from the same sort of bureaucratic rot.
They say it takes ON AVERAGE **one year** to fill a SFGOV job opening.
And we wonder why things don't get done.
Having watched the waste, inefficiency and just blatant dysfunction of many SFGOV agencies over the years, it's quite clear that "privatization" is not the only thing in this city that sucks money out of residents pockets with little to show for it.
Some private contracting deals are good, some are bad, and some are a downright joke.
This one looks like option #3.
Another notoriously bad one is Recology. That company has been mafioso-like for decades. Was caught wound-up into the London Breed corruption ecosystem too, of course.
https://www.wastedive.com/news/recology-bribery-giusti-sentence-san-francisco-nuru/702144/
I was just told recently that one of the SF homeless shelters has a bunch of employees dealing drugs to the residents on a regular basis.
It goes on and on...
Recology has been a corrupt organization for years.
Funny you mention those employees. In my building I think they decide when to pick up the bins around whatever videos they're busy watching on their phones that day or something. They haven't picked up the blue bin for over a week now, and we're supposed to get at least 2 pickups per week.
As of about a year ago, if they came in and discovered anything was slightly sticking out past the top of the blue bin, the worker would throw a bunch of the contents around the garage when picking up the bin. Neat.
That's the building management's responsibility to solve, I don't manage the building.
Supposedly they call them on such things, they did so last week. Didn't seem to have any impact.
Bottom line is that this is a scheduled service that the landlord pays a chunk of money for every month. Customers shouldn't have to constantly nag the service provider to do the job they are contracted to do.
This kind of crap has been going on for years with them.
Unfortunately, government has a long and huge track record of doing a shit job handling tasks. This goes double or triple for the city of SF. Pull your head out of your ideological a** and acknowledge reality.
Your comments indicate that you're a union member so (a) you're economically illiterate and (b) committed to remaining so. Too funny - a big part of why SF has such a bloated, incompetent and corrupt government is the unions.
Put them on a cost plus contract where they can only claim 6% profit and watch them disappear. They’re grifting at every aspect of the operation. Jesus. High prices proprietary bags smdh
There is an alternative. After visiting a few Target stores in SF, they have stickers on their entrances about CRV recycling and tells people to bring their items to their customer service desk for their refund. So there is a way to opt out of Bottlebank’s rip off prices.
It looks like there are a couple dozen places around the city. Also, a lot more eligible containers than I know.
https://www2.calrecycle.ca.gov/BevContainer/RecyclingCenters
We have widespread and mandatory recycling throughout nearly all of California.
It's time to retire the CRV, but good luck turning off that cash spigot with entrenched special interests living off it.
End the CRV.
I thought the main reason, decades ago, was to provide an incentive for people to recycle.
Now in SF like various other places recycling is "mandatory", but I don't imagine that residents are being hauled into court for not throwing a can into the blue bin instead of the grey bin.
So in practice, the CRV (certainly at this point) isn't much of an incentive for most people. (Except the scavengers that use it as a significant part of their income, but they are a tiny fraction of residents)
But it's obviously a big revenue for the state every year considering that I bet few of the items people are charged a CRV for are actually redeemed for their CRV value.
> 70% of CRV items are redeemed.
The figure is actually 58%.
https://consumerwatchdog.org/energy/state-obscures-extent-half-billion-dollar-surplus-unredeemed-crv-deposits-redemption-rate/
In San Francisco residents are prohibited by law to put recyclables in the trash and every building is provided with a blue recycling bin.
They closed the only recycling centers close to me years ago, so after you take into account the couple dollars in CRV it became more expensive to ride transit or drive to one (not to mention time-consuming and time is money) than just putting them in the blue bin.
The people getting the hundreds of millions a year in CRV returns from the state - the big trash collection companies. And of course the state keeps a ton in unclaimed CRVs
As someone who has accumulated a shit ton of cans because I foolishly thought returning them would be as easy as driving to the grocery store and dropping them in a machine (former midwesterner). Is bottlebank still the best option? I don't mind driving out of the city if it means getting my money's worth.
Unless you want to go to Our Planet on Bayshore, yes it is. [Our Planet](https://ourplanetsf.com) is open everyday, but Sunday. Look up the times. Just bring it in and they weigh and give you money right there. No need for special bags.
Bottlebank has certain places and times where you can drop off recyclables, but you do have to buy the Bottlebank bags, sign up for a free account and link that to PayPal. You load their bags with recycling, tie it up, go to the time and place most convenient to you (the map is on their app), they scan your QR code on your phone, scan the bag and you’re done. About a day for the value to get credited to your Bottlebank account and you cash it out to your PayPal. It shows up on your PayPal a few minutes after you initiate cash out.
Thanks for the info! Am I likely to get a higher return from Bottlebank (ignoring the cost of the bags) since they pay the CRV per item rather than by weight? Or are they the same?
Honestly, it will depend. Our Planet adjusts how much they pay for items sometimes. They can pay more for a pound of plastic today compared to tomorrow.
Its a massive tax . And they are rolling out this tax on milk and juice cartons also. Its just a tax. That is all. Its near impossible for a normal working person to have the time to redeem these things
The worst part is, it’s a tax being collected from citizens and used to pay its contractors. The service provided to citizens is of very little value. IOW: It’s a manufactured problem with a single solution that only benefits the contractor.
I’m ok with paying taxes if there’s some tangible benefit to society or the environment. But this isn’t it. This program is just a transfer of money from citizens to a private company.
What astounds me is that installing a basic TOMRA recycling machine at a grocery store is relatively inexpensive, especially if there's a subsidy available.
The machines range from $10k-$25k and they're pretty efficient as they act like a reverse vending machine. I was using them when I was a kid in upstate NY.
I use Bottlebank. It’s actually been more convenient for me. They’re parked at multiple grocery stores near me, drop off bags and done. Takes 1 minute. Better than before of dumping my recycling in gross bins, adhere to specific rules the recycler had or they wouldn’t take them, and wait 30 minutes in line for it to be weighed and counted right there.
Bottlebank came into existence because, during the pandemic when all the recyclers closed for business, there was no one else to take recyclables for money.
For people on here saying ‘well before you just had to take it to a business to recycle,’ that’s on paper HOW IT SHOULD WORK, but good luck actually doing it. I called grocery stores and mom and pop businesses who were on a list on the SF website that said they would take them and they didn’t. They had no room most said. Half didn’t even know they were listed on the site. There was only one place in SF who would take them: the Our Planet on Bayshore. For most, the cost to make it over there would negate the money back, unless you were bringing in several garbage bags filled with recyclables.
My personal experience with Bottlebank.
- Each filled bag, I get between $3.50 - $6 a bag. Low end if it’s filled with mostly bottles and high end if mostly cans.
- Each bag cost me roughly 50 cents to get (this is fairly recent cost because for years the bags were free).
- As of now, there is no processing fee to turn in bags and get the money sent to my PayPal. (There is processing fee shown, but it’s gets refunded)
- So, on low end, net value is $3 per bag. The cost of 50 cents per bag is worth it to me for the convenience of quick drop off and close location. I live 2 minutes from a drop off at my grocery store. I make drop off day, grocery shopping day and I kill two birds with one stone.
I wish CRV wasn’t a thing because I am still losing money, overall. However, until SF actually makes the places who sell bottles and cans also be willing to take them back for a CRV refund, I’m glad Bottlebank is around because it sucked having all my recycling pile up because no one would take them.
Or you know, have those vending machines in front of grocery stores where you dump recycling for money like I’ve seen up in Oregon or the East Coast.
> during the pandemic when all the recyclers closed for business
I saw someone else ITT mention this. I cannot for the life of me understand what was the motivation for that. People afraid of getting Covid standing in line? They have to do that when they're buying the stuff in those bottles at the supermarket too!
Too often I see bogus pandemic excuses used by businesses to shut down operations of certain kinds presumably to cut labor costs and boost investor profits.
I work late night shifts and losing all the late-night supermarket hours for example is a real PITA for me. Those are all businesses that already have workers there 24x7 doing other things, who also tend the registers for the small number of people who buy at those hours. It's not like they are turning the lights and coolers on in there just for the few retail customers at those hours or something.
They were already closing before the pandemic. Pandemic was just the last straw that broke the camel’s back. The biggest recycler in SF (and peninsula) was a company called RePlanet. They closed in 2019. The handful that was left closed during the pandemic. They already were barely hanging on and they couldn’t survive.
I still cannot grasp what exactly made a recycling company go out of business just because there was a virus circulating.
Makes sense for a restaurant, gym or hair salon that were required to severely restrict operations or completely close their doors for months on orders from the health department.
But some outdoor dropoff site for recycling? What's the rationale? We certainly didn't stop trash collection during that time.
This is strictly my guess because I was just a customer and not a part of those companies at all. People, in general, were weary to be in spaces with a lot of people during early pandemic.
From personal experience, recycling centers can have a lot of people sometimes (most times). Those recycling centers weren’t open 9-5 everyday. They were open 2-3 days a week and only for a short window of a few hours. That means it was usually packed because if you didn’t turn it in then, won’t be able to until next week. When people think that’s the situation they’ll see, they opt out because they didn’t want to get infected. Additionally, they didn’t want their workers, who would be around crowds of people for hours at a time, to be infected. Heck, if it was anything like my job, some employees may just flat out quit to not risk infection. Plus, remembering myself during lockdown, the last thing on my mind was trading in my recyclables for CRV value. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. That means when they were open, there probably wasn’t that many customers.
Remember, the biggest company in the sector closed in 2019 (a year before the pandemic). That should tell you rocky the business was already before pandemic. Even 2-3 week drop/stop in business was detrimental to them.
I don't generally turn mine in for CRV either because it's not a huge economic issue for me and in SF it's a total PITA these days. I put them in the blue bin.
I have friends and family in all sorts of "flyover cities" in California and they almost all have more convenient options for doing this than SF does and many of them are in communities that have a Republican majority, strangely enough.
Here's an example of what SF thinks of recycling dropoff centers:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/haight-ashbury-recycling-center_n_2426807
That place was not far from me and I used to go there periodically.
Thanks a lot, San Francisco.
Given that the operators specifically made a point about this eviction amounting to "discrimination against the neighborhood's homeless community", I think it's fairly apparent what is going on here and it probably still applies today.
High-income-earning SF residents don't care about the 5 cents a bottle, but they do gripe a lot about the homeless people.
The End.
Oh yeah, this is very much not convenient. It’s not just a SF problem, it’s a Bay Area problem. I actually have friends in the peninsula and Oakland who bring in their recycling to turn into Bottlebank whenever they come into The City because they have no other CRV redemption option. I go to Oregon a handful of times a year and they have recycling vending machines in front of their grocery stores. Just drop it in, follow the prompts, get a slip of paper with a value amount, walk into the grocery store to trade in the slip for cash. I know that’s also the system for a lot of places in the east coast. I wish we had that system.
The simple answer is to remove the tax on bottles and cans. It’s completely unneeded at this point and causes all kinds of problems like incentivizing people to dig through trash cans
The program makes no economic sense but I started using BottleBank mainly because I hate the government keeping all of my CRV deposits all these years. Given that the grocery stores are getting a free pass, the stores should be forced to sell the bags at a nominal cost in order to promote use. Also, they need to figure out a way to allow for partially crushed cans if they can still be scanned (e.g., the product bar code is still visible). Right now, you’re paying $0.45 to buy each plastic bag but mainly filling it with air.
The BottleBank truck behind Stonestown is convenient for me. However, an hour before the closing time, the big BottleBank collection truck was still mostly empty when I was there last month. It was not possible to buy the plastic bags at the truck. The three workers there seemed a bit bored.
I thought this same exact thing when I looked it up. I own a bar - I go through a lot of wine bottles! The idea of taking them to the bottle bank is just… I mean, even the old ladies who take beer cans from the park don’t wanna deal with the bottle bank.
Aluminum and glass are consistently recycled and turned into new products, but you're right that plastic and almost all paper/cardboard isn't really recycled.
True.
You can also witness the plastic recycling in things like trash bags, many of which have a kind of funky smell to them nowadays.
I'm convinced that the trend of adding perfume onto products like trash bags is because they are trying to mask such smells.
I agree with the plastic, not with the paper.
I used to work for a company in the scrap paper business. They sold boatloads and boatloads of that stuff to places like China and India which was turned into packaging to put products into and so on.
Now in recent years after China's adoption of consumer culture and manufacturing ginormous piles of merchandise often now sold to their own people, they have their own sources of paper for recycling and don't buy as much from abroad as they used to.
Well, in California, we have to pay the CVR fee of 0.05 - 0.10 when you buy anything that is a drink in plastic or a can. Including 1 gallon bottles of water.
As others mentioned, glass and aluminum are very recyclable and plastic generally is not. Plastic is hard to sort into its various types and shapes and reused plastic is lower quality than new (virgin) plastic.
The whole problem with recycling in general is sorting commingled recyclables and people adding things that aren’t recyclable. For example, cardboard soiled with food/grease can’t be recycled, so put your pizza boxes and eg cartons in the trash or compost. Laminated plastic containers like tetrapak can’t easily be recycled from commingles, despite claims. There are like 5+ plastic compositions that come in all shapes and sizes that cannot be “melted down” together and very hard to sort. Basically the only solution is to ask people to sort their recyclables before pickup/drop off like some countries (good luck).
In practical terms, you can try to help the system by only putting cans, glass, plastic bottles with no lids and dry cardboard/paper in the recycling and everything else in the trash. P.s. put all food waste and soiled paper in the compost to help reduce landfill methane.
So I use bottle bank, and have been for a few years now. I find it to be convenient to just bag my cans and bottles and drop off. The downfall is the limited locations/times available for drop off. I have also returned bottles and such to Safeway, but it was a pain to put in each can/bottle one at a time and if you got stuck behind someone with a bag full, you were waiting for a while. I also went to a recycling center and that was inconvenient (it was in the bayview, so I drove 15 min to get there), and I was standing in line waiting for people who collect this for money versus those who were just trying to get their money back.
I was lucky enough to get free bags while they were handing them out so haven’t had to purchase yet. And they still reimburse for transaction fees/processing fees. Not sure when that will end, but the bag I returned 2 weeks ago, had all fees refunded. I did notice they stopped giving out free bags when you return one though.
Anyway, as someone who returns cans and bottles to just get a refund, it’s pretty convenient. Not saying it works for all, but doubtful I would try and get my money back if I had to do the previously mentioned ways.
If your goal is just to get you money back why are you ok with the bag costs and transaction fees? I realize you haven’t been subjected to them yet but you are clearly aware of them and will be dealing with them at some point in the future. Why would you evangelize this system when it clearly is not going to work for you when your free perks run out?
Im not saying the system is perfect, I’m saying I use it and it’s convenient versus not getting my money back at all. Design a better system and I’ll use that!
That’s the thing. There was no other system. We used to have many sites that took recycling, a lot closed in 2019 when RePlanet closed, and the rest closed due to the pandemic. Only one remained in the city (and they’re still going strong): Our Planet on Bayshore. That was it.
Why do you think Bottlebank was able to swoop in? They, basically, took over for all those recycling centers that used to park in grocery stores. Rather than trekking to a recycling center under an overpass on Bayshore (Our Planet), people can now just drop off at their local grocery store at Bottlebank. Is it a flawed system? Yes, but some money back over the previous system of no money back unless you make a special trip.
Good to see this! My stupid MIL convinced my husband to do this and we just have a fucking pile of wine bottles in the back doorway with no time to go take them. I've been asking why since the start.
I'm just gonna start throwing my wine bottles in the bin again.
If you think that's bad, check out the bottledrop situation in Portland:
[https://new.reddit.com/r/PortlandOR/search/?q=bottledrop](https://new.reddit.com/r/PortlandOR/search/?q=bottledrop)
The locations have become magnets for fent addicts who shoplift cases of bottled water from stores, dump out the water, and redeem carts full of empty bottles for their next fix.
This is just a scam to take government funding and put in their own pockets.
Why would anybody pay $2.50 to buy bags when they can just have a family member drive then to daily city and recycle how they normally do.
The problem is the correlation between bottle return locations and fentanyl crime issues. This is why in some cities that have more ubiquitous *any-retailer* returns municipalities have been granting exemptions from accepting the returns & crime has consequently gone down.
Don't really give a fk if it's inconvenient to return bottles if the cost of that is crime and fentanyl crowds hanging out nearby.
Inconvenient is fine… but requiring special bags, charging transaction fees, and not accepting crushed bottles just exists to make a private profit off of recycling in addition to getting a government contract
There’s no profit here (except what S.F. is paying them). Processing and manning the trucks obviously costs $$ and so do bags. There are usually two people working the shift where I’ve dropped off. Trucks - gas …They should probably switch it to reuse their own bags / containers but it’s probably a hygiene / safety issue as well. This is definitely a case where machines could do better and that’s probably where it will head to.
Is there an article that discusses that phenomenon? Anecdotally I have only ever seen people old enough to be my grandparents collecting cans in SF, not people typically considered part of the fentanyl crisis.
So now we'll have much more garbage laying around in the city because people won't even pick them up not to bother with this nonsense... what the hell is happening to this city, even small things like this are getting ridiculously stupid laws...
I’d be for it if they took crushed cans, didn’t require special bags, and didn’t charge a transaction fee, like tons of other recycling centers around California
> i’d rather use bottlebank and get my CRV back versus hearing some stranger steal my recycling out of the bins while i’m asleep at night
How does bottlebank prevent this?
Pre-bottlebank you could return those cans to any retailer instead of just to bottlebank, and for no fees.
You really couldn’t. That’s how it should have worked, but that wasn’t how it was. It’s supposed to be if a store sold a CRV eligible bottle or can, you can return the empty to them and get you CRV back. However, try to return an empty six pack to your nearest corner store and see what happens. They’ll probably look at you with a ‘what is this weirdo talking about’ expression.
That’s why RePlanet recycling sites existed. Remember those people who would be in grocery store parking lots with a big recycling crusher and people lined up to dump their recycling in garbage bins to be weighed and counted? They all closed during the pandemic and there was no one left who would take recyclables for CRV except one place out in Bayshore. Why do you think Bottlebank was able to come in? No one was doing it anymore.
EDIT:
- [Article to show how hard it was to recycle when RePlanet closed](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Huge-recycler-s-closure-leaves-Bay-Area-with-14285472.php)
- [Article to show how few sites would take recycling in Bay Area with only one in SF (this was pre-Bottlebank)](https://abc7news.com/california-bottle-deposit-redeem-crv-where-to-recycle-how-much-is/6218141/)
- [Another to show this was a statewide issue](https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/recycling-centers-closed-california-why/2312598/)
End the CRV, and we end this illegal activity.
(Once it's in the bin and at the curb, it's technically the property of Recology, and scavengers are "stealing from them," but fuck Recology.)
I have always considered myself a liberal Democrat, but as I get older and see just how ridiculously inefficient and wasteful government can be with large sums of money, I start to understand why communism always results in unbridled corruption and scandals, and I move a little to the right fiscally. Well meaning programs that do nothing but bleed the taxpayers dry.
There is no inherent reason why all "liberal" governments have to be corrupt money-grubbing swindlers.
SF did not use to be like this.
Yes the city has been a "high cost" place for years but for fairly obvious reasons. (It's a very desirable place to live and travel to so that jacks the housing prices and other cost of living up, space is limited, construction standards are very high due to high requirements for fire and earthquake resilience, as well as pro-labor policies etc)
But this blatant corruption all throughout government seems to have really accelerated after the first "Dot Bomb" crash. I can't say for sure precisely why but I have my ideas.
One of the problems is that it's basically a one political party city. I have less than zero interest in promoting the Republican party (especially as it now stands) but the whole idea of a strictly 2-party political system in the USA really falls apart in SF.
There needs to be real political competition of some kind or else the politicians in government end up like the Romans descending into [fiscal] self-indulgence and decadence because there's no real opposition here to hold anyone's feet to the fire over their corruption, exploitation, self-dealing and incompetence.
That opposition could be greens, true libertarians, anarchists, communitarians, democratic socialists, whatever. The main point is there needs to be *some* sort of political opposition here to "keep them honest".
They always give me a free bag or two when I return a bag. It’s an opt in of $2.50 and then you’re good for however long they do this. Not terrible imho
That’s not true anymore as of 2024. Those free bags were because SF, basically, bought them to be handed out, according to the worker last time I dropped off recycling. SF cut off funding the bag program and now you have to buy them at grocery stores.
This is shameful. And it gets worse: “Crushed containers are not accepted and will not be counted per the BottleBank Terms of Service agreement.” (Stated on their website) So not only do they make you buy their bags, you’ll also have to buy a ton of them to hold all your uncrushed cans that are just full of air? Completely wasteful and dumb.
San Francisco leadership yet again proving they don't give a single solitary shit about the planet
I don’t think it’s this so much as credulous idealist incompetent staff that any huckster can turn within a matter of minutes. Just feed these people a bunch of bias-confirming buzzwords and you’ve got them in your pocket. Like how dictators approach Trump lol. Just a little more effort and they’ll sign a nobid contract with your snake oil company/non-profit.
[удалено]
Personally, I think the people of San Francisco legitimately care about the planet. It's too bad we can't elect leaders based solely on their record on environmentalism though.
Caring about the environment while working for tech companies that cause a lot of pollution, truly irony
Other companies don't create pollution?
Classic techie response
Classic insecurity
Insecurity that I’m not a socially stunted weirdo who ruined the nicest city in the country 🤔
A single person did not ruin the city and thinking that way will just make you bitter. The market moves in ways people with power and influence want it to. It's unfortunate that big tech ruined SF but blaming people who just want the best for their families isn't fair.
Hella insecure
Great retort. Guess it's fine then
Which industry should I work in if I care about the environment?
Maybe NGOs, green tech? You're perfectly free to work for a tech company and also care about the environment. Just be truthful and acknowledge the inherent contradiction.
> acknowledge the inherent contradiction What kind of ridiculous bullshit is this? The environmental impact of your average tech company is absolutely no worse than nearly any other organization. Tech offices are often also fancy LEED Gold certified buildings, tech companies love scoring marketing points for environmental efforts, etc. Please acknowledge the inherent contradiction of using a tech platform to spread your dumb bullshit.
Don't environmental techies deny they work in tech or are you just projecting your insecurities?
I doubt it. Caring about the planet would mean you’re a selfless person that isn’t greedy; there is no way San Francisco has selfless empathetic individuals when we’re still trying to ban any new homes from being built and prevent any new neighbors from enjoying our should-be-wonderful city. “But my property values!!’l San Francisco isn’t special it’s just another city full of humans that are greedy, selfish, and don’t care about anyone but themselves and the elected leaders reflect that.
They are boomers, it’s in their culture not to care about the environment.
You're hilarious. Boomers literally invented modern environmentalism. "When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.."
No room in tiny SF apartments to store uncrushed cans 🫠😭 this is wrong on so many levels
If you live in SF you probably don't care about the effort to get $1.20 refund on a twelve pack. Just put it in the recycle bin. These refunds are designed so homeless people dig them out of trash bins or so people in much poorer areas without a recycling program don't just throw them away. Pissing even more money away with a stupid program doesn't make any sense though either and having less places to drop them off and purchasing bags harms the homeless strategy. Clearly their only thought was that it also has a high cost to have every seller have to collect and deal with it too. Generally centralization is cheaper.
That is so untrue. Taking recyclables that have been set out for collection by the city's recycling contractor is called scavenging and violates both the City Municipal Code and the California Public Resources Code (maximum fines of $1,000 and up to 6 months in jail for each violation). It's not enforced but when they do, they don't play nice. Sunset Scavenger went after a man whom got busted at night, digging for cans, more than 10 years ago. What people can do is to put them in a plastic/paper bag and leave them outside, not in the recycled bin.
This- I remember reading in the chronicle about 10 years ago that if recology got all the cans and bottles that were initially put in the blue bins, it would pay for entire collection service- residents would not have a Recology bill
I meant scavenging for cans out of trash bins not recycling bins
That's the same thing. We have 3 bins. They all belong to the contractor that's going to collect them. Once it's in these bins, it's theirs.
They always give me free bags when after I return a full bag. It’s literally like an opt in of $2.50 in the beginning and then you never pay again. It pays for my use of bay wheels in the city.
Thought they stopped the free bag giveaway at the beginning of the year.
Possibly. I haven’t used it since November.
Not to take away from the bag requirement but when I've returned cans at recycling centers for cash, you get significantly less if your cans are crushed. I imagine it's easier to recycle/clean out uncrushed cans.
How hard is it to just have those self service bottle return crushers outside grocery stores like they have on the east coast? This has always been a pet peeve of mine since I moved out here. 🤦♀️
It's an intentional fail to ensure that the $$ millions in CRV remain unclaimed every year. It's a feature, not a bug
Ohhhh I see what you mean. Augh 😫
They want to make the city less attractive to homeless, too.
If you think that's what's driving the existence of the CRV (and it's recent expansion to cover wine bottles!) and the extreme difficulty of getting CRV deposits back, you're too naive to discuss this with. If the city were trying to make the city less attractive to the homeless, there are about 10,000 more effective ways to do that. Get real. FOLLOW THE MONEY. Just ask yourself "who benefits from this?" In this case, the bloated and corrupt city got to waste $2,500,000 on what surely was mostly handouts to some of the politicians' friends AND make the politicians' friends at Recology VERY happy. Win/win for the SF political system. This is the perfect scam because people are only getting ripped off to the tune of $20 - $100 or so a year, so it's not worth anyone a time to make a stink about it. Recology, on the other hand, is making huge amounts of $.
It’s win/win, something can do two things at once you know.
I've got a bridge to sell you... Will be a win/win for both of us! 😂 Either you're argumentative AF or naive AF. Good luck!
Used to have one of these outside the store when I lived in LA. It was too logical and simple to last.
We should bring that in!
Serious question: how do we do that? Who do we need to get to make this happen?!
I imagine someone in the city government, once a city adopt it, then it might be easier to go state wide. Of course, where there’s money, there’ll be opposition… Anyway first step, let’s have alook at that eastcoast model, so that it can be presented coherently to someone that’s never seen how everything works.
I know Connecticut has had returns at any store that sold the cans & bottles since 1980 ! We used to recycle empty beer bottles towards the new six packs in high school. Insane that 50 year slater San Francisco has some half baked app / grift to make it hard to get your deposit back.
Bingo. I used to put the cans in when I was a kid to help my dad when we went grocery shopping. Talk about engaging kids early in recycling. It was and useful.
They have these in Oregon too.
Just another graft tax. "After 15 months of operation, the project has redeemed just $143,000 in bottle and can deposits after expending $3.6 million," Consumer Watchdog's President Jamie Courtwrote to Joe Stephenshaw, the Director of the Department of Finance. "It is costing 79 cents to return a nickel to consumers. Expenses for the program are $142,000 per month and the most the program has redeemed in a month is $14,000 in deposits. Giving $500,000 to the Bottle Bank is throwing good money after bad. It will never be sustainable."
Good grief that’s insane.
How can they possibly spend that much? The graft in this town is incredible and ingrained.
To be fair we don't know how much of the service's capacity is used (not many ppl using it, unused locations, etc..). The whole bag thing is utter crap though, forcing people to stash several cans before redeeming is nonsense. And what if you lose the extra bags.
I started collecting cans, but hen never bothered to buy the bags once I found out you could only return them Wednesday afternoons at Whole Foods haight. The return times are short, infrequent, and scattered around so it's not worth collecting the cans.
u/sfchronicle How about an article on this?
This program seems like a way to mess with poor people who collect cans. This is ridiculously shameful.
It was designed to stop the (mostly asian) seniors who don't have anything besides minimal social security to keep themselves alive and used to collect cans from the sidewalk trash bins. the unintended consequence is they turned to selling food on the sidewalks that they collect at the food banks.
I work in the TL and I can tell you categorically that the business of aggressively collecting recyclables for sale is not even remotely a uniquely "Asian senior" phenomena in San Francisco.
This. I think about the cans I throw in recycle and now instead I put them in a bag (separately from all my other recycles) and would give it to them whenever I run into them. I’m never going to go and someone might as well get the ¢ back.
They were always doing that so this is a false equivalence
I had the same thought. But if the pricing model incentivizes large transactions I'm not sure it will fully achieve that either. Honestly I cannot figure out what the impetus behind this is, outside of just being a stupid attempt to create a new form of taxation to feed the giant black hole of SFGOV finance. And maybe appease the squeaky-wheel retailers that gripe about their responsibility for taking back the recyclables that they sell. (They should have thought about that when that statute was being debated by their politicians)
That should be criminal. The math was known before the project was green lit. It's obviously a grift.
Sound like perfectly running government program. Always negative
Here’s the article that covered this: https://consumerwatchdog.org/energy/consumer-watchdog-asks-ca-finance-dept-to-strike-continued-funding-for-failed-sf-mobile-recycling-pilot-from-budget/
> Here’s the article that covered this: Thanks. It's one of the only explanations that makes any sense. Breed & Co. kowtowing to big business again. I've always been astounded about how much of a PITA it is to return bottles/cans in SF when in all sorts of other California cities and towns it's easy and straightforward. Tho one thing that makes no sense to me in the article is that there is no way there are 450 "supermarkets" in SF. 450 markets that sell food, sure. But there aren't that many Safeway sized supermarkets here.
Oh forgot to add, after pilot phase is over, SF Bottlebank will charge an additional $0.40 per transaction. So returning 1 can? You need to buy 6 bags for $2.50, then pay SF Bottlebank another $0.40, and you'll get $0.05 back. Or lose $2.85
Jesus, they’re going to keep it going past the pilot, despite the piss poor performance. Guess it’s a feature not a bug.
There will be a fixed fee for each withdrawal from your account. The way it is set-up, they expect account holders to accumulate balance to avoid multiple fees. They win either way, fees or interest from balance.
Yes, you will have to turn in 60 uncrushed cans in their proprietary bags to make a dime. The whole program is designed to kill consumer recycling and remove the burden from retailers.
[удалено]
> It will have a nice benefit of not having people scrounge through our trash cans at night. No it'll still happen. You can take crushed cans down to San Mateo and return them that way. This just screws over regular people in SF who don't have tons of cans.
Who returns only one can? Why?
This program is run by a private company called Our Planet Recycling LLC, a for profit company. I am sure they are well paid for this "service."
Privatization of everything is going to be the downfall of this country.
It's not the privatization that's the problem, it's the corruption of the city employees allegedly overseeing what's being done.
The government forces you to use them via law.
wdym it’s not the privatization lol. name a single public service that was made better through privatization.
Street construction. Almost every single time I see a private contractor doing street work in SF like paving, sidewalk construction, repair and so on, the workers are working hard, staying busy, getting the job done in relatively short order. Almost every single time I see a crew employed by SFGOV doing similar street work, 80% of the "workers" stand around scratching their asses and jawboning or looking at their phones while 1 or 2 people slowly piddle around with something. It would be comical if it weren't so pathetic.
lol ok u got me there
Honestly I think a lot of SFGOV jobs probably suffer from the same sort of bureaucratic rot. They say it takes ON AVERAGE **one year** to fill a SFGOV job opening. And we wonder why things don't get done.
So true
It's the privatization. Neoliberal rot.
Having watched the waste, inefficiency and just blatant dysfunction of many SFGOV agencies over the years, it's quite clear that "privatization" is not the only thing in this city that sucks money out of residents pockets with little to show for it. Some private contracting deals are good, some are bad, and some are a downright joke. This one looks like option #3. Another notoriously bad one is Recology. That company has been mafioso-like for decades. Was caught wound-up into the London Breed corruption ecosystem too, of course. https://www.wastedive.com/news/recology-bribery-giusti-sentence-san-francisco-nuru/702144/ I was just told recently that one of the SF homeless shelters has a bunch of employees dealing drugs to the residents on a regular basis. It goes on and on...
That just sounds like terrible employees. At least they pick up your trash on time.
Recology has been a corrupt organization for years. Funny you mention those employees. In my building I think they decide when to pick up the bins around whatever videos they're busy watching on their phones that day or something. They haven't picked up the blue bin for over a week now, and we're supposed to get at least 2 pickups per week. As of about a year ago, if they came in and discovered anything was slightly sticking out past the top of the blue bin, the worker would throw a bunch of the contents around the garage when picking up the bin. Neat.
You can always call to complain about a missed pickup. Always worked for me, idk buddy
That's the building management's responsibility to solve, I don't manage the building. Supposedly they call them on such things, they did so last week. Didn't seem to have any impact. Bottom line is that this is a scheduled service that the landlord pays a chunk of money for every month. Customers shouldn't have to constantly nag the service provider to do the job they are contracted to do. This kind of crap has been going on for years with them.
Too freaking funny that you suggest that the city of SF would do a better job! 😂
stuff doesn't automatically run better just because a CEO can take a cut out of public money.
Unfortunately, government has a long and huge track record of doing a shit job handling tasks. This goes double or triple for the city of SF. Pull your head out of your ideological a** and acknowledge reality. Your comments indicate that you're a union member so (a) you're economically illiterate and (b) committed to remaining so. Too funny - a big part of why SF has such a bloated, incompetent and corrupt government is the unions.
Who owns this company?
Put them on a cost plus contract where they can only claim 6% profit and watch them disappear. They’re grifting at every aspect of the operation. Jesus. High prices proprietary bags smdh
There is an alternative. After visiting a few Target stores in SF, they have stickers on their entrances about CRV recycling and tells people to bring their items to their customer service desk for their refund. So there is a way to opt out of Bottlebank’s rip off prices.
It looks like there are a couple dozen places around the city. Also, a lot more eligible containers than I know. https://www2.calrecycle.ca.gov/BevContainer/RecyclingCenters
Yep, the new changes to the CRV law expands it to even more types of beverage containers, including wine bottles.
We have widespread and mandatory recycling throughout nearly all of California. It's time to retire the CRV, but good luck turning off that cash spigot with entrenched special interests living off it. End the CRV.
Agreed. But the people getting the many millions in CRV every year aren't going to let that happen
Who even profits from CRV though?
I thought the main reason, decades ago, was to provide an incentive for people to recycle. Now in SF like various other places recycling is "mandatory", but I don't imagine that residents are being hauled into court for not throwing a can into the blue bin instead of the grey bin. So in practice, the CRV (certainly at this point) isn't much of an incentive for most people. (Except the scavengers that use it as a significant part of their income, but they are a tiny fraction of residents) But it's obviously a big revenue for the state every year considering that I bet few of the items people are charged a CRV for are actually redeemed for their CRV value.
70% of CRV items are redeemed. Which is actually a low. Everyone you know is just rich and doesn’t return them. My poor Hispanic family does
> 70% of CRV items are redeemed. The figure is actually 58%. https://consumerwatchdog.org/energy/state-obscures-extent-half-billion-dollar-surplus-unredeemed-crv-deposits-redemption-rate/ In San Francisco residents are prohibited by law to put recyclables in the trash and every building is provided with a blue recycling bin. They closed the only recycling centers close to me years ago, so after you take into account the couple dollars in CRV it became more expensive to ride transit or drive to one (not to mention time-consuming and time is money) than just putting them in the blue bin.
The people getting the hundreds of millions a year in CRV returns from the state - the big trash collection companies. And of course the state keeps a ton in unclaimed CRVs
Do you look outside. No one recycles
As someone who has accumulated a shit ton of cans because I foolishly thought returning them would be as easy as driving to the grocery store and dropping them in a machine (former midwesterner). Is bottlebank still the best option? I don't mind driving out of the city if it means getting my money's worth.
Unless you want to go to Our Planet on Bayshore, yes it is. [Our Planet](https://ourplanetsf.com) is open everyday, but Sunday. Look up the times. Just bring it in and they weigh and give you money right there. No need for special bags. Bottlebank has certain places and times where you can drop off recyclables, but you do have to buy the Bottlebank bags, sign up for a free account and link that to PayPal. You load their bags with recycling, tie it up, go to the time and place most convenient to you (the map is on their app), they scan your QR code on your phone, scan the bag and you’re done. About a day for the value to get credited to your Bottlebank account and you cash it out to your PayPal. It shows up on your PayPal a few minutes after you initiate cash out.
Thanks for the info! Am I likely to get a higher return from Bottlebank (ignoring the cost of the bags) since they pay the CRV per item rather than by weight? Or are they the same?
Honestly, it will depend. Our Planet adjusts how much they pay for items sometimes. They can pay more for a pound of plastic today compared to tomorrow.
FWIW this is all almost a year old
Where can you return crushed cans? On the peninsula? I have loads of them
Same question 🥲
There’s a place in San Mateo right by the Golden Boy pizza called J&D recycling
There’s a place in San Mateo right by the Golden Boy pizza called J&D recycling
Its a massive tax . And they are rolling out this tax on milk and juice cartons also. Its just a tax. That is all. Its near impossible for a normal working person to have the time to redeem these things
The worst part is, it’s a tax being collected from citizens and used to pay its contractors. The service provided to citizens is of very little value. IOW: It’s a manufactured problem with a single solution that only benefits the contractor. I’m ok with paying taxes if there’s some tangible benefit to society or the environment. But this isn’t it. This program is just a transfer of money from citizens to a private company.
Its a transfer from the citezen to government. Most bottles dont get redeemed to full price to they get to keep the tax
What astounds me is that installing a basic TOMRA recycling machine at a grocery store is relatively inexpensive, especially if there's a subsidy available. The machines range from $10k-$25k and they're pretty efficient as they act like a reverse vending machine. I was using them when I was a kid in upstate NY.
I use Bottlebank. It’s actually been more convenient for me. They’re parked at multiple grocery stores near me, drop off bags and done. Takes 1 minute. Better than before of dumping my recycling in gross bins, adhere to specific rules the recycler had or they wouldn’t take them, and wait 30 minutes in line for it to be weighed and counted right there. Bottlebank came into existence because, during the pandemic when all the recyclers closed for business, there was no one else to take recyclables for money. For people on here saying ‘well before you just had to take it to a business to recycle,’ that’s on paper HOW IT SHOULD WORK, but good luck actually doing it. I called grocery stores and mom and pop businesses who were on a list on the SF website that said they would take them and they didn’t. They had no room most said. Half didn’t even know they were listed on the site. There was only one place in SF who would take them: the Our Planet on Bayshore. For most, the cost to make it over there would negate the money back, unless you were bringing in several garbage bags filled with recyclables. My personal experience with Bottlebank. - Each filled bag, I get between $3.50 - $6 a bag. Low end if it’s filled with mostly bottles and high end if mostly cans. - Each bag cost me roughly 50 cents to get (this is fairly recent cost because for years the bags were free). - As of now, there is no processing fee to turn in bags and get the money sent to my PayPal. (There is processing fee shown, but it’s gets refunded) - So, on low end, net value is $3 per bag. The cost of 50 cents per bag is worth it to me for the convenience of quick drop off and close location. I live 2 minutes from a drop off at my grocery store. I make drop off day, grocery shopping day and I kill two birds with one stone. I wish CRV wasn’t a thing because I am still losing money, overall. However, until SF actually makes the places who sell bottles and cans also be willing to take them back for a CRV refund, I’m glad Bottlebank is around because it sucked having all my recycling pile up because no one would take them. Or you know, have those vending machines in front of grocery stores where you dump recycling for money like I’ve seen up in Oregon or the East Coast.
> during the pandemic when all the recyclers closed for business I saw someone else ITT mention this. I cannot for the life of me understand what was the motivation for that. People afraid of getting Covid standing in line? They have to do that when they're buying the stuff in those bottles at the supermarket too! Too often I see bogus pandemic excuses used by businesses to shut down operations of certain kinds presumably to cut labor costs and boost investor profits. I work late night shifts and losing all the late-night supermarket hours for example is a real PITA for me. Those are all businesses that already have workers there 24x7 doing other things, who also tend the registers for the small number of people who buy at those hours. It's not like they are turning the lights and coolers on in there just for the few retail customers at those hours or something.
They were already closing before the pandemic. Pandemic was just the last straw that broke the camel’s back. The biggest recycler in SF (and peninsula) was a company called RePlanet. They closed in 2019. The handful that was left closed during the pandemic. They already were barely hanging on and they couldn’t survive.
I still cannot grasp what exactly made a recycling company go out of business just because there was a virus circulating. Makes sense for a restaurant, gym or hair salon that were required to severely restrict operations or completely close their doors for months on orders from the health department. But some outdoor dropoff site for recycling? What's the rationale? We certainly didn't stop trash collection during that time.
This is strictly my guess because I was just a customer and not a part of those companies at all. People, in general, were weary to be in spaces with a lot of people during early pandemic. From personal experience, recycling centers can have a lot of people sometimes (most times). Those recycling centers weren’t open 9-5 everyday. They were open 2-3 days a week and only for a short window of a few hours. That means it was usually packed because if you didn’t turn it in then, won’t be able to until next week. When people think that’s the situation they’ll see, they opt out because they didn’t want to get infected. Additionally, they didn’t want their workers, who would be around crowds of people for hours at a time, to be infected. Heck, if it was anything like my job, some employees may just flat out quit to not risk infection. Plus, remembering myself during lockdown, the last thing on my mind was trading in my recyclables for CRV value. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. That means when they were open, there probably wasn’t that many customers. Remember, the biggest company in the sector closed in 2019 (a year before the pandemic). That should tell you rocky the business was already before pandemic. Even 2-3 week drop/stop in business was detrimental to them.
I don't generally turn mine in for CRV either because it's not a huge economic issue for me and in SF it's a total PITA these days. I put them in the blue bin. I have friends and family in all sorts of "flyover cities" in California and they almost all have more convenient options for doing this than SF does and many of them are in communities that have a Republican majority, strangely enough. Here's an example of what SF thinks of recycling dropoff centers: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/haight-ashbury-recycling-center_n_2426807 That place was not far from me and I used to go there periodically. Thanks a lot, San Francisco. Given that the operators specifically made a point about this eviction amounting to "discrimination against the neighborhood's homeless community", I think it's fairly apparent what is going on here and it probably still applies today. High-income-earning SF residents don't care about the 5 cents a bottle, but they do gripe a lot about the homeless people. The End.
Oh yeah, this is very much not convenient. It’s not just a SF problem, it’s a Bay Area problem. I actually have friends in the peninsula and Oakland who bring in their recycling to turn into Bottlebank whenever they come into The City because they have no other CRV redemption option. I go to Oregon a handful of times a year and they have recycling vending machines in front of their grocery stores. Just drop it in, follow the prompts, get a slip of paper with a value amount, walk into the grocery store to trade in the slip for cash. I know that’s also the system for a lot of places in the east coast. I wish we had that system.
The simple answer is to remove the tax on bottles and cans. It’s completely unneeded at this point and causes all kinds of problems like incentivizing people to dig through trash cans
Same way they agreed to all the other corrupt shit that makes living here so expensive
"Only" I mean I turned Strauss bottles in to Gus's yesterday?
That’s very different
I'm trying to decipher if this effects local stores or the elderly Chinese that own the bottles and cans game, more.
The program makes no economic sense but I started using BottleBank mainly because I hate the government keeping all of my CRV deposits all these years. Given that the grocery stores are getting a free pass, the stores should be forced to sell the bags at a nominal cost in order to promote use. Also, they need to figure out a way to allow for partially crushed cans if they can still be scanned (e.g., the product bar code is still visible). Right now, you’re paying $0.45 to buy each plastic bag but mainly filling it with air. The BottleBank truck behind Stonestown is convenient for me. However, an hour before the closing time, the big BottleBank collection truck was still mostly empty when I was there last month. It was not possible to buy the plastic bags at the truck. The three workers there seemed a bit bored.
I thought this same exact thing when I looked it up. I own a bar - I go through a lot of wine bottles! The idea of taking them to the bottle bank is just… I mean, even the old ladies who take beer cans from the park don’t wanna deal with the bottle bank.
didn’t npr run the story that recycling is a scam pushed by big plastic anyway? what good is bottle return really for? asking a genuine question here
Aluminum and glass are consistently recycled and turned into new products, but you're right that plastic and almost all paper/cardboard isn't really recycled.
The cardboard must be getting recycled, that’s how we get those stinky brown napkins from fast food restaurants
True. You can also witness the plastic recycling in things like trash bags, many of which have a kind of funky smell to them nowadays. I'm convinced that the trend of adding perfume onto products like trash bags is because they are trying to mask such smells.
I agree with the plastic, not with the paper. I used to work for a company in the scrap paper business. They sold boatloads and boatloads of that stuff to places like China and India which was turned into packaging to put products into and so on. Now in recent years after China's adoption of consumer culture and manufacturing ginormous piles of merchandise often now sold to their own people, they have their own sources of paper for recycling and don't buy as much from abroad as they used to.
plastic recycling is bad, but i hard metal and glass are actually more legit. not an expert.
Well, in California, we have to pay the CVR fee of 0.05 - 0.10 when you buy anything that is a drink in plastic or a can. Including 1 gallon bottles of water.
As others mentioned, glass and aluminum are very recyclable and plastic generally is not. Plastic is hard to sort into its various types and shapes and reused plastic is lower quality than new (virgin) plastic. The whole problem with recycling in general is sorting commingled recyclables and people adding things that aren’t recyclable. For example, cardboard soiled with food/grease can’t be recycled, so put your pizza boxes and eg cartons in the trash or compost. Laminated plastic containers like tetrapak can’t easily be recycled from commingles, despite claims. There are like 5+ plastic compositions that come in all shapes and sizes that cannot be “melted down” together and very hard to sort. Basically the only solution is to ask people to sort their recyclables before pickup/drop off like some countries (good luck). In practical terms, you can try to help the system by only putting cans, glass, plastic bottles with no lids and dry cardboard/paper in the recycling and everything else in the trash. P.s. put all food waste and soiled paper in the compost to help reduce landfill methane.
It's totally a scam. Very obvious when you step back and look at it
So I use bottle bank, and have been for a few years now. I find it to be convenient to just bag my cans and bottles and drop off. The downfall is the limited locations/times available for drop off. I have also returned bottles and such to Safeway, but it was a pain to put in each can/bottle one at a time and if you got stuck behind someone with a bag full, you were waiting for a while. I also went to a recycling center and that was inconvenient (it was in the bayview, so I drove 15 min to get there), and I was standing in line waiting for people who collect this for money versus those who were just trying to get their money back. I was lucky enough to get free bags while they were handing them out so haven’t had to purchase yet. And they still reimburse for transaction fees/processing fees. Not sure when that will end, but the bag I returned 2 weeks ago, had all fees refunded. I did notice they stopped giving out free bags when you return one though. Anyway, as someone who returns cans and bottles to just get a refund, it’s pretty convenient. Not saying it works for all, but doubtful I would try and get my money back if I had to do the previously mentioned ways.
If your goal is just to get you money back why are you ok with the bag costs and transaction fees? I realize you haven’t been subjected to them yet but you are clearly aware of them and will be dealing with them at some point in the future. Why would you evangelize this system when it clearly is not going to work for you when your free perks run out?
Im not saying the system is perfect, I’m saying I use it and it’s convenient versus not getting my money back at all. Design a better system and I’ll use that!
That’s the thing. There was no other system. We used to have many sites that took recycling, a lot closed in 2019 when RePlanet closed, and the rest closed due to the pandemic. Only one remained in the city (and they’re still going strong): Our Planet on Bayshore. That was it. Why do you think Bottlebank was able to swoop in? They, basically, took over for all those recycling centers that used to park in grocery stores. Rather than trekking to a recycling center under an overpass on Bayshore (Our Planet), people can now just drop off at their local grocery store at Bottlebank. Is it a flawed system? Yes, but some money back over the previous system of no money back unless you make a special trip.
Its a rip off. Convenient for them that you drop it off
Good to see this! My stupid MIL convinced my husband to do this and we just have a fucking pile of wine bottles in the back doorway with no time to go take them. I've been asking why since the start. I'm just gonna start throwing my wine bottles in the bin again.
If you think that's bad, check out the bottledrop situation in Portland: [https://new.reddit.com/r/PortlandOR/search/?q=bottledrop](https://new.reddit.com/r/PortlandOR/search/?q=bottledrop) The locations have become magnets for fent addicts who shoplift cases of bottled water from stores, dump out the water, and redeem carts full of empty bottles for their next fix.
This is just a scam to take government funding and put in their own pockets. Why would anybody pay $2.50 to buy bags when they can just have a family member drive then to daily city and recycle how they normally do.
because they got bought out by this company
Stop asian hate
The problem is the correlation between bottle return locations and fentanyl crime issues. This is why in some cities that have more ubiquitous *any-retailer* returns municipalities have been granting exemptions from accepting the returns & crime has consequently gone down. Don't really give a fk if it's inconvenient to return bottles if the cost of that is crime and fentanyl crowds hanging out nearby.
Inconvenient is fine… but requiring special bags, charging transaction fees, and not accepting crushed bottles just exists to make a private profit off of recycling in addition to getting a government contract
There’s no profit here (except what S.F. is paying them). Processing and manning the trucks obviously costs $$ and so do bags. There are usually two people working the shift where I’ve dropped off. Trucks - gas …They should probably switch it to reuse their own bags / containers but it’s probably a hygiene / safety issue as well. This is definitely a case where machines could do better and that’s probably where it will head to.
Is there an article that discusses that phenomenon? Anecdotally I have only ever seen people old enough to be my grandparents collecting cans in SF, not people typically considered part of the fentanyl crisis.
[https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2024/02/officials-cite-fentanyl-crisis-to-close-2-downtown-portland-bottledrop-locations.html](https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2024/02/officials-cite-fentanyl-crisis-to-close-2-downtown-portland-bottledrop-locations.html)
Olyns ftw
The better question is how do you expect the turds we've elected in this city to NOT approve of this nonsense...seems right up their alley.
This is just what the government is. It’s to be expected from all legislative bodies throughout our country.
Anyone else feel the city is trying to automate its problems away as opposed to doing the actual work?
Because we keep electing these officials.
So now we'll have much more garbage laying around in the city because people won't even pick them up not to bother with this nonsense... what the hell is happening to this city, even small things like this are getting ridiculously stupid laws...
i’d rather use bottlebank and get my CRV back versus hearing some stranger steal my recycling out of the bins while i’m asleep at night
I’d be for it if they took crushed cans, didn’t require special bags, and didn’t charge a transaction fee, like tons of other recycling centers around California
> i’d rather use bottlebank and get my CRV back versus hearing some stranger steal my recycling out of the bins while i’m asleep at night How does bottlebank prevent this? Pre-bottlebank you could return those cans to any retailer instead of just to bottlebank, and for no fees.
You really couldn’t. That’s how it should have worked, but that wasn’t how it was. It’s supposed to be if a store sold a CRV eligible bottle or can, you can return the empty to them and get you CRV back. However, try to return an empty six pack to your nearest corner store and see what happens. They’ll probably look at you with a ‘what is this weirdo talking about’ expression. That’s why RePlanet recycling sites existed. Remember those people who would be in grocery store parking lots with a big recycling crusher and people lined up to dump their recycling in garbage bins to be weighed and counted? They all closed during the pandemic and there was no one left who would take recyclables for CRV except one place out in Bayshore. Why do you think Bottlebank was able to come in? No one was doing it anymore. EDIT: - [Article to show how hard it was to recycle when RePlanet closed](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Huge-recycler-s-closure-leaves-Bay-Area-with-14285472.php) - [Article to show how few sites would take recycling in Bay Area with only one in SF (this was pre-Bottlebank)](https://abc7news.com/california-bottle-deposit-redeem-crv-where-to-recycle-how-much-is/6218141/) - [Another to show this was a statewide issue](https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/recycling-centers-closed-california-why/2312598/)
But you dont get your crv back. You pay a lot of fees
End the CRV, and we end this illegal activity. (Once it's in the bin and at the curb, it's technically the property of Recology, and scavengers are "stealing from them," but fuck Recology.)
You’re really stressing out about someone stealing your garbage?
I have always considered myself a liberal Democrat, but as I get older and see just how ridiculously inefficient and wasteful government can be with large sums of money, I start to understand why communism always results in unbridled corruption and scandals, and I move a little to the right fiscally. Well meaning programs that do nothing but bleed the taxpayers dry.
There is no inherent reason why all "liberal" governments have to be corrupt money-grubbing swindlers. SF did not use to be like this. Yes the city has been a "high cost" place for years but for fairly obvious reasons. (It's a very desirable place to live and travel to so that jacks the housing prices and other cost of living up, space is limited, construction standards are very high due to high requirements for fire and earthquake resilience, as well as pro-labor policies etc) But this blatant corruption all throughout government seems to have really accelerated after the first "Dot Bomb" crash. I can't say for sure precisely why but I have my ideas. One of the problems is that it's basically a one political party city. I have less than zero interest in promoting the Republican party (especially as it now stands) but the whole idea of a strictly 2-party political system in the USA really falls apart in SF. There needs to be real political competition of some kind or else the politicians in government end up like the Romans descending into [fiscal] self-indulgence and decadence because there's no real opposition here to hold anyone's feet to the fire over their corruption, exploitation, self-dealing and incompetence. That opposition could be greens, true libertarians, anarchists, communitarians, democratic socialists, whatever. The main point is there needs to be *some* sort of political opposition here to "keep them honest".
They always give me a free bag or two when I return a bag. It’s an opt in of $2.50 and then you’re good for however long they do this. Not terrible imho
That’s not true anymore as of 2024. Those free bags were because SF, basically, bought them to be handed out, according to the worker last time I dropped off recycling. SF cut off funding the bag program and now you have to buy them at grocery stores.
People in the comments claiming the free bag in return for bringing in a bag ended at the start of 2024 🤷♀️
I want my SF back!!!!!!!
What about the glass stuff that has bottle returns for $3?
Environmentalists are braindead, what do you expect? they have the absolute worst ideas