Population:
Type of Community:
Type of Program:
Program Start Date:
In the three years
since our program
began, an average of
87 percent of
residents have
requested 32-gallon
cans—the smallest
size we offer.
EPA530-F-97-007d
PAY- AS- YOU-THROW SUCCESS STORIES
San Jose, California
850,000
Urban
Four-sort
July 1993
We worked to educate residents away
from the concept of unlimited garbage
toward the idea of unlimited recycling,
Getting Started: Why Pay-As-You-Throw?
San Jose is the nation's eleventh largest city.
Our residents are among the most educated
and affluent in the country and represent a
diverse community, with the two largest
minority groups being Latino (27 percent)
and Asian (14 percent).
Before July 1993, San Jose provided unlimited
weekly garbage collection service at a flat
monthly rate of $12.50 per household.
Residents set out an average of three 32-
gallon garbage cans per week. The city fully
implemented its Recycle Plus (RP) residential
integrated waste management program for
186,000 single-family dwellings on July 1, 1993.
This program was designed to permit the
city to reach its California Integrated Waste
Management Act goal of 50 percent waste
reduction by 2000.
The new RP program result-
ed from over 3 years of
planning that included
extensive research on all
major policy changes.
This program includes a
fully automated garbage
collection system, an
aggressive PAYT rate
structure, a four-sort
recycling system, and a contractor payment
mechanism which provided financial incen-
tives that encourage contractors to promote
recycling.
Educating the Public
The public was involved in the design of the
RP program through a questionnaire mailed
to all 186,000 households; community meet-
ings throughout the city; pilot projects in 17
neighborhoods for collection of yard trim-
mings and mixed papers; and the use of a
public review committee to select the firms
that would be given 6-year collection contracts
for the collection of garbage and recyclables
and for recyclables processing.
A comprehensive public outreach campaign
aimed at single-family households explained
the new variable rates being introduced, the
new categories of recyclables being
added to the services
provided,
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and the benefits of participating. All
materials were produced in three lan-
guages (English, Spanish, and Vietnamese).
The campaign was guided by the infor-
mation received during a series of focus
groups in the three languages, baseline
and follow-up telephone surveys, and
shopping mall intercept surveys. More
than 250 community meetings were held
in 1993, and a block leader program and
school education program were
organized.
Getting the Prices Right
Staff began researching unit-pricing
structures for the new RP program in
the spring of 1992 through surveys and
interviews with successful PAYT com-
munities nationwide. Residents were
offered 32-, 64-, 96-, and 128-gallon
carts with an "aggressive" unit-pricing
structure. This structure provided a
slight price break for each additional 32
gallons of capacity at the 64- and 96-gal-
lon level, which the council considered
important to help residents make the
transition from flat rate to unit pricing.
We had to ensure that we had suffi-
cient quantities of wheeled-garbage
carts in the sizes the residents would
request. We sent out a return-reply
card to all single-family households in
January 1993 with our estimated rates,
and let residents know that no reply
would result in delivery of the default
32-gallon cart.
Staff was able to work out a compro-
mise with the city council, which
included offering one of the most com-
prehensive low-income rate assistance
programs for garbage service in the
state. Criteria were based solely on
household size and income and permit-
ted eligible residents to receive a 30
percent discount on their bill. About
3,400 households currently participate
in this program.
Managing the Program Costs
The challenge faced by the program is
to both continue and expand its multi-
pronged recycling efforts to meet diver-
sion goals, while reducing costs to close
the projected $5 million cost-to-revenue
gap in five years. The city already has
reduced costs by over $4 million annu-
ally through contract renegotiations that
resulted in extending the term of the RP
and yard-trimming collection contracts
from June 1999 to June 2002.
Success: Waste Reduction
and Increased Recycling
Staff did not anticipate how quickly resi-
dents would change their recycling par-
ticipation to accommodate the 32-gallon
size cart, especially since prior to RP the
average set-out was three garbage cans.
Since RP implementation, an average of
87 percent of residents have requested
the 32-gallon size.
The difference between the "before
and after" garbage set-out volume could
readily be found in the quantity of recy-
clables collected in the new RP program.
The volume of recyclables and yard
trimmings being collected more than
doubled the levels recorded prior to RP.
Most importantly, residents reported
wide satisfaction with the program and
its results (80 percent in 1993 to 90 per-
cent in 1996. Figures are based on a ran-
dom sample telephone survey).
San Jose's success story was compiled by b Zientek, Supervising Environmental Services
Specialist, (408) 277-5533.
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