Intervention record · CHANGE4PLANET

The intervention

TIMELINE

WHAT WAS DEPLOYED

Ordinance 100-09 added Chapter 19 to the San Francisco Environment Code and required every person in the city to separate recyclables, compostables and trash into designated colour-coded containers, required every property to subscribe to refuse collection service, and gave the Director of the Environment Department inspection and enforcement powers with fines administered by the Departments of Public Health and Public Works [1]. It was finally passed on 16 June 2009 by 9 votes to 1 [1]. The findings that carried it record the problem it was written to solve: the Board had adopted goals of 75 percent diversion from landfill by 2010 and zero waste to landfill or incineration by 2020; the city's landfill diversion rate as reported to the state stood at 70 percent, while most residents and businesses were diverting closer to 50 percent; more than 660,000 tons a year were landfilled in 2006; growth in the diversion rate had risen less than 1 percent from 2005 to 2006; and the findings state that 36 percent of what San Francisco sent to landfill was compostable, mostly food scraps, and 31 percent recyclable, mostly paper [1]. On 16 October 2012 the Mayor announced an 80 percent landfill diversion rate, described as the highest of any North American city of 100,000 people or more [5]. The 80 percent has since been documented as resting on a denominator no other city used, and it is no longer the number San Francisco publishes. An independent recomputation in 2013 found that of 1,575,500 tons the city counted as diverted, 1,028,550 tons sat in an undetailed category that the Environment Department confirmed was largely inert rock, dirt, sand and crushed concrete with some biosolids; removing those materials put the residential and commercial diversion rate at about 60 percent [6]. In 2018 the city replaced the 2020 zero waste goal with C40 targets to cut municipal solid waste generation per capita by at least 15 percent against 2015 levels by 2030, and cut landfill and incineration waste by at least 50 percent by 2030, a target for which no baseline year is stated [10]; the department states the same two commitments without a baseline year and without the words per capita [2]. The measure the city publishes today is a Recovery Rate with a different denominator again: monthly tons recycled and composted, net of residual contamination, divided by total residential and small business refuse, against a 55 percent target [7]. That rate ran between 48.20 and 57.00 percent across the published series and stood at 53.11 percent in June 2026 [7]. Separately, the Refuse Rates Administrator calculated in 2023 that the recovery rate for all material Recology collects was 39 percent, against a peak of 62 percent in 2014, and suspended the Zero Waste Incentive Account on the finding that it had not correlated with diversion [8]. State reporting shows the same reversal in tonnage: San Francisco's reported disposal fell from 628,914.20 tons in 2007 to 446,685.32 tons in 2011, then rose to 740,413.12 tons in 2018, and stood at 481,899.27 tons in 2024, above the 2011 low [9]. The mandate itself remains in force, with the Environment Department reporting 99 percent of properties on adequate mandatory collection and 25,000 multi-family and commercial accounts covered [3].

HOW IT WORKS

Legal: Environment Code Chapter 19 makes source separation an obligation on every person, dwelling, commercial property, food vendor and permitted event, requires collectors to provide designated blue, green and black containers, and requires owners of residential, multifamily and commercial property to subscribe to adequate refuse collection service, meaning enough capacity in all three streams at all times [1][4]. Administrative: the Director of the Environment Department may administer and enforce all provisions and may inspect any collection container, collection vehicle load or receiving facility; the Directors of Public Health and Public Works may impose administrative fines within their jurisdictions, under Administrative Code Chapter 100; where a dwelling or commercial property puts out under a cubic yard of refuse a week, the first fine is capped at US$100; penalties collected are directed to funding implementation and enforcement; a waiver route exists for property owners and managers [1]. Financial: refuse rates price trash volume so that recovering material into the recycling and composting streams lowers the bill, and the collector offers a diversion discount [4]. Physical: one franchised collector runs the three-stream collection and the downstream processing, including the mixed construction and demolition material recovery facility opened in July 2003 and the organics composting operation running since 1996, so the mandate has a single delivery counterparty [3][8]. Institutional: the Environment Department's zero waste staffing and outreach are paid from the Solid Waste Impound Account, funded by a portion of the refuse rates rather than the general fund, at US$12.2 million in Rate Year 2024 and US$12.6 million in Rate Year 2025 [8].

The measurements

8 OUTCOMES

OUTCOMES

METRIC	VALUE	METHOD	MEASURED BY	INDEPENDENT	PERIOD	SRC
Landfill diversion rate announced by the City	80 % of all materials discarded in the city, through source reduction, reuse, recycling and composting	City calculation of diverted tonnage as a share of total discards; the announcement publishes no tonnage breakdown and no denominator definition	San Francisco Environment Department and the Office of the Mayor	○	announced 16 October 2012	[5]
Diversion rate recomputed after removing inert construction fill and biosolids from the diverted tonnage	60 % of residential and commercial discards kept out of landfill, recomputed by the author · baseline 80 (the city's published 80 percent rate for the period the survey covered, which the source does not date)	Recomputation from the 2013 Waste and Recycling News Municipal Recycling Survey return for San Francisco: 1,575,500 tons counted as diverted against 1,969,375 tons of generation, of which 1,028,550 tons sat in an undetailed category that the Environment Department confirmed by telephone was largely rock, dirt, sand and crushed concrete with some biosolids; the author also discounted disposal by the 12.2 percent construction and demolition fraction in the city's 2006 characterisation study	Samantha MacBride, Baruch College School of Public Affairs, City University of New York	●	published 6 December 2013, from the 2013 Municipal Recycling Survey; the survey's data year is not stated in the source	[6]
Landfill disposal reported to the state (reporting-year disposal amount)	446685.32 tons in 2011, the low point of the published series; 628,914.20 in 2007, 594,731.73 in 2008, 484,848.10 in 2009, 454,637.09 in 2012, 740,413.12 in 2018, 506,180.79 in 2021, 520,891.47 in 2023 and 481,899.27 in 2024 · baseline 628914.2 (2007, the first year of the post-2006 series and two years before the ordinance took effect)	Annual jurisdiction disposal reporting under the California Disposal Reporting System, published per jurisdiction; CalRecycle notes some rates are calculated with data as submitted by the jurisdiction	Jurisdiction 438, self-reported to CalRecycle under the California Disposal Reporting System; per-capita rates calculated and published by CalRecycle	○	2007 to 2024	[9]
Per-resident disposal rate	2.9 pounds per resident per day in 2011 and 2012 against a jurisdiction target of 6.60; 4.20 in 2007, 3.70 in 2008, 3.70 in 2015, 4.10 in 2018, 3.80 in 2019, 3.40 in 2023 and 3.10 in 2024 · baseline 4.2 (2007)	CalRecycle per-capita disposal calculation from reported disposal tonnage and reporting-year population; CalRecycle states the index is jurisdiction-specific and cannot be compared between jurisdictions, and that meeting the target is not necessarily an indication of compliance	Jurisdiction 438, self-reported to CalRecycle under the California Disposal Reporting System; per-capita rates calculated and published by CalRecycle	○	2007 to 2024	[9]
Recovery rate for all material collected by Recology	39 % of collected material · baseline 62 (2014 peak)	Calculated by the Refuse Rates Administrator from Recology's quarterly and annual rate reports for 2014 through the first quarter of 2023	Office of the Refuse Rates Administrator, Office of the Controller, City and County of San Francisco	○	2014 to first quarter 2023	[8]
Recovery Rate, residential and small business refuse, net of residuals (the city's current published measure)	48.20-57.00 % monthly range across the published series January 2025 to June 2026, against a target of 50% to June 2025 and 55% from July 2025; the calendar 2025 range alone was 48.20 to 54.10; calendar 2026 values to June were 52.30, 54.00, 57.00, 56.00, 55.80 and 53.11%	Monthly tons recycled and composted, less residual contaminants that end up landfilled, divided by monthly total tons of recycling, composting and trash; Recology reports the stream tonnages to the Environment Department, and data carry a two to three month lag	San Francisco Environment Department, published by the Controller's Office City Performance Scorecards	○	January 2025 to June 2026	[7]
Properties with adequate mandatory collection service	99 % of all properties, covering 25,000 multi-family buildings and commercial accounts, with potential daily fines of US$1,000 for large generators	Operator statement of service compliance; no underlying data or method published on the page	San Francisco Environment Department	○	stated as 2020 outcomes	[3]
Recoverable material still in the landfill stream at adoption	36 % compostable, primarily food scraps, with a further 31% recyclable, mostly paper	Study cited in the ordinance findings and described there only as a comprehensive study; the findings state the breakdown applied across residential, commercial and city government sectors	study cited by the Board of Supervisors in the findings; the study is not named in the ordinance text	○	cited in findings adopted 9 June 2009	[1]

● independently measured○ operator-reported· not stated in any source

COST BASIS

CAPITAL: not published
OPERATING: USD 12,200,000 per year (2024)
PER UNIT: 39.54 USD per month, minimum three-bin service for a one-unit residential building: base charge US$17.55 per dwelling unit plus US$7.33 each for a 16-gallon trash bin, a 32-gallon recycling bin and a 32-gallon compost bin, rates in force at the 31 August 2023 rate order [8]
FUNDING: 8 · 12200000
1
1 · 167

The whole program is ratepayer funded. Total Solid Waste Impound Account funding across the Environment Department and Public Works was set at US$24.2 million in Rate Year 2024 and US$24.6 million in Rate Year 2025; Recology's proposal had assumed US$23.8 million for both years [8]. The rate order held rates flat for the first three months of Rate Year 2024, raised them 1.33 percent on 1 January 2024 and 2.55 percent on 1 October 2024, a cumulative two-year increase of 3.92 percent against the 6.15 percent Recology requested [8]. Notice of the rate proposal went to 146,573 known residential ratepayers [8]. Enforcement cost is partly self-financing by design: the ordinance directs administrative penalties, including recovery of enforcement costs, to fund implementation and enforcement, and authorises a Department of Public Health inspection fee of US$167 per hour [1]. Two ratepayer settlements sit behind these figures: a US$101.52 million settlement with Recology in March 2021, of which US$94.52 million reimbursed ratepayers for overcharges and interest and US$7 million was a settlement payment, and a December 2022 settlement creating a notional balancing account with an initial balance of US$25.0 million [8].

The assessment

PRECONDITIONS

A single franchised collector covering every property, so one counterparty delivers the bins, the collection and the tonnage reporting; San Francisco's ordinance runs through licensed Collectors and a duty on every owner to subscribe to adequate service [1][8]
Three-stream collection already in place before the mandate: the three-bin system was established for single-family residences from 2000, nine years before source separation became compulsory [3]
Organics processing capacity and an outlet for finished compost: commercial food collection was piloted in 1996 and residential collection expanded from 2000 [3]
Mixed construction and demolition processing capacity: the integrated material recovery facility opened in July 2003 [3]
A study establishing what is actually in the landfill stream; the study cited in San Francisco's findings, which the ordinance names only as a comprehensive study and does not date, found 36 percent compostable and 31 percent recyclable, and the findings state the breakdown held across residential, commercial and city government sectors [1]
Local legal authority sufficient to mandate participation without state legislation; the findings record that a state bill on multifamily recycling was vetoed on the ground that local jurisdictions already held that authority [1]
A rate structure that makes compliance cheaper than non-compliance, pricing trash volume above recycling and composting volume [4]
A recurrent administrative funding source outside the general fund, here a ratepayer impound account set by the rate-setting body [8]
Deferred liability for tenants: no fines on residents of multifamily or multi-tenant commercial properties for source separation until specific liability regulations were adopted, and not before 1 July 2011 [1]
A published, fixed definition of the diversion denominator before a headline rate is announced: San Francisco's headline measure changed twice after 2012, and the numbers are not comparable across the three definitions [5][6][7][8]

OPERATOR HINDSIGHT

The failure here is not of the mandate but of the outcome trajectory and of the measurement that reported it, and the record is graded degraded on that basis. Documented mechanisms. (1) A denominator that did the work. The 80 percent counted 1,575,500 tons as diverted, of which 1,028,550 tons sat in an undetailed category the Environment Department confirmed was largely rock, dirt, sand and crushed concrete with some biosolids; removing those materials puts residential and commercial diversion at about 60 percent, and per-person landfill disposal at roughly the same level as other large United States cities [6]. The city's own 2009 findings had already drawn this distinction, recording a 70 percent rate as reported to the state alongside a note that most residents and businesses were diverting closer to 50 percent [1]. (2) Reversal in tonnage. State reporting shows disposal falling from 628,914.20 tons in 2007 to 446,685.32 tons in 2011, then rising to 740,413.12 tons in 2018 and standing at 481,899.27 tons in 2024, above the 2011 low; per-resident disposal followed the same path, 4.20 pounds per day in 2007, 2.90 in 2011 and 2012, 4.10 in 2018, 3.10 in 2024 [9]. (3) Reversal in recovery. The Refuse Rates Administrator calculated the recovery rate for all material Recology collects at 39 percent in 2023 against a 62 percent peak in 2014 [8]. Recology attributed the change to economic conditions: less commercial construction through the pandemic, and the closing of its Sustainable Crushing operation, and Public Works reported that street repair asphalt and concrete formerly diverted through that program now goes to facilities on the Peninsula [8]. That is the same inert stream the 2013 analysis identified as the ballast in the 80 percent [6], so the headline rate and its later collapse have a common cause. (4) An incentive that did not bite. The Zero Waste Incentive Account, worth up to 2 percent additional profit to the collector, was suspended for two years in 2023: tons disposed had exceeded every incentive target for a decade, the use of unearned funds had not been transparent, and the Administrator recommended studying retrospective incentives or penalties instead [8]. (5) Compliance without recovery. Service compliance reached 99 percent of properties [3], but the department states that around half of what residents and commercial businesses put in the three bins is still landfilled [2], and the Controller's Recovery Rate was below the 55 percent target in nine of the twelve published months to which that target applied, July 2025 to June 2026, exceeding it only in March, April and May 2026 [7]. Separating the bins was made compulsory; filling them correctly was not achieved by the same instrument.

Stated in the sources. The Refuse Rates Administrator, 2023 [8]: suspend the Zero Waste Incentive Account for two years and study models that do not require encumbering funds, such as retrospective incentives or penalties; require infrastructure spending to be approved through the rate process rather than outside it; add a Waste Zero Specialist splitting time between diversion outreach and contamination work, targeted at commercial customers generating two or more yards per week with diversion rates under 50 percent; replace six on-board contamination cameras and study whether camera technology identifies contamination; fund an interim organics pre-processing system while a longer-term solution is studied; run a trash processing pilot on San Francisco waste at a facility in Oakland with the recovered organic fraction, recyclable commodities and non-recyclables analysed by an external contractor, at an estimated US$500,000; establish a Zero Waste Capital Reserve at about 1 percent of projected net revenue; and mail every resident an outreach item at least every two years. A commissioner on the Commission on the Environment proposed changing the incentive metric from tonnage-based to percent recovered [8]. The Environment Department's own amendment in 2019 requires audits for large refuse generators and follow-up engagement of zero waste facilitators where needed [3], and the department now directs property owners to right-size bins, keep the three indoor containers equally convenient, label stations, and repeat the source-separation notice to occupants annually [4].

TRANSFERABILITY ASSESSMENT

AXIS	SCORE	RATIONALE
CAPITAL INTENSITY	●●	No municipal capital project was required: collection and processing assets belong to the franchised collector and are recovered through refuse rates, and the city's own cost is administrative, US$12.2 million in Rate Year 2024 from a ratepayer account [8].
GOVERNANCE DEPENDENCY	○○	Required a new local law, Environment Code Chapter 19 with consequential Health Code and Public Works Code amendments, passed 9 to 1 on 16 June 2009; no state legislation was needed, and the findings record a governor's veto message holding that local jurisdictions already had the authority [1].
ENVIRONMENTAL SPECIFICITY	●●	The obligation is to separate materials and applies to every dwelling, commercial property, food vendor and permitted event regardless of climate or geography; nothing in the ordinance depends on site conditions [1].
SKILLS AND MAINTENANCE	●○	Sustained specialist staffing is required: the Environment Department drew US$12.2 million and US$12.6 million from refuse rates in Rate Years 2024 and 2025 [8], the 2019 amendment requires zero waste facilitators for non-compliant large generators [3], and the 2023 rate order added a Waste Zero Specialist for commercial accounts diverting under 50 percent [8].
FUNDING REPEATABILITY	●●	Funded from a recurrent ratepayer account set by the Refuse Rate Board, US$24.2 million in Rate Year 2024 and US$24.6 million in Rate Year 2025 across two departments, with no grant or philanthropic dependency [8].
POLITICAL DURABILITY	●●	Adopted in 2009 under one mayor and used as the platform for the October 2012 diversion announcement by his successor [1][5], amended in 2019, funded and administered through the 2023 rate order [8], and published as current requirement in 2026 [2][3][7].

TOTAL 9/12 · T2

POLITICAL TEST

The mandate itself has outlasted every administration since 2009: it was carried by Mayor Newsom's office and the Board in June 2009 [1], its results were announced by Mayor Edwin M. Lee in October 2012 [5], it was amended in 2019 [3], and it was still funded and enforced in the 2023 rate order and published as a current legal requirement in 2026 [3][4][8]. What did not survive were the targets and the numbers attached to it. The zero waste to landfill or incineration by 2020 goal cited in the ordinance findings [1] was not met and was replaced in 2018 by C40 commitments to reduce municipal solid waste generation per capita by at least 15 percent against 2015 levels by 2030, and reduce landfill and incineration waste by at least 50 percent by 2030, for which C40 states no baseline year [2][10]. The 80 percent diversion headline is no longer published: the department's current program history page carries the diversion narrative only to 77 percent in 2008 and does not repeat it [3], the 2012 announcement URL now returns HTTP 404 on sfenvironment.org, and the version quoted here is an archived copy [5]. The financial instrument built to drive diversion was also withdrawn: the Refuse Rates Administrator suspended the Zero Waste Incentive Account in 2023 after finding it "has not correlated with diversion", and recorded that tons disposed had stayed above every incentive target for ten years [8].

The file

10 SOURCES

SOURCES

[1] ordinance · Ordinance No. 100-09, Mandatory Recycling and Composting, File No. 081404: amending the San Francisco Environment Code by adding Chapter 19, Sections 1901 through 1912, and amending the Public Works Code and Health Code · Sponsored by Mayor Newsom and Supervisors Mirkarimi and Daly · Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco · 2009-06-16 · en · PRIMARY · sfbos.archive.sf.gov Full 27-page scanned PDF fetched and text-extracted from the Board of Supervisors archive after the sfbos.org URL returned a permanent redirect. Read the title and operative-date clause, all 16 findings, the definitions and source-separation sections, Section 1908 enforcement including the US$100 initial fine cap and the July 2011 bar on tenant liability, Section 1910 exceptions, and the tails report recording the votes of 7 April, 9 June and 16 June 2009. The OCR layer is imperfect and the mayoral approval date in the signature block is not legible.
[2] operator_web_page · Zero Waste · San Francisco Environment Department · accessed 2026-08-16 · en · PRIMARY · www.sfenvironment.org Fetched in a browser after WebFetch returned 403 for the domain, and read in full. Carries the 2018 pledge and the two 2030 targets, the statement that around half of what residents and commercial businesses put in the three bins is landfilled, a figure of around 1,593 tons of landfill-bound material each month, the policy timeline from 2002 to 2022, and the link to the Controller's recycling and composting rate page. Undated, so published_on is null.
[3] operator_web_page · Zero Waste: Program history and outcomes · San Francisco Environment Department · accessed 2026-08-16 · en · PRIMARY · www.sfenvironment.org Fetched in a browser and read with all four collapsed topic sections expanded. Gives the department's own diversion narrative (46 percent in an eight-month 1999 pilot, 63 percent in 2002, 68 percent recycling rate in 2007, 72 percent by end 2007, 77 percent in 2008 against 25 percent in 1990), the organics program history from 1996, the iMRF opening in July 2003, the 2019 amendment requiring audits and zero waste facilitators, and the 2020 outcomes of 99 percent service compliance, 25,000 accounts and US$1,000 potential daily fines for large generators. The narrative stops at 77 percent and does not state the 80 percent figure. Undated, so published_on is null.
[4] operator_web_page · Mandatory Recycling and Composting Ordinance: how to comply · San Francisco Environment Department · accessed 2026-08-16 · en · PRIMARY · www.sfenvironment.org Fetched in a browser and read in full. Gives the current compliance steps: assess and right-size service so there is capacity in all three streams at all times, colour coding of green, blue and black, certified compostable liners, loose dry clean recyclables with no plastic liners in the blue bin, the diversion discount on the collection bill, and an annual duty to repeat the source-separation notice to occupants. Undated, so published_on is null.
[5] operator_press_release · San Francisco Sets North American Record for Recycling and Composting with 80 Percent Diversion Rate · San Francisco Environment Department · 2012-10-16 · en · PRIMARY · web.archive.org The live department URL at https://www.sfenvironment.org/news/update/san-francisco-sets-north-american-record-for-recycling-composting-with-80-percent-diversion-rate returned HTTP 404 on re-check, so the archived snapshot of 31 January 2013 was fetched in a browser and read in full: a single short page dated Tuesday, 16 October 2012, recording Mayor Edwin M. Lee's announcement of an 80 percent landfill diversion rate, the highest of any North American city, with a footnote defining city as 100,000 people or more. It also states that trash to landfill halved over the preceding decade and gives a figure of 444,000 tons in a sentence about half of landfilled material being recoverable, without stating which quantity the figure attaches to. A different, later blog URL for the same release was still returning 200 on an Internet Archive index query as of 15 June 2024; the 404 above refers to the original press-release URL.
[6] independent_analysis · San Francisco's Famous 80% Waste Diversion Rate: Anatomy of an Exemplar · Samantha MacBride, Baruch College School of Public Affairs, City University of New York · Discard Studies · 2013-12-06 · en · INDEPENDENT · discardstudies.com Full article fetched in a browser and read after WebFetch returned 403. Sources are the 2013 Waste and Recycling News Municipal Recycling Survey, Eurostat, US EPA 2013, the city's 2006 waste characterisation study, and a telephone confirmation from the Environment Department on the composition of the undetailed category. Two summary tables are stated to be the author's own calculations; the article's tables are images and only the figures given in the running text were read. Not peer reviewed.
[7] government_performance_dashboard · Recovery Rate (data story and dashboard), City Performance Scorecards · Office of the Controller, City and County of San Francisco, with the Environment Department · accessed 2026-08-16 · en · PRIMARY · www.sf.gov Data story fetched in a browser and read in full for the measure definition, the stated formula, the residual-materials deduction, the two to three month reporting lag and the 55 percent target line. The monthly figures were read directly from the embedded Power BI table: every month of calendar 2025 (targets 50 percent to June and 55 percent from July), the six published months of calendar 2026, and January and February 2024 at 41.10 and 48.50 percent against a 53 percent target. The table is virtualised and only the twenty most recent rows could be read, so earlier years shown on the chart axis, which runs from 2010, were not captured. Undated, so published_on is null.
[8] regulatory_rate_order · Refuse Rate Order for Rate Year 2024 and Rate Year 2025, Modified from the Refuse Rates Administrator's Proposed Rate Order · Office of the Refuse Rates Administrator: Ben Rosenfield, Todd Rydstrom, Jay Liao, Ben Becker · Refuse Rate Board, City and County of San Francisco, prepared by the Refuse Rates Administrator (Office of the Controller) · 2023-08-31 · en · PRIMARY · media.api.sf.gov Full 114-page PDF fetched and text-extracted, and read for: the Solid Waste Impound Account section including the Environment Department allocations of US$12.2 million and US$12.6 million against requests of US$14.7 million and US$15.1 million; the residential rate sheet including the US$17.55 base charge and US$7.33 per bin; the rate-change summary of 1.33 percent and 2.55 percent for a cumulative 3.92 percent; the Zero Waste Incentive Account section with the 39 percent current and 62 percent 2014 recovery rates calculated from Recology's quarterly and annual rate reports, and the suspension rationale; the program enhancement list; and the settlement and Proposition F background. Chart 1 and several tables are images; only figures present in the extracted text were used. Prepared by the city's own Controller, so primary but not independent of the operator, though independent of the collector.
[9] government_dataset · Jurisdiction Diversion/Disposal Rate Detail, San Francisco (jurisdiction 438), reporting years 2007 to 2024 · CalRecycle (California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery), Local Government Central · accessed 2026-08-16 · en · PRIMARY · www2.calrecycle.ca.gov Jurisdiction 438 was identified from the jurisdiction selector on the Diversion/Disposal Rate Summary page, then the detail page was fetched in a browser for every reporting year from 2007 to 2024, and the reporting-year disposal amount, disposal reduction credits, adjusted disposal amount, transformation waste, population, employment and the per-resident and per-employee disposal rates with their targets were read from each. The summary page carries CalRecycle's advisories that the per-capita rate is jurisdiction-specific and not comparable between jurisdictions, that meeting a target is not necessarily an indication of compliance, and that some rates are calculated with data as submitted by the jurisdiction. Continuously updated, so published_on is null.
[10] programme_declaration · C40 Towards Zero Waste Accelerator · C40 Cities · accessed 2026-08-16 · en · PRIMARY · INDEPENDENT · www.c40.org Fetched and read for the two commitments (cut municipal solid waste generation per capita by at least 15 percent against 2015 levels by 2030, and cut landfill and incineration waste by at least 50 percent while raising diversion to at least 70 percent by 2030) and the list of 21 committed cities, which includes San Francisco. The page does not state the year the declaration was launched or signed; the 2018 date comes from the Environment Department's own page [2]. Undated, so published_on is null.

RECORD

PUBLISHED: 2026-08-16
LAST VERIFIED: 2026-08-16
REVIEW DUE: 2027-02-16
RUBRIC: v1.0
STATUS HISTORY: 2026-08-16 · degraded · Record published.
RIGHT OF REPLY: Not yet exchanged. Every figure in the decline documented here comes from the operator's own publications and from its own regulators: the ordinance and its findings, the department's current pages, the Controller's Recovery Rate, the Refuse Rate Board's rate order, and the state's disposal reporting. Right of reply will be offered to the San Francisco Environment Department before this record is promoted or distributed, and any response received will be published here in full.
LANGUAGE: All sources are English-language publications of the City and County of San Francisco, the State of California, one United States academic author and one international city network. No translation was required and no non-English source was consulted.
CONFIDENCE: Solid: the ordinance text, its findings, its vote record and its enforcement and fine provisions were read from the scanned original [1]; the disposal tonnage and per-capita disposal series 2007 to 2024 were read year by year from the state database [9]; the Environment Department's impound account allocations, the residential rate components, the cumulative 3.92 percent rate increase, the 39 percent and 62 percent recovery rates and the suspension of the Zero Waste Incentive Account were read from the rate order itself [8]; the monthly Recovery Rate values and the calculation method were read from the Controller's page and its embedded table [7]; the 80 percent announcement was read from an archived copy of the department's own release [5]. Thin, unresolved or judgment-based. (a) outcome_status is a judgment. The mandate is in force, enforced and delivering measured results, which would support operating; degraded was chosen because the two published recovery measures have fallen (39 percent in 2023 against a 62 percent peak in 2014 [8]; the Controller's rate below its 55 percent target in nine of the twelve months of calendar 2025 [7]), disposal tonnage in 2024 sits above its 2011 low [9], the 2020 goal was abandoned and the 80 percent headline is no longer published [2][3][5]. Operating is a defensible alternative label. (b) No source establishes causation. The 2018 rise in disposal and the fall in recovery are attributed by the collector to economic conditions and to a processing facility ceasing operation [8]; no fetched study separates the ordinance's effect from the construction cycle, the pandemic or the recession, and none is claimed here. (c) The city's own diversion figures for the same period disagree: the June 2009 findings state 70 percent as reported to the state [1], while the department's current program history page states 72 percent by end 2007 and 77 percent in 2008 [3]. Neither was reconciled. (d) The 2012 announcement's 444,000 tons figure is ambiguous in the source text, which does not state whether it is the total landfilled or the recoverable half; it is not coded as a structured number, and the state series gives 446,685.32 tons for 2011 and 454,637.09 tons for 2012 [5][9]. (e) The 60 percent recomputation is the author's own calculation from a trade survey and a telephone confirmation, described in the source as probable, and its implied disposal total of 393,875 tons matches no year in the state series, whose nearest values are 446,685.32 tons for 2011 and 454,637.09 tons for 2012, and its population figure of 812,826 matches no state year exactly, the nearest being 812,820 for 2011 and 812,538 for 2012; the survey's data year is not stated in the source, so the comparison cannot be closed [6][9]. (f) The department's current page states around 1,593 tons of landfill-bound material each month, which does not reconcile with an annual disposal series of 481,899.27 tons for 2024; no unit or period reconciliation is published, the registry did not resolve it, and the figure is not coded [2][9]. (g) The three headline rates are not comparable with each other: 80 percent counted total discards including inert construction fill and biosolids, 39 percent covers all material the collector handles, and the current Recovery Rate covers only residential and small business refuse net of residuals. Any reader comparing them is comparing three denominators [5][7][8]. (h) The operative date of the ordinance is not asserted: the text sets it at 90 days after the effective date and the mayoral approval date is illegible in the fetched scan [1]. (i) proposed_on is null because the introduction date is not stated in the fetched document; the file number is 081404 and the first recorded action is 7 April 2009 [1]. (j) The full state reporting-year series 2007 to 2024 was read, confirming 446,685.32 tons in 2011 as the series minimum and 740,413.12 tons in 2018 as the maximum; the intervening unfetched years read 455,390.35 (2010), 454,219.12 (2013), 529,782.22 (2014), 595,091.13 (2015), 601,773.73 (2016), 636,517.70 (2017), 719,460.69 (2019), 508,478.60 (2020) and 528,110.66 (2022). The Controller's monthly table could only be read back to January 2024, so the recovery-rate series before 2024 is known only through the rate order's two calculated points [7][8][9]. (k) The 99 percent service compliance and 25,000 account figures are operator statements with no underlying data published [3]. (l) The operating cost of US$12.2 million funds the department's zero waste, toxics and consumption-based emissions programs together, not this ordinance alone [8]. (m) No waste characterisation study later than the one cited in the 2009 findings was fetched, so there is no current measurement of what remains recoverable in the landfill stream. (n) The amendment year rests on a source that contradicts itself: the Environment Department's timeline dates the Refuse Separation Ordinance requiring zero waste facilitators to 2018, while the Mandatory Recycling and Composting panel on the same page dates the amendment to 2019. This record uses 2019, from the panel, and the discrepancy is unresolved [3]. No figures were estimated or interpolated by the registry; all nulls reflect absence in sources.

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change4planet.org. C4P-CIR-0003: Mandatory three-stream source separation (Ordinance 100-09), San Francisco: the 80 percent diversion headline and the measures that replaced it. Grades T2/E3 (rubric v1.0). Last verified 2026-08-16. https://change4planet.org/records/c4p-cir-0003-sf-mandatory-sorting-usa