San Francisco expands recycling rules, shrinks trash carts as zero-waste rollout begins

San Francisco’s Commission on the Environment heard details on the most significant changes to its curbside recycling program in more than a decade as staff and Recology begin a two‑year citywide rollout.

Department staff said the city will increase the standard single‑family blue recycling cart to 64 gallons and reduce the standard black trash cart from 32 gallons to 16 gallons to encourage diversion. Recology has upgraded its Recycle Central sorting facility at Pier 96 and is building a larger compostables transfer building at Tunnel Avenue to handle increased tons of recyclables and compostables, officials said.

“Empty paper cups like coffee cups, and a variety of cartons…all of those can now go in the recycling bin,” Robert Haley, zero‑waste program manager for the San Francisco Department of the Environment, told commissioners. Haley also said the changes will require extensive outreach, and pointed residents to sfrecycles.org for details.

Paul Giusti, regional government and community affairs manager for Recology, described operational changes: the company will begin using dedicated single‑chamber trucks for recyclables while deploying split trucks for compostables and trash. Giusti said the recent Recycle Central upgrades—new optical sorters and other equipment—reduced the facility residual rate (material put in recycling that previously went to landfill) substantially, cutting it roughly in half from a prior residual of about 15 percent.

Giusti said early results in the Sunset neighborhood rollout show about 75 percent of households accepted the new bins and the city has delivered roughly 1,000 requested sets ahead of schedule. “We’re running a pretty consistent 75% of the people will take the bins,” Giusti said, adding the city has seen an approximate 10% decrease in trash on routes as the new bins arrive.

Outreach lead Donnie Olivera said the department is replacing cart lids, adding bilingual stickers that meet disability and language‑access standards, distributing tri‑folds and reminder postcards, and testing “secondary” labels that promote underused programs (for example, curbside battery collection). He emphasized that some film plastics will be accepted only if tied in a bag and called the rollout a “marathon, not a sprint.”

Commissioners pressed staff on compliance and practical challenges—how to keep film plastics ‘clean’ and prevent contamination, and how multifamily buildings and non‑English speakers will be served. Haley and Olivera said education and neighborhood‑level learning will guide messaging, with enforcement focused on large commercial generators rather than individual single‑family households.

The department said changes to the labels and a public‑facing one‑stop information site (sfrecycles.org) are intended to reduce confusion and support behavior change. The rollout will continue neighborhood by neighborhood over roughly two years with staff and Recology monitoring incidence of contamination and program uptake.

The commission’s presentation combined operational detail with early pilot numbers and a public‑education plan, and commissioners asked staff to return with a fuller discussion of how the city will measure progress toward the 2020 zero‑waste goal.