Urban Cleaning and Greening

By Sunny Lewis, Environment News Service. Posted March 17, 2005.

San Francisco is holding its first annual Spring Cleaning Day on Saturday, encouraging all residents to make the city brighter. The Department of Public Works is offering free brooms and trash bags to residents at 11 locations around the city. In addition, residents, but not businesses, are being treated to free trash dumping. Norcal Waste System is offering all San Francisco residents the opportunity to drop off one free car or truck load at the Norcal Waste Dump at Tunnel & Beatty Road for free on Spring Cleaning Day only.

The San Francisco Clean City Coalition, a non-profit organization founded in 1991, offers year-round neighborhood beautification, transitional employment, community education, tool loans, and special event services. The Community Clean Team visits a different district of the city each month, coordinating volunteers to sweep streets and sidewalks, tend to neighborhood trees and plants, work on gardening projects, and paint out graffiti.

The cleaner streets will be easier for visitors and residents alike to navigate on the city's newest zero emissions form of transportation – the Segway Human Transporter. Segways are allowed on most San Francisco streets and designated bike pathways. Segways are not allowed on sidewalks in San Francisco.

The San Francisco Electric Tour Company has introduced guided tours for groups of 10 mounted on the electric, self-balancing, two-wheeled transporters.

Traveling at a top speed of eight miles per hour, the tours stay on the flat parts of the hilly city. The package includes a 20-30 minute on board training session for first-timers to ensure a safe and fun experience. Easy to use and operate, the Segway's high-tech gyroscope monitors the rider's balance 100 times a second and automatically respond to body movements.

The Segways glide noiselessly along the San Francisco waterfront from Fisherman's Wharf through Ghirardelli Square, the National Maritime Museum and the historic sailing ships, Fort Mason, Marina Green, the Palace of Fine Arts. Tours include views of Alcatraz, a WWII submarine at Pier 45, the sea lions at Pier 39, the Aquarium of the Bay, the Cruise Ship Terminal and Historic Piers, and the recently restored Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street. Refreshment breaks and photo stops are included.

Not just Segway riders, but all users of the San Francisco streets will find them cleaner this year. In February, eco-conscious San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom launched a new citywide anti-litter campaign that will focus on changing littering behavior through education, enforcement and abatement.

"Our anti-litter campaign effort will help restore San Francisco's vibrant image," Newsom said, "Litter on our streets and sidewalks has increased during the past years. Instead of streets littered with trash, graffiti, and dilapidated buildings, it is time to have a more aggressive approach to dealing with this issue."

Surrounded by community representatives, Police Chief Heather Fong, Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White and Ed Lee, director of the Department of Public Works, the mayor pledged to help residents and businesses revitalize their neighborhood merchant corridors.

While the city is attempting to recycle more of its trash, the tonnage is increasing. In 2003, the Department of Public Works picked up 16,727 tons off the streets. In 2004, the tonnage increased by 35 percent to 23,451 tons.

DPW's central call center – Dial: 28-CLEAN – experienced an increase of litter calls from 38,541 calls and complaints in 2003, to 44,518, a 15 percent increase, in 2004.

In 2005, the city will provide educational materials aimed at people who litter and leave trash, with a message to be more responsible and respectful. The new program will educate San Franciscans that this behavior is wrong and serve as notice that enforcement will follow to change it. The city will train 400 city employees from 43 different classifications, who are authorized to issue litter citations, in addition to their regular duties. The new citation officers who observe acts of littering will issue citations of $80 to $1,000 to individuals, depending on the amount of trash and the severity of the crime.

Newsom acknowledges that the long-term challenge is to bolster the DPW's ability to respond more often and more quickly to the rising number of litter complaints and requests, while the department's financial resources shrink.

As part of its cleanup effort, the city is working towards reducing the number disposable plastic grocery bags in circulation, possibly by charging a fee for each bag a customer takes at checkout. The flimsy plastic bags show up as litter on the streets, contaminate recyclables, and cost the city millions in management costs.

In February, the San Francisco Commission on the Environment recommended and the Board of Supervisors enacted legislation empowering the city to develop a policy that will reduce grocery bag waste. The proposal recommends a fee to recoup the actual costs the city currently pays for bag-related problems. According to figures developed by the Environment Department, the city pays $8.7 million annually to manage bags that were disposed of improperly – and divided by the estimated total number of bags distributed in the city each year, that works out to 17 cents apiece.

Sunny Lewis is editor-in-chief of Environment News Service, an independently owned, real-time wire service.

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