Big blue plastic bins -- the signature of single-stream recycling -- will start arriving at Santa Rosa homes in June and by July 1 all 40,000 households will be involved, bringing 85 percent of the county's population into the single-stream program.
The blue bins accommodate nearly all household recyclables, eliminating the chore of sorting, flattening and packaging them into three crates for curbside pickup. Sorting is done by the trash hauler at a central facility.
In places where single-stream started last year, recycling mushroomed -- as much as 70 percent in Windsor and at least 30 percent in other parts of the county, including the unincorporated area.
"It's just fantastic. I haven't seen this kind of increase in any other program," Ken Wells, Sonoma County Public Works integrated waste manager, said.
In March, a new dump fee surcharge on construction waste will encourage contractors to recycle as well, and county officials anticipate a combined 10 percent boost in recycling, Wells said.
That would put Sonoma County in compliance with a long-standing state goal of diverting half of California's trash from landfills.
Already, the daily flow of 1,300 tons of trash to the central landfill on Mecham Road is diminishing, a trend that hasn't been seen in a decade and is because of, Wells said, the start of single-stream recycling last year in more than half of the county.
"We've come a long way," Wells said.
So have California and the United States in the campaign, started in the late 1980s, to dump less and recycle more of the nation's mountain of trash, now more than 400 million tons a year.
Since 1989, Californians have diverted a whopping 200 million tons of waste from disposal, boosting the statewide diversion rate from 10 percent in 1989 to 42 percent in 2001, according to the most recent Integrated Waste Management Board statistics.
California's 42 percent diversion rate is tied for third best in the nation, behind Delaware (59 percent) and Arkansas (45 percent), according to BioCycle magazine's latest tally.
"California has really been a leader in waste reduction and recycling," said Timonie Hood, an Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman in San Francisco.
The national recycling rate, a paltry 8 percent in 1990, is now 32 percent, keeping nearly a third of the country's 409 million tons of trash from landfills in 2001, BioCycle reported.
While the EPA wants America to recycle 35 percent of its waste by 2005, California is striving for 50 percent, a goal that Roni Java, an Integrated Waste Management Board spokeswoman, called "one of the most ambitious in the country."
The goal was set in 1989 with passage of a landmark law requiring cities, counties and regional agencies to recycle or otherwise divert 50 percent of waste from landfills by 2000.
To date, only 196 of the 445 cities and counties have met or exceeded the 50 percent goal, but the Integrated Waste Management Board, which monitors diversion efforts, is delighted.
"It's been nothing short of remarkable," board spokesman Chris Peck said, noting the 30 percent rise in the diversion rate. In 1989, he said, "a lot of people said 'no way'" would the state meet its goal.
The waste board has given 48 cities and counties credit for "good faith efforts" to meet the 50 percent goal, and 105 more jurisdictions -- including Sonoma County -- have received more time to comply, Peck said.
Only four jurisdictions have failed to satisfy the state board with their efforts to achieve 50 percent diversion.
Sonoma County achieved 40 percent trash diversion in 2000 and got a three-year extension from the state board to push up to 50 percent, a level Wells said he expects to reach this year.
After Santa Rosa joins the fold, Petaluma and Cloverdale will be the only cities in Sonoma County that offer curbside recycling but are not involved in the single-stream process.
Along with preserving space in landfills, the recycling movement gave California a new industry that accounted for 179,000 jobs, $8 billion in personal income and $9 billion in sales in 1999, according to a UC Berkeley economist's study.
Recycling generates twice as much income and sales and twice as many jobs as trash disposal, said the study by George Goldman, a UC Cooperative Extension economist. – The Press Democrat