From:
To: City Council
Cc:
Subject: Please Keep Recology!
Date: Tuesday, January 7, 2025 11:29:14 AM
January 7, 2025
Dear Mayor Zollman, Vice Mayor McLewis, and Coucilmembers Carter, Hinton, and Maurer,
I was dismayed to read the staff report for the Jan 7th meeting that recommends that the City end its garbage hauling contract with Recology and switch to Sonoma County Resource Recovery (SCRR). As a residential Recology customer I have been very happy with Recology’s service over the years. This move would be financially detrimental to residents and businesses, disincentive compost and recycling, and would reverse gains we have made as a community to reduce waste and greenhouse gas emissions. Please refer to Sunny Galbraith's careful analysis of these issues below.
Waste management is a public service. Unions are a powerful bulwark against the accelerating inequity and creeping fascism of our times. Public leaders can protect and promote unions by requiring companies doing public services to be unionized.
Thank you very much for your important work and your cafeful consideration of these issues.
Sincerely,
Park Guthrie
Sebastopol, CA 95472
Teacher, Salmon Creek Charter School
CTA Member
Excerpt from Sunny Galbraith's analysis:
"I am also deeply concerned that SCRR does not have a recycling facility in Sonoma County, as Recology does, so has to haul recyclables much longer distances, further increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Given this, and the fact customers will be disincentivized to compost and recycle under SCRR’s rate structure, it is incomprehensible to me why the staff report gives SCRR an almost equal score to Recology in the category of “Sustainability” (p. 3).
The increased greenhouse gas emissions and increased solid waste generation that will result from switching to SCRR goes against several policies and goals of the Sebastopol General Plan:
Policy COS 1-1: Strive to establish Sebastopol as a leader in environmental protection, environmental stewardship, and sustainability.
Goal COS 8: Reduce Emissions of Greenhouse Gases from City Operations and Community Sources
Policy COS 8-3: Encourage local businesses and industries to engage in voluntary efforts to reduce GHG emissions and energy consumption.
Policy COS 9-14: Continue efforts to reduce solid waste generation throughout the life of the General Plan.
I am dismayed that the recommendation to switch to SCRR goes against these critically important goals in the Sebastopol General Plan.
As an advocate for good, living wage jobs in our community, the proposal to drop Recology also alarms me. Recology workers are unionized, represented by a local chapter of the Teamsters, whereas SCRR is a non-union company. The fact that my husband and I have been able to afford to raise our family in Sebastopol is due in large part to us both having union jobs (California Teachers Association/ California Faculty Association). So many families have had to leave Sonoma County because their jobs cannot cover the high cost of living, leading to school closures, among other losses. If Sebastopol drops Recology, numerous family-sustaining, union jobs will be lost. This does not seem to have been taken into account in the assignment of a lower score for Recology in the “Community Employment and Engagement” (p. 3) category.
For the above economic and environmental reasons, I urge the council to keep Recology as Sebastopol’s solid waste hauler.
Sincerely,
Sunny Galbraith
Sebastopol Resident
Teacher, Orchard View School"
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Park Guthrie