The HANC recycling center is under new threat of eviction. Holding a month to month lease to operate their facility on Golden Gate parkland, the efforts to evict the center gained momentum in the last few months. A recent homicide of a homeless man near Kezar Stadium led some city officials to point the finger at the HANC center located nearby.
This video has excerpts from that meeting which took place on September 9, 2010 at The Urban School on Page Street.
SF Recycling Center shut down? from Laccolith Films on Vimeo.
District 5 Supervisor, Ross Mirkarimi, attended the latest HANC meeting to discuss the future of the center. He stressed that until solid data is made available that measures the impact of the recycling center to the city, they will continue to face opposition on issues like noise, criminality and homelessness. Recycling centers, in general, are not currently part of San Francisco's ecological plan. But why not?
Some facts that are currently available via the Californians Against Waste website are as follows.
• Just over 80% of recycled beverage containers in California are returned directly by consumers for cash or donated to schools, churches and other non-profits.
• Roughly 14% of recycled beverage containers are collected via curbside recycling programs.
Curbside programs, like Sunset Scavenger in San Francisco, also known as Recology, do not return cash for containers and charge residents for their services. They also offer a handy form to report recycling theft from their curbside bins.
The HANC recycling center estimates about 15% of their customer base suffer from extreme poverty and may be collecting from those curbside bins.
In attendance at the meeting last week was Kevin Drew from the San Francisco Department of Environment, Greg Gaar, Founder of the Native Plant nursery at the recycling center and Quintin Mecke, Communications Director in Tom Ammiano's office. HANC board members and general members were also present including a representative from the newly erected Hayes Valley Farm and the center's director, Ed Dunn.
