The city of San Francisco appears to be doing an exceptional job at diverting material from the landfill. The recent announcement that they are only 3% away from their goal of 75% recycling is pretty noteworthy. I applaud them. I do want to offer some words of caution. I suggest they do some careful analysis of their recycling efforts to ensure that their efforts aren’t doing more environmental damage than good.

Sometimes, in our race to recycle everything possible, we forget that recycling does take energy; energy for initial processing of material, transportation, and energy for final processing into a useable product. Believe me, I am all for recycling, it is part of what we do. The key is responsible recycling. If San Francisco is achieving a net improvement to the environment (as measured by a non-biased, non-partisan person/organization), then the rest of us should certainly see what we can learn from them to improve recycling across the country and offer the plaudits they deserve.