The RHN Neighborhood Enhancement committee has gotten to know our neighborhood trash and is looking for solutions beyond our Clean Up and Smile monthly cleanups. We’ve reached out to our local SF Supervisors with ideas and even identified some areas that are worthy of state-wide action.
Last week our committee, represented by Barbara Bella, and Vince Yuen, founder of Refuse Refuse, met with our CA State Senator, Scott Weiner to talk trash and see if we could get his input on pursuing change around the following four initiatives:
- Consumer Education Campaign on Litter: A statewide consumer/citizen campaign promoting the virtues of litter abatement. Restoring civic pride is a worthy goal: “Where flowers bloom, so does hope – and hope is the precious, indispensable ingredient.” Lady Bird Johnson
- More Effective Garage/Litter Collection and Oversight. Our highways need more TLC to remove litter and maintain medians. Delivery and share-ride drivers need more reasonable breaks so they don’t throw bottles of urine and take-out containers on our streets.
- Cigarette Litter Abatement: Because cigarettes are a toxic waste and represents over 30% of all trash by count, a specific effort to abate is needed. Current SF Tax is a failed policy.
- Single-use Take-out Containers: How can we get incremental policies/programs added to the recently passed SP-54 legislation, such as optional receipts, banning of BPA, eliminating paper tickets.
Scott Weiner and his legislative aide Jack Persons have offered support and help for us to pursue these items. It will take effort and time and we welcome anyone interested in working with our team. Reach out to us at neighborhoodenhancement@rhnsf.org.
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