Health & Fitness
Los Altos Cleans Up – Businesses and Residents Join City’s Effort to Reduce Waste
While participation in recycling programs is a vast improvement over simply throwing everything in the garbage, it's even better to implement policy and programs that eliminate waste.
By Peg Champion, GreenTown Correspondent
“It’s a win-win situation – good for our bottom line and for the environment,” says Ron Piazza, store manager of , describing the store’s waste-reduction program. “While garbage pickups cost us money, composting and recycling are free.”
The downtown grocery store is just one of the Los Altos businesses that has joined the city’s model waste-reduction program. The goal is to reduce the amount of trash that is hauled to the landfill by composting organic food and yard waste and increasing recycling.
Following a two-year effort by Los Altos City Council, the Environmental Commission, city staff, consultants and the GreenTown Los Altos Waste Management Committee, the council unanimously voted on March 23, 2010, to award a 10-year waste management contract to Mission Trail Waste Systems. Mission Trail launched the program—including expanded recycling, organics and household hazardous waste collection, plus a public-education effort—two years ago, in September 2010. Read more to find out how
