The Scoop on Pet Poop – please pick up after your pet!

Help keep your neighborhood and San Mateo County safe and sanitary by picking up pet waste. Pet waste contains harmful bacteria like E. coli and parasites that put the health of animals and humans at risk, pollute our environment, and creates a health hazard for our waterways.

Be a responsible pet owner by following these guidelines:

1. 💩 All pet poop pollutes. Dogs aren’t the only furry companions that need to be cleaned up after. Remember to pick up after all pets including dogs, cats, horses, and other household pets. Always carry poop bags to clean up after your pet. 🐶🐱🐴

2. 🐕  Poop bags belong in the trash, not on the trail. Always bring poop bags to pick up after your pet when you’re out and about. Remember, don’t leave bagged pet waste on the ground; throw it in the trash. Sign Flows to Bay’s Scoop the Poop Pledge for a chance to win a free poop bag dispenser.

3. 🚫 Compost and Poop Don’t Mix. Contrary to popular belief, pet waste is not compostable, and it should be bagged and thrown away in the garbage. While manure makes useful fertilizer, pet waste can cause diseases in humans.

4.🤝 Share and Care

Let your family, friends, and neighbors know about the harmful effects pet waste has on the environment. Carry extra bags with you when walking and offer them to other pet owners who don’t have a bag. 

Coastal Cleanup 2022 – Calling All Volunteers!

Get your reusable gloves 🧤, buckets, and water bottles 💧 ready! There are two ways to participate in the annual litter cleanup event this September:

1. Join the main event on Saturday, September 17^th from 9 a.m. to noon – San Mateo County is hosting over 50 cleanup sites led by site captains with thousands of volunteers gathering in groups to remove litter before it breaks up into smaller pieces, injures wildlife, or ends up in our waterways 🌊.
   
2. Cleanup all month–long – can’t join the main event? You can still make a difference right outside your doorsteps 🚪. Gather your family and friends, go solo, or bring fido 🐕‍🦺, and pick up litter in your neighborhood throughout September.

If you are looking for an opportunity to help beautify and protect your community, and be inspired by fellow volunteers, register today at smchealth.org/ccd to find a location near you.

Cigarette Butts Recycled into a Bench

The local nonprofit Pacific Beach Coalition has picked up over 1 million littered cigarette butts since 2013. These cigarette butts have been recycled into a park bench located at Mussel Rock Park in Daly City – newly installed in January 2022.

How is a bench made out of cigarette butts? Pacific Beach Coalition sends all their butts to TerraCycle’s Cigarette Waste Recycling Program. The butts are processed –  the synthetic part of the butt gets melted down, turned into a powder, and mixed into recycled plastic lumber. This lumber can be turned into fencing, decks, benches, and more.

Join Pacific Beach Coalition for their monthly Mussel Rock cleanup where you can rest your butt on a bench made out of butts after you’re done.

For more litter cleanup event options, and resources for residents and businesses looking to get involved in extinguishing cigarette butt litter in the County, visit smchealth.org/cigbutts.  

5 Eco Tips for the Ocean-Loving Boater

Boaters are drawn to the beauty and serenity of our oceans and waterways. They’re also responsible for preventing pollution and protecting our marine ecosystems, which are sensitive to hazardous waste, motor oil, and trash that may come from boats. Hazardous waste and motor oil can be harmful to marine wildlife, even in small quantities. Additionally, ocean animals may become entangled in trash or mistake plastic for food.

Luckily, there are many ways boaters can get “all aboard” with pollution prevention. Here are five eco tips for the ocean-loving boater:

1. ⚠️Safety First – Switch to Reusable Flares

• Boaters in the U.S. are legally required to carry visual distress signals. However, expired, single-use marine flares are extremely hard to dispose of and are considered explosive hazardous waste. 
• Go reusable –Stock your boat with Electronic Visual Distress Signal Devices (eVDSDs). They are safer for your family, better for the environment, never expire, and are ultimately more cost-effective.

Save 10%! For the rest of 2022, California boaters can take advantage of this discount for a U.S. Coast Guard approved pyrotechnic flare replacement from Sirius Signal.

2. 🛢️ Safely Dispose of Used Oil and Oil-related Items

• Used motor oil, oil filters, and oil cleanup absorbents (e.g. bilge pads) pose a threat to the ocean and our waterways if not properly disposed of. 
• If you’re a boater in San Mateo County, your marina will help you recycle or safely manage used oil, filters, and oil absorbent materials — call your Harbormaster for details or click here for a marina phone directory. 

If you live elsewhere in the Bay Area, check out this San Francisco Bay Clean Boating Map for locations of marina-based pollution prevention services.

3. ☢️ Properly Dispose of Hazardous Waste

• Many items you may have in your boat such as paints, varnishes, batteries, oil, oil filters, and old fuel are hazardous waste that pose a threat to humans and the marine environment. 
• Too toxic to trash – safely manage hazardous waste using retail drop-off locations, curbside pick up, or by making a FREE drop-off appointment. 

4. 🧼 Go Green and Clean

Many cleaning products contain chemicals that are harmful to marine ecosystems if released directly into waterways. 

• Choose less toxic cleaning products, which were tested by the BoatUS Foundation for eco-friendliness and effectiveness. 
• Wash your boat on land in a designated wash area or on a permeable surface that will absorb and filter the wash water.

5. ♻️ Repurpose and Recycle Old Gear

If you have unwanted boating gear that is still in good condition:

• Donate it to someone else or set up a gear exchange at your marina. 
• Reel in and recycle – fishing lines are not biodegradable and marine life may suffer from line entanglement. Find a list of line recycling container locations here.  

Out with the old, in with the new – if your gear is past its useful lifetime, see if there are options to recycle it into something new. For instance, SeaBags turns old sails into reusable bags, and Suga recycles old wetsuits into new yoga mats!

These tips are brought to you by San Mateo County Environmental Health Services (EHS). EHS works to ensure a safe and healthy environment in San Mateo County through education, regulation, and monitoring. Visit smchealth.org/boatoil for more boater information and resources. 

Coastal Cleanup Day – September 18, 2021

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Coastal Cleanup Day is back in action to the way it was before COVID-19. This
litter cleanup event will be in-person, with site captains and volunteers following the most current San Mateo County Health Order at all times. Grab your buckets, gloves, and loved ones, and enjoy a return to normalcy by gathering with others once again to make a difference in your community.

On Saturday, September 18, 2021, from 9 a.m. to noon, San Mateo County is hosting over 50 cleanup sites and thousands of volunteers gathering in groups to divert and recycle litter to prevent it from ending up in our ocean as pollution.

This is a welcome change from last year where COVID-19 safety requirements only permitted households to clean up their local neighborhoods. While Coastal Cleanup 2020 was a great way to get outside during the pandemic, multiple veteran volunteers stated it “just wasn’t the same. There is a sense of coming together as a community that motivates and inspires people.”

If you are looking for an opportunity to help beautify and protect your community, and be inspired by fellow volunteers, register today at smchealth.org/ccd to find a location near you.

A Little Battery, A Lot of Harm

 

Improper battery recycling poses a huge risk to employees and the community

Around 8:30 p.m. on September 7, 2016, employees at the Shoreway Environmental Center’s materials recovery facility (MRF) in San Carlos had just started processing materials after a meal break when they noticed something was terribly wrong.

A small fire had started in one of the automated screens that mechanically separates mixed paper from other recyclables. The fire quickly spread deeper into the facility as materials continued to be conveyed.

“Staff sprang into action and began extinguishing the fires they could access,” said Dwight Herring, General Manager of South Bay Recycling who operates the RethinkWaste*-owned facility. “It was emanating thick, acrid black smoke and the supervisor at the time made the call to evacuate.”

While there were thankfully no injuries, the building interior and processing equipment suffered extensive fire, smoke and water damage — damage significant enough to suspend the facility’s ability to process recyclable materials. After examining the site, fire investigators strongly suspected the ignition source was likely a lithium-ion battery.

It was three months before the MRF could start processing materials again, and an entire year before the building and damaged equipment were fully restored. During this time, some employees were temporarily laid-off while repairs were made.

After the repairs were finished, the facility’s insurance coverage cost increased significantly, ultimately impacting user rates. “Just because the facility shut down doesn’t mean the material flow stopped. We had to make arrangements to have third party haulers come in and remove that material,” Herring said.

Since the fire, the facility has increased staff fire safety training and installed additional fire suppression equipment throughout the MRF, including improved sprinkler systems and an automatic plant-wide system shutdown in the event of fire. But those safety measures can only do so much.

What the Shoreway facility and all haulers in San Mateo County really need is for residents to make sure batteries don’t get put into their recyclables or trash. “When you’re discarding a battery, and you’re discarding it inappropriately — whether it’s the black cart or the blue cart — you’re basically putting a bomb in that container. It takes very little damage to a lithium-ion battery for it to explode,” he said. “You’re literally putting an incendiary device into a pile of paper.”

Recycle your Batteries Right, contact your local waste hauler for recycling options, or visit RecycleStuff.org

Reduce, Recharge, Recycle

A multi meter is used to test battery life.

Batteries charge our world and power the devices that make our lives convenient. In an effort to reduce the amount of waste we generate, here are some simple tips for household battery use.

Ditch the Disposables

Calling all campers! Beckoning all BBQers! Tempting all tailgaters! Summer is approaching, and we know you’ll be fueling up your portable stoves and barbeques to grill up the juiciest hot dogs and roast the perfect veggies. That means it’s time to go reusable with 1lb. propane cylinders.

Campers power their portable stove with a refillable 1lb. cylinder.

 

Why go reusable?

Prevent Cigarette Butt Pollution

Have you seen this receptacle before?  In 2016, four cigarette butt receptacles were installed in downtown Millbrae to help smokers have a place to stash their cigarette butts. The receptacles installed reduced butts by 49% near the installation area over a four month period.

There’s a New Refillable in Town!

Four million disposable one pound propane cylinders are sold every year in California alone.  Consumers are spending around $4.00+ per disposable cylinder, just to be able to use about $0.30 worth of propane gas inside.