my name is debbie rafael, director of the department of the environment and joined today with a number of my staff who have such tremendous expertise, i wanted them to be here so that you could get the best answers to your mtit on theound, street-wise, understag of what's going on there. i'm also joined by john porter of recology and his partners. we have staff from public works here. we are here to ge convertion a a ainstorm together on what we need to move forward. so peter is going to help me with that. the so, 0 waste. 0 waste means no material to landfill or incineration. the way we think about it here is getting rid of our black bins, whether those bins be the carts in a single-family home, or the huge compactor you might see in a hospital or a large commercial office building. as supervisor safai said, this goal is not new. in 2002, actually a very important context, when theboa adopted the goal of 0 waste, they emphasized some very important concepts that have been the marching orders and the underlying values of our department and of recology as well. the first is producing an

debbie -- director rafael mentioned it earlier. you throw your banana peel and your orange, and you throw it in your card board, your paper. that banana gets on the paper, that orange gets on the card board. those materials no longer have value. china has strong import restrictions. they've actually cut it off for the month of may and june. that material gets ruined. you throw it in the trash with your animal waste, baby waste, it gets ruined. >> supervisor safai: that gets ruined, but there has to be 60%. >> those facilities, what we call it is dirty murph, they're only getting about 80% of the crv value. those facilities are not a panacea. the best way we believe is to separate the material at the source and ensure that it has the highest and best use, which is in many cases either reuse or recycleability. >> supervisor safai: so when you say at the source, you mean in the commercial building. >> sure. >> supervisor safai: in the home. those are really the only two choices other than the construction site. so there's no problem i