Atherton News
Starting the week of February 5, BFI customers in Atherton will have garbage and recycling collected on the same day of the week. Atherton’s pick-up day is Friday. Your garbage will be collected every Friday; your recycling and yard waste will be collected every other Friday. The change is intended to get people who are not currently recycling to do so by making it easier for them. The Town needs all residents to recycle in order to meet the state mandated 50% diversion goal.
BFI is also implementing “on-call” clean-ups to replace the scheduled spring and fall clean-ups. You can now choose the date for two clean-ups per year. A clean-up appointment can be scheduled by calling 592-2411. Appointments must be scheduled two weeks in advance. Residents are encouraged to donate usable unwanted items to a local charity.
BFI has implemented the County’s first electronics recycling program. Since January 1, 2001, over 20,000 pounds of electronic waste has been diverted from the landfill and retrieved for reuse. Now you can recycle computers, keyboards, monitors (no broken glass), printers, zip drives, fax machines, copy machines, power cables, typewriters, stereo equipment, speakers and VCR’s. Materials are accepted at the San Carlos transfer station during normal business hours, 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. daily. The program is open to all residents and small businesses at no charge. There is no limit to the number of items a resident may bring in, however, BFI can only accept a maximum of ten items including five monitors and one copy machine per business due to the difficulty and cost of recycling those items. Materials do not need to be in working order to be eligible for this program. HMR INC, an electronics recycling facility in San Francisco, picks up the materials collected by BFI. Equipment that still has value is refurbished and resold. HMR’s four overseas operations enable them to repair and resell equipment, which is considered obsolete in the United States, but cutting edge in other countries. Equipment that cannot be repaired or reused is disassembled and the various components recycled.
The independent Service Operators, ISO, reports that a tremendous amount of conservation has helped reduce some strain on the system. Customers are encouraged to continue major efforts to conserve energy, particularly during the daily peak times of 7:00 am until 11:00 am and 5:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m. to help avoid rolling blackouts.
Get up to date information on the current energy situation, including what outage block you are in and what you can do to help at the PG&E Website. http://www.pge.com
You can also call PG&E at the following numbers:
| 24 Hour Customer Service | 1-800-743-5000 |
| 24 Hour Electric Outage Information | 1-800-743-5002 |
| Smarter Energy Line (residental) | 1-800-933-9555 |
If you want to see the demands on the power grid, and any other information provided by the ISO, check the following Website: http://www.caiso.com