Got a notice from SF Environment? Here's the way through.
Seven in ten audited San Francisco properties fail at least one stream, so you are in good company. Zero Standard Consulting LLC writes the compliance plan (RSCOP) the Department will approve, signs the 24-month facilitator agreement your notice requires, and, where it's needed, puts trained sorters at your dock so the next audit passes.
Free, about 20 minutes on site, no obligation. A scoped proposal follows within 5 business days.
Deadline days away? Ask for the engagement agreement today
Mail app didn't open? Email Karl@ZeroStandardSF.com or call the number above.
Compliance is the floor
Why Zero Standard
90 seconds · sound onA compliance plan doesn't sort the bin. People do.
Source: SF Environment Refuse Separation Ordinance audit records, 287 audits, January 2025 to September 2026.
That point is after your porters consolidate and before Recology collects: the last hour contamination is still fixable. On most properties nobody owns it. The fault is the system, not your staff.
A plan that says we will retrain staff and improve signage is a promise. A plan that says a trained sorter works the consolidated streams before each haul, logs contamination by weight, and hands the routine to your staff on a written schedule is a measure, and the Department is not obliged to approve a plan it doesn't believe will work. We write the second kind, because we are the ones who carry it out.
What a staffed sort is
Four things, running together. Keep our crew for as long as you want it, or have us train your staff to take it over. Your call.
The dock sort
Trained sorters work your consolidated streams ahead of collection: recoverables pulled out of landfill, contaminants pulled out of recycling and compost. Scheduled against your haul days and your building's access rules, not ours.
The contamination log
Every shift photographed, weighed, and logged by stream. That log is the evidence your plan is built on, what the six-month update reports against, and what turns your diversion rate from an estimate into a number with a source.
Your porters, not instead of them
Our people work the stream beside your staff and coach them in shift. Where the setup is making the wrong behavior easier (bin placement, signage, routines), we say so and price the fix.
Keep the crew, or take it over
Keep our crew on your haul days for as long as you want it. Or choose a transition, typically 90 days, in which we train your staff against written milestones and hand off only after a readiness check of your logs and a joint sort.
Facilitation retainer $1,500–$3,500 a month · RSCOP authoring and submission from $1,800 · waste audit and baseline from $2,500 · staff training from $1,500 a session. Staffed sorting is quoted on stream volume, service days and crew size. A 20-minute call gets you a ballpark range; the fixed price comes in writing within 5 business days of the walk-through. Full services & pricing →
The clock you are on
Every date below is set by ordinance or the Department's enforcement rules, not by us. The deadline printed on your own notice is the one that governs.
| Milestone | Deadline |
|---|---|
| City audit — recycling, compost, landfillFail any one stream and a Notice of Noncompliance (NONC) is issued | At least every 3 years |
| Sign a facilitator agreement and submit your RSCOPThe plan must include a written agreement that states the 24-month term | 60 days from the notice |
| Extension if no facilitator is availableAt the Director's discretion, on demonstrated unavailability | Up to 120 days from the notice |
| Comply after an Order Imposing Administrative PenaltiesPenalties are held, not collected, in this window; comply and no invoice is issued | 45 days from the Order |
| Penalty — first 60 days of noncompliance | $500 / day |
| Penalty — day 61 onward | $1,000 / day |
| Required facilitator engagement term | 24 months |
| Six-month progress updateFiled with the Department after your plan is approved | 6 months after approval |
| Early compliance audit, on requestAt your expense, with evidence of remediation | After 12 months compliant |
How does it pay for itself?
The sort is not only a compliance measure. It is the thing that makes a right-sizing recommendation possible, and right-sizing is where the money is.
Right-sizing recovers part of the cost. The rest is the penalty it stops. At the opening rate, a month out of compliance is $15,000. Past day sixty it is $30,000, several times what a staffed sort costs over the same month.
This is a recommendation the Department actively wants to see, and one it verifies directly with Recology, so it has to be real. We check right-sizing against twelve months of your own hauler invoices and against what the sort log actually shows, not against a rule of thumb.
Zero Standard Consulting LLC takes no referral fee from any vendor, ever. The plan and the crew are quoted separately and you can buy either one without the other, which is the only honest way to run a firm that both writes the recommendation and can carry it out.
Who you would be hiring
A principal who has audited the hauler, ran the zero waste programs at Grand Hyatt San Francisco and Hyatt Regency San Francisco, and completed both Department trainings, with a team built so your deadline never depends on one person's calendar.
Site Supervisor
Runs the sort on your haul days, coaches your porters in shift, and knows your trash room before the first log goes out.
Operations
Scheduling, the contamination log, and your point of contact between site visits.
Sorters
Our crew, not day labor, supervised by our Site Supervisor and trained on your building's streams before their first shift.
Most firms on the Department's facilitator list are janitorial and facilities contractors. They can staff a sort, and several do it well. Far fewer can write the plan the Department will approve, and an unapproved plan is a property still paying by the day.
Auditing Recology from the outside meant learning how San Francisco's waste system actually performs, not how it is described. The plan and the sort are the same knowledge, and on this team the people who write it are the people who carry it out.
Start with a free walk-through, not a contract
About twenty minutes on site, free and with no obligation. It tells us what your streams actually look like, whether a staffed sort is worth it, and what the work would cost. If you are up against a deadline, the engagement agreement is drafted to the ordinance and can be in your inbox today.
Book a free walk-throughPick an open time on the calendar. You get an invite right away.
Twenty minutes on the phone: your notice date, your streams, your building. You leave with a ballpark range.
Under an Order? The engagement agreement can be emailed the same day, 24-month term stated.
Site walk, then a fixed scope and price in writing within 5 business days.
See the work before you sign anything
We bring sample deliverables to the walk-through: a quarterly diversion and compliance report, a compliance plan, and a field workbook. You see exactly what your property would receive before any scope is proposed.
Samples use a fictional client and illustrative figures.