Our History - Recology
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Our History

Over 100 Years of Service

We’ve been recycling long before there was even an industry for it. Our founders immigrated to San Francisco in the mid 1800’s looking for opportunity and they eventually found work doing what no one else wanted to do – picking up other people’s garbage.

They called themselves scavengers – in fact, the Recology Sunset Scavenger company name is a nod to these same founders. The original scavengers sorted through trash to find what was salvageable by rewashing, repackaging, and selling bottles, and by sorting and separating rags and papers from other refuse materials. Little did they know that they were creating a foundation for our current business model today.

To this day, many of our employees are descendants of our Italian founders.

Key Milestones