This company tries to recycle the really difficult plastics

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SAN LEANDRO — A start-up recycling company has a message for its potential, environmentally conscious customers: Don’t send your problem garbage to the landfill; put it on your front porch.The company is Ridwell, and if you drive the residential streets of the San Francisco Bay Area or Los Angeles, you’re likely to see the company’s signature white metal boxes on porches.

The boxes are for empty tortilla chip and plastic produce bags, used clothing, light bulbs and batteries.In some locations, polystyrene peanuts.

All the things you’re not supposed to put in the blue recycle bin, but wish you could.The Seattle-based waste service is geared toward people who worry their waste will end up in the landfill, or get exported to a developing country in Asia.

They sort their waste into colorfully labeled canvas bags the company provides, and wait for a Ridwell pickup.“Sorting is our special sauce,” said Gerrine Pan, the company’s vice president of partnerships.

Part of the reason the company is successful at finding markets — or buyers — for its waste, she said, is that it’s sorted and pretty clean (unlike the food-contaminated jumble of waste that gets stuffed in many blue bins).The company promises to distribute all that waste to specialty recyclers, manufacturers, even thrift shops.But critics say the boutique waste hauler is not accomplishing anything environmentally useful and is selling the public a myth: that these plastics — multilayer plastic film, plastic bags, polystyrene — can be taken care of responsibly.

The service would be benign, they say, if it stuck to the delivery of materials, such as light bulbs and batteries, that can be recycled.Most local waste haulers don’t accept batteries and light bulbs because they can pose a hazard to workers and equipment.The base Ridwell membership is $20 a month.

For that, a driver will come by every ...