Leonard Stefanelli, who rose from a garbage collector to president of San Francisco’s largest refuse firm, died April 6 after a long illness. He was 83.
Stefanelli had a key role in transforming the garbage business from simple collection into a major enterprise that recycles and reuses trash. Sunset Scavenger, the company he headed, is now part of Recology Inc., which has revenue of more than $1 billion a year and operates 45 solid waste companies from Bakersfield to Seattle.
He wrote about his experiences in the business in a memoir titled “Garbage” published last fall by the University of Nevada Press.
Stefanelli was a native San Franciscan, the son of immigrants. He barely graduated from high school, got a job on a garbage truck at age 19, became a “boss scavenger” with a stake in Sunset Scavenger at 23, and rose to president of the company at 31.
He was also proud of his service aboard submarines in the U.S. Navy. But what he liked to talk about most was his role collecting other people’s trash and disposing of it properly. Garbage collection, he wrote in his memoir, was regarded “as the lowest rung on the social ladder of life.”
Stefanelli turned a life of hard work into an asset. “I was proud to be a scavenger,” he said.
His favorite achievement, he said often, was to reform the way trash was collected in San Francisco. When he went to work in the 1950s, the system had been unchanged for years. Each truck had four men, hauling garbage in large, heavy cans or burlap sacks. It was old-fashioned and backbreaking work.
“The only difference from the old days was that we had motor trucks instead of horses pulling wagons,” he said.
Stefanelli and some of his associates organized what, in effect, was a coup and took over Sunset Scavenger. Stefanelli became president and immediately started modernizing the company. They got new trucks that could compact the waste, changed business practices, started curbside recycling, developed new landfill strategies, and started buying other refuse companies.
“I brought garbage out of the dark ages,” he said.
Stefanelli also brought in new management blood. One of them was Mike Sangiacomo, who became the company’s chief financial officer, and is now CEO of Recology.
“He hired me as the first outside professional,” Sangiacomo said. “I wouldn’t be here if not for him.”
Sangiacomo brought in modern business ideas, set up lines of credit and improved the financial picture, important in an employee-owned business.
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