San Francisco's composting/recycling law is still a full six weeks away from taking effect, but it's already working like a charm...
According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, the city's Department of the Environment is handing out 130 composting bins a day (up from 5 to 10 a few months ago) and 480 tons of composted material is coming out of the city everyday (up 15% over the last few months).
The Department is also sending people to apartment buildings to teach residents how to correctly separate their trash from their recyclables from their compostables.
It's a pretty optimistic article. We're wondering: If this program ends up being as successful as it seems like it might, how many other big city mayors will jump on the composting-law bandwagon?
Image: Brant Ward / The Chronicle
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Oakland doesn't require it, but we have compost bins here. My fiance and I use it for our heavier lawn clippings, and meat products, since we have a home compost pile that takes all the other stuff.
Ditto with Alameda, where I used to live. It was awesome. But then are still lots of places where you can't even get curbside recycling pick-up. It's sort of hard to believe.
I think this is totally brilliant! Our tiny backyard doesn't leave much room for the huge garden of our dreams, so although we plan to start composting asap we are not sure what to do with it other than offer it up on craigslist.
I am all for mandatory recycling composting. We just bought our first home in Queen Creek, Az and the city doesnt even offer recycling--we had to hire a private service (not that we mind the expence, we are more aghast that in this day and age a town of Queen Creek's size isn't more ecologically-mided.) Education is going to be the key for SF I think...just today someone decided that her diapers were "recyleable" and donated them to our bin. Um, hello?
Man, I wish anyone in the South Bay did this. It's hard for a lot of apartment dwellers to compost. I am loving my new NatureMill though, and soon my container garden will, too.
WOW - I wish there was a program like that here in S. FL... People think I'm crazy to compost, everyone I know thinks it's "stupid"
That's how it is in Ohio, too - I get this blank look from most people when I tell them, "Oh, don't put that in the trash, put it in this bucket so I can put it in the compost pile in the yard." While my parents in the SF Bay Area have been composting curbside for years!
Are rats & raccoons really no less of a problem for municipal compost collection than they already are for trash and recycling? As a Brooklyn resident it is hard to believe that nuisance & disease carrying animals are not a bigger problem.
We're fighting that fight in our Oakland condo HOA right now. The board keeps claiming that compast will inspire more critters to invade, but I don't see their logic. I mean, we already throw the food out; what difference will putting it into a different bin make? And keeping the bin clean? Do we clean the dumpsters? sheesh.
But then I grew up tending Grandma's compost pile in Sacramento summers. I kinda got over the ick factor a LONG time ago.
the city recently took away our curbside recycling because of the economy. really?? just when i think okc is catching up with the times and becoming a quite modern city afterall, they take away recycling. (while increasing taxes to build some stuff to help with tourism) come on okc is not a tourist town. i don't see compost bins any where in our future, unfortunately