In June, The city of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors introduced a new law mandating composting of all food and lawn waste with violators facing a fine from $100-$500.
This bill was the first in the nation to make it illegal to throw away recycling or compostable waste. This recycling campaign is the strictest in the nation, but what makes it so exciting is the degree to which it is being embraced by the city's population. NPR reports that landlords and citizens began the practice even before the law became official earlier this fall.
Since it's implementation, many have praised it for making homes and businesses cleaner and less smelly by getting rid of the mixed garbage bags that often sat around for up to a week before pickup and transitioning to disposal in sealed city provided compost bins. Many have noticed, especially workers and managers of high waste producing venues such as restaurants are happy to comply with the law that makes their businesses much more pleasant to the nose.
After pickup, the waste is transported to the Organics Annex, a composting facility that is currently processing 500 tons per day. This compost is then sold to local farms and wineries, a boon for both organic and conventional producers looking for cheaper, eco-friendlier fertilizers that were previously difficult to obtain due to a shortage of sanitary organic compost.
Jared Blumenfield, the city's chief environmental officer plans to have the entire city be waste free, meaning no trash delivered to landfills, by 2020. A lofty goal that he believes the city will happily support him in.
Programs like this were advocated by author Michael Pollan in his open letter to the Obama administration last fall. Pollan supports these campaigns because they will serve the purposes of diverting synthetic fertilizers from fields, reducing costs for sustainable farming, and increasing soil fertility through addition of organic matter to land that has in many cases been exploited since the arrival of Europeans.
It is time that the town of Blacksburg take notice of the success of this program, there is already a large composting faicility in place that would be able to handle the additional load with only minor expansion. This would serve both the town through mitigation of trash problems as well as the growing local agriculture movement that has a high demand for such compost.
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How do they keep it sanitary? This sounds wonderful, its comforting to know that some metropoitan governments are trying to change the common practice in cities, mindlessly sending out valueble waste every day. Also, I heard that there was not a close-by composting site. Last year the EC was talking about getting the food waste from the dining halls to be composted, but that there was not a composting sight local enough and that it is hard to build one because it has to get the same permit that a landfill has to get, which is not easy to obtain.
ReplyDeleteHell yeah San Francisco--I think this is an awesome initiative. The disincentive idea seems to be a good way to go. But could an incentive program work for Blacksburg? Maybe to get it started have farmers or gardeners pay for the compost we produce and it could mitigate the price the school pays to pick up the compost? And dining halls and other sites could get a small amount of compensation? I thought the site was near the garbage dump.. I think it's do able! Why waste soooo much good fertilizer?!
ReplyDeleteI think this is great news, thanks for sharing Alex! I lived in Madagascar as a child and we composted a lot of our food waste, like eggshells, coffee grinds etc. We had a large compost pile in the back, and our gardener often used it for fertilizers, something Lauren mentioned above. The entire process was very easy, and eco-friendly. I'm not sure why we don't still do it at home now that we are in the U.S. but I'll certainly have to mention it to my parents! This is just one of the many many ways you can start helping the environment on a personal household level.
ReplyDelete-- Kirsten Dobson