Composting is about to become mandatory in San Francisco.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/08/BAR419IP8A.DTL&tsp=1

San Franciscans have six more weeks before they're required to toss their food scraps into green composting bins or face a fine - but apparently all the trash talk coming out of City Hall is already having an effect.

Just a few months ago, the city Department of the Environment was doling out five to 10 green composting bins a day; now that number is up to 130. The amount of composted material coming out of San Francisco is up 15 percent over the past few months - now totaling 480 tons every day.

"There's a real sense of urgency now," said Jared Blumenfeld, director of the Environment Department. "We never heard from these folks and, suddenly, they're saying, 'How do you do it?' "

Each day, Blumenfeld's department sends five or six people schooled in composting to apartment buildings, homes and businesses to show people how to get started - and to help them find the space for another bin in this tightly packed city. In some particularly crowded neighborhoods like Chinatown, homeowners are already banding together to share a bin.



This seems to be a pretty clever idea.