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.

[TransitJohn]

1. I miss living in San Francisco.

Ah the days of my youth. ;)

[BonnieJW]

2. When I lived in Virginia Beach,

composting was mandated as far as grass clippings. You put your cut grass into clear plastic lawn bags and it was taken to a composting heap near the dump. Christmas trees were buried there as well. After a couple of years, the compost was made available free to anyone who wanted to bring a truck and fill it up. Black gold.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

12. That's a great idea.

Unfortunately SF doesn't have room for a giant compost heap.

[Nikki Stone1]

3. Where does the compost go?

In other words, what business is profiting from the mandated free labor of San Franciscans?

[saltpoint]

4. Alternately considered, what planet is the chief beneficiary of

a more involved and aware citizenry?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

5. You put it in a bin. It gets taken to a composting facility, composted, then sold on...

...for agricultural uses. The system pays for itself and reduces landfill waste.

[Nikki Stone1]

6. Is the composting facility run by the city? Does the money return to the city?

I like the idea. Don't get me wrong. I just wonder about where the money goes.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

8. No, it's not run by the city.

Where have you ever seen a city that runs its own waste management programs top to bottom? It's always contracted out.

Uncomposted food scraps are not a saleable commodity. Recology takes the scraps, composts them, then sells the compost to support their own operations.

[Nikki Stone1]

9. And makes a profit on it.

So, the company is getting free raw materials from the labor of people, stuff it doesn't have to collect, and then it sells it at a profit. OK.

[saltpoint]

10. Jesus, Nikki. Get a clue here. You need shoes, you pay some store for

the pair you need, you buy 'em and take 'em home and wear 'em to work, to shop, to play, to travel, to get around.

If you want you can butcher animals of the prairie and woods and use their skins to make your own shoes.

You appear to suggest that intelligent recycling is bad if a profit is generated in its implementation. It seems to me that it is an essential service. Human mammals need to recycle or we will be swimming in our own garbage in no time flat.

San Francisco, not surprisingly, is WAY ahead of most of the rest of the nation in many things, this included.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

11. Yes it does have to collect it.

That's what the company does. It collects materials of no saleable value and makes them into something saleable. Would you have a problem if landscaping companies began composting grass clippings collected during their work? Would you demand to be paid for your grass clippings?

[lunatica]

7. Those damn Liberals!

They just ruin everything they lay their hands on! What a Sosholist Commie Pinko Brainwashing Afro-Leninist Muslin Furrener and GAY thing to do!!