Composting Food Waste in the San Francisco Bay Area
There’s a great write-up on the various composting programs run by Bay Area waste management companies in today’s Chronicle/SFGate.
While we here at DooF have focused mainly on what good food is and where they come from, composting is one natural end of unused food: food wastes and scraps such as leftover uneaten food, food gone bad, food trimmings from meal preparation, etc. (not to also mention yard and garden trimmings, leaves, clippings, etc.)
By making a concerted effort, such food scraps and biomatter are put into their natural decomposition process at a sped up rate, resulting in large quantities of high quality humus that is used to enrich the soils of local growers.
One little tidbit that I did not know is that good, rich soil (enriched by humus) retains carbon dioxide, the global warming gas.
Anyhow, you can see how a circle is formed: local farms provide good, nutritious organic fruits and produce, and the resulting scraps go back into making compost that wind up in local farms.
So, if you’re in the Bay Area, do your part, and make the (small) effort to put your food scraps in the provided compost bins. If you don’t live in an area with a community-wide composting program, consider home composting. Check with your local waste management service for more information. Below are some resources for your area:
- www.sfrecycling.com – San Francisco
- www.stopwaste.org – Alameda County
- www.reducewaste.org – Santa Clara County
- www.recycleworks.org – San Mateo County
- www.recyclenow.org – Sonoma County
- www.wastediversion.org – Contra Costa County
- www.naparecycling.com – Napa County
Sounds like a great topic for an episode of DooF, don’t you think?
Check out the article here.
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