NPR - October 1, 2009 - David Gorn reports - "... Jared Blumenfeld, the city's environmental officer, says the Organic Annex is already processing about half of the city's food waste, which is more than 500 tons per day.
"You can see a lot of lettuce, tomatoes, old apples, rotten cabbages," Blumenfeld says. "You get a kind of vivid picture here of what's being thrown away."
Composting your food scraps is probably the single most effective thing you can do as a citizen in the United States today.
- Jared Blumenfeld, city environmental officer for San Francisco
San Francisco turns all of that food refuse into compost, which is then sold to Bay Area farms and vineyards. The program is the latest effort in one of the most aggressive recycling campaigns in the nation. San Francisco currently keeps 72 percent of its garbage stream out of the landfill by recycling cans, bottles, construction material and cooking oil. Blumenfeld says that even though the program officially launches Wednesday, he's not surprised by how many people are already fully participating...." Read the full article.
PHOTO - Courtesy of Recology: "A front loader moves food waste in the Organics Annex, the headquarters of San Francisco's food waste operation."
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