At the Farmer's Market in front of the San Francisco Ferry Building today, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom signed a first-of-its-kind rule requiring all residences and businesses to compost their organic waste. The tougher new composting standards were approved by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in early June by a vote of 9-2.
"San Francisco has the best recycling and composting programs in the nation, and we’ve already attained an impressive, and first in the nation, 72 percent rate, because of them," said Mayor Newsom.
Newsom's office recently conducted a waste-stream analysis and discovered that about two thirds of the garbage people throw away, approximately 500,000 tons annually, could have been recycled or turned to compost. San Francisco already converts over 400 tons of food scraps and other compostable discards into high-grade organic compost every day.
"It’s so nutrient-rich that the final product is almost jet black in color," writes Newsom today at CleanTechnica. The high quality of compost is "snapped up by farms and vineyards across the Bay Area, we can barely keep up with the demand," adds Newsom.
By requiring all residences and businesses in San Francisco to sign up for the city's recycling and composting collection programs, Newsom hopes even more organic waste will be diverted from landfills and made available as a valuable commodity used in sustainable regional agriculture.
City officials say they'll give residents time to adjust to the new rules but could eventually start levying fines of up to $1000 for organic waste scofflaws. No fines are specified in the ordinance, but there is a cap of $100 established for residences and businesses that generate less than one cubic yard of refuse per week. Fines higher than $100 may still apply to businesses and to landlords of large apartment buildings who refuse to offer recycling and composting opportunities to tenants.
Newsom said a primary goal of the mandatory recycling ordinance, which was co-sponsored by Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Chris Daly, is to get recycling and composting happening in buildings where it is not currently provided.
"I believe that composting will become second nature for Americans, just like sorting bottles and paper," added Newsom. "It will take time, but I believe mandatory composting will spread across the country—improving the air we breathe and reducing our need for landfills."
This article was contributed to Celsias by Timothy B. Hurst
Be Informed, Take Action on Climate Change - www.Celsias.com.
Jordana G. says:
Does anyone find this Big Brother-esque? I was talking to a family member the other day about this, and that was the response I got. . .
Adam W. says:
I don't think it is Big Brother-esque at all - I actually think this is a great compromise compared to what the city was considering beforehand. All they are doing here is requiring that landlords give their tenants the OPPORTUNITY to compost by providing the green bins. It would be big brother if they then went though our trash and levied fines for each ounce of organic garbage NOT composted, which was the alternative I alluded to earlier.
My current landlord refuses to get a green bin, even after I did all the work of signing us up and offered to pay for the service out of my own pocket. Her reason was that "we need organic compost in our landfills to help all that other stuff break down" and when I tried to explain to her that this was not true she just responded with: "you may think you know what you are talking about, but I have been on this earth much longer than you have."
So, instead of composting daily, I have been forced to save up my scraps all week in a tiny kitchen compost bin and then run downstairs in the dead of night once a week to drop it off in my neighbors bin (more on this in the "Guerrilla Composting"article on SL). The simple act of requiring people to at least own bins will undoubtedly do wonders for the amount of organic waste that will get diverted into compost.
As to costs, here is a great idea. The city should start charging people for the weight of their regular garbage, but taking recycling and compost for free (they could still charge us the current minimal cost to have the bins in the first place). The city is already in the process of buying trucks with the technology to weight bins, and with this new incentive people would certainly start doing a much better job of sorting their garbage. As for where the proceeds go, hopefully it will go a little way towards closing our current budget deficits - I personally am not currently having trouble affording my $10 a month in garbage fees.