Everyone knows we should recycle plastic, glass, aluminum and
paper--or at least, we know we're supposed to. But for leftover Chinese takeout
and other kitchen scraps, which make up around 30% of our residential garbage
stream, there are usually only two options: do the messy work of making compost
for the backyard garden--or toss the glop down the disposal or into the
trash.
Deep-green San Francisco isn't the only city to offer curbside
food-scrap recycling. Across the bay, Alameda County--which includes
Berkeley--also recycles organic waste from residences and restaurants, and in
Seattle, the massive Cedar Grove recycling facility handles 40,000 tons of food
waste a year. Toronto has the most extensive organic recycling program in North
America, and Portland, Ore., is considering adding curbside food-scrap
pickup.
It's still a rare service in the rest of the U.S.--less than 3%
of the more than 30 million tons of organic waste we produce annually is
recycled. "This represents a great opportunity in the world of waste," says Kate
Krebs, executive director of the National Recycling Coalition. "We just think
about this stuff as garbage, but there's so much we can do with it."
Food scraps are a recent focus for recyclers in part because,
unlike glass and plastic, organic waste will decompose once it's put in the
ground. But that becomes a problem in municipal landfills. As buried food breaks
down in these oxygen-free environments, it produces methane, a greenhouse gas
that has a warming effect 23 times as potent as carbon dioxide. Global methane
emissions from garbage are estimated to be as high as 70 million metric tons a
year. By recycling organic waste--composting it--methane emissions are
eliminated.
Financially, organic recycling is a no-brainer. It's cheaper in
many areas to recycle food waste than to consign it to valuable landfill space,
and the compost can be sold as organic fertilizer. (San Francisco brews a
variety of compost recipes from its waste and sells them to more than 200 local
vineyards.) But first you need to get citizens on board. In San Francisco, about
half its residents participate in the curbside program, along with thousands of
restaurants. The key is getting over what Robert Reed of Norcal Waste Systems
calls the "ick factor"--the fear that leaving food in a curbside bin will lead
to bad smells and marauding rodents. But that problem can be solved with
biodegradable bags, and ultimately putting food scraps out for recycling
shouldn't be any different from leaving it out for the garbage truck.
THE PROCESS
A New Life for Leftovers
Food waste makes up about 30% of the average home's garbage, but
unlike glass and plastic, most of it ends up in landfills. Here's how San
Francisco and other cities are turning these scraps into fertilizer and reducing
greenhouse-gas emissions along the way
1 PICKUP Some West Coast cities allow residents to put food
waste in recycling bins for curbside pickup
2 PREPARATION Magnets and grinders remove metal and other
inorganic waste mixed in with the food scraps
3 COMPOST The material is compressed, and bacteria help speed
decomposition
4 MATURATION Gore-Tex covers help limit odors as the compost
goes through the aeration process
5 DELIVERY The finished compost is sent to nearby farms to be
used as an alternative to chemical fertilizer
Ricanthony@no.address
RichardAnthonyAssociates.com
San Diego,
California