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Thank God for garbage disposals. Seriously. On your knees. Because Mayor Gavin Newsom just signed a ruling calling on all San Franciscans to compost their eggshells, coffee grounds, apple peels, dead roses and other food rubbish and garden clippings. While city officials will give residents time to adjust to storing their waste in a green bin, they "could eventually start levying fines of $100 on rubbish recidivists." (Thankfully, many residents are now too cash-strapped to afford real, non-prepackaged food, so many of you don't have to worry. Yay, hunger!) If you recall, the Board of Supes OK'd the country's toughest composting law earlier this month.
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Do I have to compost my rotten corpses? Because I thought it was ok to leave them in the basement.
I'll hold judgement 'til I see the bins. If they are anything like the ginormous recycling bins they gave us to replace the reasonably-sized blue boxes I'll be seriously annoyed. Whoever designs these things needs to take stroll through a typical SF flat and get a sense of the fact that most of us don't have garages or porches (or anywhere) to store things that big and smelly.
Gavin Newsom can kiss my ass. I'll be composting on the front lawn of his multimillion dollar mansion, flies and gnats included.
Right on the front lawn, eggshells and all. What a pompous, arrogant dickhead.
Share some for your Supervisor
What about all of my stems and seeds?
Once again, SF plows ahead with some Big Idea without thinking it through, and of course without adequately informing people how to conform to this new way to issue tickets - oops I mean "save the earth."
My building, like many is from the early 1930s and doesn't have a garbage disposal. There is also nowhere inside I plan on having a compost pile. Nor is there really enough space for I and other residents to dump our eggshells and coffee grinds in our building -the existing bins are so huge they barely fit in the side space in our building.
Thanks again to Green Gavin and the Board of Goofervisors for another pain in the ass law. But hey! It'll make for great mail pieces and press releases kthxbai.
Sec. 1910 allows an exemption if there is inadequate space for containers, or allows contiguous properties to share containers. Within your apartment, I'm sure you can find room for a small trash receptacle.
Written by someone who clearly doesn't actually cook with REAL food. Prepackaged crap is much more expensive then real vegetables. I really hate your ignorance.
I find it blissful, actually.
I'm talking Kraft Marroni & Cheese, Hormel Chili cans, etc. -- meals that cost around $.99, you pretentious derfwad.
DERFWAD!! I love it. Oh, and I can vouch that Brock knows a thing or two about cooking with REAL food.
"derfwad" is my new favorite word. It replaces "asstard" as my former favorite made up word amalgamation.
for future reference, "neologism."
WACK ATTACK!!! Screw swine flu, the things growing in my compost bin are about as frightening as it gets. I wouldn't get near that thing if I was submitted to waterboarding. Seriously, the entire thing is filled with a pelt of gray hairy looking mold that grows from the bottom to the top!
I'm sure the garbage drivers are really gonna spend time opening bags and sorting through them looking for banana peels.
I want to see the look on y'all's faces after your food composting bucket has been sitting out in the hot sun for the better part of a week. We tried that out here in the sticks, WM handed out little covered buckets you were supposed to keep in the kitchen and dump into your green recycle bin periodically.
We tried; after two days the candida, aspergillus, and other molds in the bucket resembled the Amazonian rain forest. The bucket went into the garage and is now used for odd gardening jobs. We still save and put watermleon rinds and corn cobs in the green can when we can.
I actually hear the the solid waste authority is gung ho for food disposal in your kitchen disposer. They filter out the organics anyway, and more food in the sludge means they have more feedstock for their cogeneration facility.
My biggest worry is that the compost bins won't be properly maintained in my building (and adjacent buildings) and we'll get vermin. It also seems strange to force people to compost... I can see rewarding people who CHOSE to do it, but punishing people who don't just seems wrong.
That said, I plan to do it when our building gets a bin. It would cut down on our trash a lot.
the housemates and I have maintained a compost bucket for over two years and very, very, very rarely is there ever an issue of smell, mold, bugs or the like. a small tupperwear container lined with a green compost bag is stored on the floor, out of direct sunlight. every few days, the bag is full and we take it outside. rinse the container with vinegar water and let air dry. what is so hard about that?
while I'm no fan of citing those who choose not to participate in this "program," I'm having a problem understanding why most of the folks I've seen speak out against this express such disdain for keeping a compost bucket. it's not difficult or much of an inconvenience.
seconded. It's very easy and clean, so there shouldn't be any whining related to that. Citing people for throwing onion skins in the trash...well that's just hare-brained.
New things are scary and bad.
I just think it's time for local government to do something FOR me instead of TO me. You've got my tax revenue, SF. You do the sorting and composting if you want. If you want more money, increase a consumption tax.
I'm not going to compost. Hell, I don't even recycle. I think it's useless and doesn't have a meaningful impact on the environment versus factory farms, oil refineries and plastics manufacturing.
And, in the end, I really don't care what kind of planet is left behind after I'm gone.
i've composted for two years. at first had a prob with fruit flies but then got a container with an airtight lid. its not that hard and as long as you aren't a dirty slob i don't see what the problem is. the people who are complaining are just lazy and don't want to change their habits. criticize the gavin for his lack of involvement in local politics, but not being environmentally responsible.
But this isn't environmentally responsible. It's pure theater, on the backs of residents who don't have time during the business day to go to the meetings and tell the supervisors to cut the crap. And the out of state donors eat this up.
I'll just ignore it.
The Board of Supervisors has out-of-state donors?
The candidate for governor who is crowing about this.
Anyone who wants to learn about hardcore composting should check out the latest issue of Make Magazine.
And yes, it does involve shitting into a bucket.
You make it sound so appealing.
In a related story, the retarded monkeys at PETA got all bitchy about Obama swatting a fly. Maybe Gavin and the Stuporvisors can join up with the other retarded monkeys in Berkeley and come up with some sort of condemnation on behalf of defenseless flies.
You know, the sort of thing that gets the work of the people done. Unbelievable.
aw, shoot. does this mean we're supposed to leave the inevitable fruit flies untouched?
SAN FRANCISCO, and this nut Gavin wants to be Governer ???? What a Joke SF and California is .... your economy is in the crapper laying off teachers cops and firemen ...and this is what the "leaders" come up with , God XXXX / Obama help you!
Well, you may be intrigued to know that there is an economic rationale. Waste isn't cheap. It currently costs San Francisco $18.60 per ton for landfill and it generates on average around 500,000 tons of nonrecycled, noncomposted waste. That's $9.3 million per year of taxpayer dollars. Unfortunately, S.F. is expected to max out its landfill contract by 2014-2015. I do believe landfill rates have gone up significantly since the contract was negotiated in 1988, so expect some sticker shock. That also doesn't include the "tipping fees" for pick up and transport, which raises to cost per ton much higher (I read $50/ton is around average. If so, that makes SF's annual bill $25 million.).
Municipal composting isn't cheap either, but it is actually cheaper than landfilling (according to the books I skimmed on waste management - thanks Google Books!). It also produces useful products that can be resold, like agricultural compost and erosion control material.
I don't understand what the hubbub is other than some people just don't like being told what to do and/or are just lazy fucks and/or think that the exact same shit they've been throwing into the trash can is going to magically smell worse if they throw it into a separate container _next_ to the trash can and/or can't be bothered to do a Google search on municipal composting economics and/or read the actual ordinance.
We PAY for this in our gold-plated, monopolistic, no-bid garbage fees. We could save a lot more via competitive bidding.
Could be. Do you happen to know what SF currently pays for tipping fee? I couldn't find it, just some national averages. If we knew what SF pays, and knew the average difference between municipalities who have bid and no-bid contracts, then we could compare it to the costs per ton for municipal composting. Aren't there supposed to be, like, journalists who figure this shit out? Oh, right. They're all getting canned. Dammit.
Four God hugs to you too spysea! Say hello to the folks at FR for me :-)
Saving bioscraps for composting is NOT that hard. We use an airtight container picked up at Target/Walmart and normally used for storing cereal; it lives behind the main trashcan and cost maybe $5.
Sure, I might need to make a trip down to the green bin twice a week (vs. once a week) but I wouldn't keep meat cuttings in my MAIN kitchen trashbin for an entire week anyway -- that'd be too stinky.
-mm
Composting is a choice, not a mandate someone can issue. My friend does it and having been HACCP certified, I can state that it is clearly an unsanitary practice as it can attract bugs and rodents to the kitchen. And to respond to one of the previous posters, yes, some of us don't appreciate being told what to do and what to do with it every second of the day.
First they wanted us to separate the recyclables from the trash and that seemed to make sense, then segment and sort the recyclables of glass from plastic and now glass from plastic from egg shells. Go hug your goddamn tree and leave me alone. Enough already. There is a point at which rational, normal people tell the rest of you to go hop off a cliff.
Flame on! That's BS. It's the exact same garbage that you put in your kitchen trash. It's no more bug/rodent prone than before. Putting it in a separate container a mere foot from where it was before does not magically make it more nasty.
An important distinction must be made here - this is not mandatory composting. This is mandatory collection of compostable material. Actual composting takes weeks and if done improperly can be unhygenic. This is just a compostable pick-up - the actual composting is done at a large-scale site, not in your kitchen.
There is a point where rational, normal people tell you to go visit a landfill and start being responsible for your own @&$^% trash, or visit one of the many nations that have mandatory municipal composting programs for a clue.
I use those safeway plastic bags and toss my trash out every night into a covered bin in the basement which is picked up each morning. Keeping a container on my counter with rotting scraps is bullshit progressive white noise and thanks, but no thanks. If you have the time to pick through my trash, go right ahead along with the nutjobs and homeless who find my table scraps so appealing.
I am not. Not now, not ever. Go yell at a cloud or do something more productive.
Then put the food scraps in a compostable bag and toss it out every night along with the rest of your trash, genius.
If, for whatever asinine reason, you still object, then I would _love_ to hear your suggestion on what to do about the 500,000 tons of landfill produced by SF per annum.
You seem to have lots of extra time on your hands. How about you swing on by and separate my composts from aluminum and glass and plastic and assorted baggies, tissues and whatever the hell else is so very important to you. While you're at it, can you sort my brown turds from my light brown turds and not so brown turds?
Everything goes into one bag from now on with a clubbed baby seal. You environmentalist, poser assholes annoy me. Go save a freaking whale.
Weaksauce cop-out. At least try to make an argument besides "I hate environmentalism".
(And where do you live that you need to separate your plastics from glass? We don't need to do that in my neighborhood.)
oh great...now I'm in an online pissing match with a self righteous envirotard. enjoy composting and your eventual self induced shigella or e. coli. you have not changed my mind or habits one iota. everything goes into one bag and you can sift through it.
Ah, I love the internet. "I'm going to spout a really strong opinion, and when someone challenges it, I'm going to call them names and do everything but actually make an argument." Sorry, I mistook you for someone with a brain. I'll leave you to your intellectual masturbation. Ciao.
I'll probably get fined for having an empty compost bin, cuz I compost the stuff myself.
http://holierthanyou.blogspot.com/2009/04/vermiculture.html
I'm saving all the worm poop to smear on Spysea's car handle.
Ok I've been getting ready for this and the results personally are:
I use 90% fresh food so I have to have 2 bins to store my scraps.(I have no disposal)
I live in a studio apartment and the square footage those take up is greater than expected.
I get fruit flies despite tight fitting lids (possibly due to opening them 10x a day to deposit scraps)
I think my quality of life is going to be worse with another nasty cleaning job once a week and flies bothering me on a regular basis. Should we have to live directly with vermin to satisfy this law?
I also have a business that has mostly recycling as waste, With this law we can't put our lunches in the garbage can anymore. (it's compost) I wonder why I still have to pay for a regular garbage can that will sit empty at 50 dollars a month!!!!
I'm for composting, but they really messed up making it a fine based system instead of an incentive system which could have allowed us to pay less for garbage and allowed us to drop a can or two if we didn't need them.
It isn't recycled until it's made into something.