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It's time to haul out those handy, dandy slop buckets, boys and girls. Starting tomorrow all residents and businesses in San Francisco will be required to start composting or face fines for improperly sorted garbage. Keep an eye open for the arrival of green bins alongside your blue and black bins in which you can dump "anything that used to be alive" along with coffee filters, greasy old pizza boxes, yard trimmings, and a plethora of other fine compostables that will be rotted down into "nutrient-rich soil that helps produce the organic food and wine that San Francisco is famous for." Blessed be!
Don't have a slop bucket of your own in which to dump the scraps you'll be hauling out to the all-you-can-eat rat buffet out back? No problem. SF Recycling is offering free decorative kitchen pails to all SF residents. Contact them to get one of your very own. Happy composting!
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Bring on the fines. The fucking nanny state stops here.
We are all garbage can users! Somos todos usuarios de las cajas de basura!
wow they even compost meats. Cool.
If it starts to smell it's because of anaerobic bacteria. Just shake it up to air it out. You can also add dry leaves to soak up the moisture.
I take out my tiny compost bin 2x a week and take out my larger garbage bin maybe every 2-3 weeks because it accumulates so slowly. If you think that composting is any more attractive to rodents/cockroaches/ants than combined garbage, you are wrong. It actually produces /less/ disgusting garbage by separating the rotting food/organic material from the general trash/recycling (and it goes to a good use. Black Gold, baby, BLACK GOLD!)
I've been calling my landlord every 2-3 months for over a year to get composting at our building and still don't have anything. I also contacted sfrecycling and had them contact him. I hope he gets fined, but then he'll just pass that cost onto us.
I guess that is what you get for renting from the remnants of North Beach mafia.
My girlfriend was actually quite insane over this before. After asking our landlord for a green compost bin when we moved in he said he didn't have space for one so she'd still save our compost and then hunt around the neighborhood on Sunday nights and dump it into the bins of various neighbors.
About two weeks ago or so though we suddenly had a green bin out front and a small stacks of little kitchen-counter bins with rolls of biodegradable bags sitting in the lobby for each apartment. I guess he somehow found a way to make it fit when the city made it mandatory.
I honestly don't care either way. As has been mentioned the garbage company is just making money selling our compost and recycling which they collect for "free" (you pay for larger black bins, but never for blue or green). That's why they got so bitchy about recycling "thieves": because they were taking their potential profit and they didn't like the competition. Considering you're already paying CRV on bottles and cans I don't know why it's such a hardship to just save them yourself and then trade them in for the refund every couple of months. It's not especially hard to find a place that pays CRV.
Can we all chip in for a webcam that'll monitor the Great Green Gavin's recycle bins?
Oh HELL yes.
We do the following which makes keeping the compost in a city apartment really doable.
We open up the tops of milk and oj containers (after ripping out the plastic spout if they have one) and place all our compostable items in that.
We then keep that in the freezer, taking it out when we need to add something else to it.
We also do the same with disposable coffee cups, take out containers etc..
Then once a week we take the whole frozen mass down to the big green bucket.
It's kept our garbage from smelling, gets rid any potential fly or smell issue and makes the hole thing less goopy when bringing it down to the compost bucket.
You really think everyone has the time and patience to do that? Pre-compost garbage in the FREEZER?
We pay garbage fees (some of the highest in the nation) for our garbage to be taken away. Those who wish to go through this extra hassle should be more than welcome to do so, but making it mandatory is too much, for very little benefit (and NO cost savings to the customer).
Wrong - AJ. We pay to have garbage hauled to the hinterlands. The compost - we sell. In theory, if Sunset Scavenger has a better bottom line, the costs for garbage removal should go down (maybe I should say - "go up slower").
That said, I think on this topic people respond to carrots better than sticks. Raise the trash collection cost by N dollars, and have an annual rebate based on actual results. That way there is an actual financial incentive to reduce waste into the trash bin (AND to stop recycling thieves).
my freezer has shelves, so milk/oj containers wouldn't fit.
Wow, you freeze your compost. I couldn't think a bigger waste of resources if I tried and no better way to offset any benefits of composting in the first place.
=v= If the freezer's running anyway, it will run more efficiently the fuller it is. The issue becomes how much you open and close the door.
Freezing it is overkill anyways. It doesn't smell unless you keep it around inside for weeks.
Just like recycling, if we compost, the city sells the compost for $$$$ while we the citizens pay higher trash bills.
Fuck it, compost it yourself and sell the stuff. Let's be like those crazy recycling bin raiders!
Someone enterprising should provide competitive service to this double screw the city i running which at the very least take our primo compost away for free in order make and sell exceptional fertilizer. Then there might be some incentive for people to do it.
Good luck getting the hillbilly royalty in my building to comply. We've had a composting bin available for at least one year, but they still insist on tossing their crap out in one bag - when they use a bag at all. That means that bottles and paper end up in the garbage bin along with food scraps; they're too busy to contribute to the environment. Having an off-property landlord and an invisible management company makes keeping tabs on these louts impossible.
Why is this your problem? Compost your own trash, and leave the neighbors alone. (Unless of course they are leaving their trash on your doorstep, or putting mixed trash in the green bins, but that seems awfully unlikely.)
If someone is fined, it will be the landlord, not you.
I beg to differ. I think if the landlord gets fined, then that cost will be passed onto ALL renters, not just the ones blowing off the law.
nbsonn - you have once again flunked economics. The landlord can in fact TRY to pass along the cost to the renters, but if he raises the rent, he might lose a tenant. In fact if he doesn't lose a tenant, he was underpricing the apartment in the first place - savor the fact you've been ripping off your landlord all along!
Once again failed? How is that possible to have a first fail be multiple? Maybe you failed math.
But anyway, it would be in his/her interest to push tenants out because most are locked in rent control. So maybe the landlord can't pass it along because of that, but if they could, then they'll have an open apt to rent at a higher rate. And I'm pretty much paying market rate right now away, so I'm not winning that game.
Once again failed? How is that possible to have a first fail be multiple? Maybe you failed math.
Touche'
I always wonder how they trust every single resident to not put weed killers and other poisonous stuff in the composting bin, there are a lot of really stupid people out there.
Another brilliant idea from the idiots at City Hall
cry moar, neocon.
before composting , liquid fertilizer can be instantly extracted from waste www.urbanfarmsorganic.com
About aeration, it's the design of the counter top composter that can prevent anaerobic conditions (and fermentation, odors and flies). There's always the smell-free alternative to compost: vermicasting. Earthworms (in a properly designed container) ingest waste and produce an odor-free and relatively dry material, useful to plants.
The idea of making your own (compost and vermicast) is not so bad, since if you vermicast waste in your kitchen, as you produce it, you don't cause odors (liek fro a composting cannister). A properly designed vermicaster requires 22 days to process material, and it can be continuous flow process.
Next will come the practice of apartment micro-gardens, roof top gardens, and neighborhood edible landscapes to find an outlet to the compost. It sounds good to me! It does cause some to put down the French fries and TV remote, so there will be protests. It still sounds good to me :)
You are aware that (a) if you compost and recycling you need a smaller trash service size (that is, you can pay less for your service because you can ask for ), and (b) the compost and recycling subsidizes the cost of landfilling (which is only going to keep going up as we run out of space to throw crap away).
See here for example: http://www.sfrecycling.com/residential/rates.php?t=r
If you consistently have less than 20 gallons of refuse (not counting compost or recycling properly sorted in their bins), then you actually pay less.
So, yes, you can go try to find someone willing to pay you much (if any) for your measly amount of compost, go ahead and try. But at least with the waste companies, they can do this in bulk and actually get some real money for it.
Also, darnit. sfist's comment posting hates me today. That was supposted to be in reply to comment #7
When you try and order a free kitchen counter bin (the 2 gallon) they ask for an account number. If you live in an apartment building, you don't have an account of your own and can't order it. Lovely.
Anyone know a way around this? Getting my landlord to give up any kind of account information will be akin to pulling out his teeth.
I really wish this was viable, but in high-density apartment buildings, especially those that rent to mainly non-english speaking and lower income people, this is just going to be a huge failure complete with more roaches and more mice problems than we already have. In my building, it's difficult for many of the tenants to figure out how to deal with the recycling that we only have 2 bins for 109 apartments and that only goes out once a week. I fear the roach influx that this will create.
I'm not sure mine is a two gallon bin -- it's one of those green ones with mesh sides that you use a compostable bag in -- but I have an extra (like this http://www.sfrecycling.com/images/compost_bin.jpg). For some reason when I moved in there were two. I doubt anyone is counting them. Want one?
Moreover, for that many residents, it doesn't sound like your landlord has the right level of service. I don't know who you complain to, given your landlord apparently is non-responsive...
There was a box of composting containers sitting at the front of our building today when I walked out to the bus stop at noonish.
=v= What a bunch of whiners. I've somehow managed to compost for the last 30 years, even when living in small Brooklyn apartments. It's not rocket science.
Good for you! And you can keep doing that, all you want, even in the absence of a government mandate. So why impose your views on others?
Ah, the mandating of a green lifestyle - a logical conclusion. Get ready to report me to the garbage police. I already sort my cans and bottles from the garbage and for me, that is more than enough. You want to compost, more power to ya.
I draw the line at anyone telling me not to toss my trash in the trash and get it out my my apartment nightly. Fuck that. Wait until the ants and roaches invade and the impending backlash.
Would it really be THAT MUCH HARDER to sort it and toss the trash in the trash can and the compost scraps in the green bin????
Geez.
I think I mentioned that I have zero interest in thinking so hard about my trash. They got me sorting cans and bottles from plastic and paper. For me, that is enough.
Do whatever you want, my scraps and garbage go in a little safeway bag each night and tossed in the big garbage bin.
People like you will be first against the wall when it comes time to clear up real estate to make room for more landfills.
People like me won't have roaches and ants vying for space in my tiny apartment. This whole green movement has officially gone off the rails. "Mandatory composting" my ass.
You idiot, composting doesn't change the quantity or overall composition of your garbage output. If you don't have roaches and ants now then dividing your trash into two containers isn't going to attract them. If anything it makes your overall refuse situation better because you can take the organic stuff out as often as you want in smaller quantities instead of however often you take the trash out now. Pretty much the only thing left in your regular trash will be the non-recycleable kinds of plastic.
You know the axiom "a drop of poison spoils a barrel of wine?" By mixing organic, decaying food trash in with non-organic, inert trash, you make a larger amount of trash appealing to pests. Just sayin (pretty much the same thing the person above me said :)
The next thing you vigilant green yahoos will be telling me is that I can't wipe my ass or flush my shit down the toilet because baby monkeys in Peru drink that water and who could possibly shit in a toilet anymore.
Get ready for your SF government mandated waterless potty's so they can collect your turds and grow spinach and turnip. Call me all the childish names you can think of, but it's a long slippery slope and I'm not on it.
I also find it amazing that as self centered, cliquish and isolationist as most people in SF truly are, everybody seems to have this really bad habit of telling everybody else what to do and how to live.
You want to compost, go right ahead. More power to ya.
I don't want to and have zero intention of doing so.
Great argument buddy.
The only way my chintzy, absentee landlord will provide a composting bin is if I threaten him with "it's the law," so thank you SF.