San Francisco Has Compost Fever

The city of San Francisco announced the latest of its many statistics on recycling participation: The city’s residents and businesses have composted 620,000 tons of organic material in the past 10 years.

San Francisco offers curbside residential composting through its green cart program, and earlier this year passed a law requiring residents to compost. The city has targeted a 75 percent landfill diversion goal by next year, an effort that supports its goal of becoming zero waste by 2020.

The U.S. EPA estimates that each American throws away an average of 1.3 pounds of food scraps daily. Photo: Amanda Wills, Earth911.com

Recology, the company that handles San Francisco’s curbside recycling and composting programs, estimates that almost 200,000 additional tons of food waste are not composted in the city annually.

“We should never throw peelings, leftovers, coffee grounds or anything else we can compost in the trash,” said Mike Sangiacomo, Recology CEO. “Instead, place all materials that can be composted in a green collection cart. That is a direct and highly effective way to help protect the environment.”

The EPA estimates that yard waste makes up almost 20 percent of our annual municipal solid waste, and food scraps account for another 13 percent. This means that the material used in compost accounts for basically one-third of what ends up in landfills.

Composting also produces nutrient-rich soil that can be used to promote plant growth. In many cases, cities that collect organic waste from residents will offer the composted soil back at little to no cost.

The City of San Francisco says there are approximately 300 community and university composting programs currently operating in the U.S.