I left my compost in San Francisco

If San Franciscans can do it we all can certainly do it. The city just pasted a resolution that asks, not really asks since a small fine will be imposed if someone doesn't comply by 2011, their citizens to put all their compost material into a third bin provided by the city.  

To dispel any notion that this is some sort of socialist plot to ask people to do something that is not for their individual short term gain and also that somehow is related to Obama's campaign promise to keep our the country's economy from collapsing, consider what happens to food scraps and plant clippings in our landfills. Methane.  Methane is very very bad stuff. It is 20 time worse of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.  Greenhouse gasses cause global warming which is suffocating our earth and really pissing off the polar bears and every other living organism, including humans, not to mention possibly eventually making our home, the earth,  no longer inhabitable.  This eventuality might sound a bit far fetched to you so please read my blog from the 20th of July which lists a few of the known effects of global warming.

The people and city of SF walk the talk.  They have 2020 as their goal for zero waste. Every city on the planet should have the same goal.  Reducing or eliminating methane is not the only benefit of eliminating landfills. 

A June 2008 report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a group focused on environmentally sound community development, said a zero waste approach is one of the fastest, cheapest and most effective ways to protect the climate. Cutting waste sent to landfills and incinerators would be like closing 21 percent of U.S. coal-fired power plants, the report said.

By the city's count, it currently diverts 72 percent of its waste, best in the nation. If recyclables and compostables going into landfills were diverted, the city's recycling rate would jump to 90 percent.

Lets hear it for the people by the bay.

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