I Left My Scraps in San Francisco

San Francisco, arguably the country's greenest city, is set to become the first in the nation to require residents to compost food scraps.

The legislation was proposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom and passed by the Board of Supervisors in June. The city's Department of the Environment has been handing out green bins to residents for several months now and offering tips on how to make the best use of them.

Even though the new law won't be enforced until Oct. 21st, it's already having an effect. The amount of composted material in the city has increased by 15 percent over the past few months, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

"It's definitely achieving the intended results -- people want to make sure they're in compliance," Jared Blumenfeld, director of the Environment Department told the Chronicle.

Under the new rule, all homes and businesses in the city must now have three color-coded bins for refuse: black for trash, blue for recycling, and green for compost. Anyone failing to sort their garbage as required will face warnings and eventually up to $1,000 in fines for non-compliance. The food scraps will be trucked out of the city to be processed, then sold to farms, vineyards and golf courses around the region.

San Francisco already diverts 72 percent of its waste away from landfills and incinerators and is aiming to divert all of it by 2020.

Now that's a goal we can get behind!

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.