Composting Law Signed in California

Composting will Prevent Tons of Material from Going to the Landfill

Jun 29, 2009 Annie Spiegelman

Last week San Francisco's Mayor, Gavin Newsom, signed the first mandatory composting law in the U.S.A.

This is the most comprehensive recycling and composting legislation in the United States and the first time a law will require both businesses and residents to compost food scraps. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed new recycling and mandatory composting rules in a 9-to-2 vote. At the present moment, San Francisco is keeping 72 percent of recyclable material out of its landfill. A recent waste-stream analysis discovered that close to two-thirds of the city's garbage – half a million tons annually – could have been recycled or composted. The mayor believes this tougher law will prevent additional material from going to the landfill and will also create hundreds of green-collar jobs. And how about free fertilizer?

Compost as Fertilizer

Food scraps are mixed into a compost pile and in a few weeks these waste materials naturally turn into a high-grade organic slow-release fertilizer called compost. The final product is so nutrient-rich that it appears almost jet black in color. This compost will be used by the local farms and vineyards across the Bay Area. "We can barely keep up with the demand!" says Newsom. "It's black gold that is available for sustainable regional agriculture. It also improves our environment." The city already composts 400 tons of food scraps a day. Most of it goes to enriching the soil in Napa and Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, where there are many family farms and vineyards.

The Dangers of Food Scraps in the Landfill

Food scraps and other organic waste take up almost half of all landfill space in the US. More insidiously, they produce methane, a gas 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide and the second leading greenhouse gas emitted in the United States. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, landfill methane emissions are the largest source of anthropogenic (human-related) methane emissions in the US. Composting food scraps, instead of placing them in landfills, produces little to no methane because there is sufficient oxygen in the process.

"Recent studies show that farming one acre of land using conventional industrial methods releases 3,700 pounds of carbon into the atmosphere each year," said Newsom. "Farmed sustainably, with compost and cover crops, that same acre will put 12,000 pounds of carbon back into the earth."

How it Will Work

Under the new law, local businesses and residents will be issued three mandatory garbage bins: a black one for trash, a blue one for recyclables and a green one for compost.

"The new ordinance will help the city toward its goal of sending zero waste to landfills by 2020," said Jared Blumenfeld, director of the city’s Department of the Environment."The city’s most notorious recycling laggards tend to be owners of apartment buildings," Mr. Blumenfeld said. “We’re mainly focusing this new law at multitenant buildings; only 25 percent of those building owners provide recycling for renters.”

"I believe that composting will become second nature for Americans, just like sorting bottles and paper. It will take time, but I believe mandatory composting will spread across the country--improving the air we breathe and reducing our need for landfills," said the Mayor.

The copyright of the article Composting Law Signed in California in Environmentalism is owned by Annie Spiegelman. Permission to republish Composting Law Signed in California in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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