San Francisco Compost Law

I did some research on this so I could be in compliance with the new city law (I live near Fillmore St. in Japantown/Lower Pac Heights). After some surfing around the web, I discovered worm composting which is actually really cool. A worm composting bin is a really cool and fun way to eliminate not just food waste, but junk mail, old newspapers, and more from your garbage bins.

written by Composting , October 20, 2009

Composting is not as "green" as most people think. It is impossible to keep oxygen supplied to all parts of a large pile, particularly during the peak period of oxygen demand. Some methane is inevitably generated representing about 2-3% of the carbon. That does not sound like much but when you factor in the fact that methane is 21 times as potent as carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas it does matter. It might be better than emitting methane from a landfill, but its not the best solution. If that compost is used as a fertilizer it has a "carbon footprint" 14 times higher than a typical synthetic source of nitrogen. If San Francisco really wants to be "green" it would do something like the anaerobic digester that Palo Alto is considering. Composting just wastes the energy in the food scraps while a digester would generate a substantial amount of clean energy. They have done the hard work of collecting this potential energy source, why not harness it?
written by Steve Savage , October 21, 2009