In the old days, trash was trash and as long as it wasn’t cluttering the place up, you didn’t worry so much about where it was going. These days we’re more aware. In the LA/OC area, you can often get residential recycling (and sometimes green waste for compost) along with your trash pickup, and malls and other areas often have bins for aluminum cans and glass/plastic bottles.
San Francisco goes a step further, with not just trash and cans/bottles, but trash, recycling (all), and compost. More importantly, they’re labeling the “plain” trash as landfill. It makes you think about where the trash is going, and a bit more likely to separate it so that things are a bit less messy and wasteful in the long run.
But for the short term, it really takes a while to figure out which bin to put your trash in.
YES!!!! It’s the single most thing that’s bumming me out the most about my move from LA to SF. I know I can (and need to) start composting, but not having a food scrap bin here is KILLING ME! LA/OC needs to take note. Thank you for this post!
Drives me nuts that we don’t have a compost bin at the office. 🙂
We’ve wanted to set up a compost bin at home, but there just isn’t room. The city does offer green waste collection, but it’s really geared toward yard waste for single-family residences with big yards — the kind of place that would have room for a compost bin anyway. At least we’ve got the curbside recycling pickup. It’s amazing how much packaging you can go through in a week of groceries.
I love the idea of labeling the plain trash as landfill.
Inspiring.