Category: COMPOSTING_CN

There were good reasons Domingo Morales, a city kid from the Bronx, didn’t want to try his hand at urban farming. He was terrified of germs. He thought vegetables were disgusting. Plus, everyone knows the ground in New York City is shot through with lead.

If you have a yard, you can compost easily. If you don’t, you can still compost in a small designated space. In California, you might hear people talking about composting more frequently. Why? Because a new law requires Californians to recycle their food scraps and other leftovers.

Sometimes she’d just toss a bell pepper into the bushes, figuring it would decompose and feed the greenery. But that wasn’t a comprehensive solution. Then she tried washing unused veggies down the drain, knowing they’d be converted to reusable gas at the city’s sewage treatment plant. But massive downloads of greens, even ground up in a blender, clogged the drain in her Studio City apartment.

The howls on social media have been fierce since the state started mandating that food waste stay out of garbage destined for the landfill. But here’s a confession from a longtime composter: Putting food waste in a separate kitchen receptacle is a no-brainer that actually feels good because it’s such an easy way to improve the world.

So you know food waste should stay out of the landfill for the good of us all, but what if your jurisdiction doesn’t have a program in place yet, and you don’t have space for a traditional compost pile or garden?

Scaling up composting, tree-planting, and other sustainable agricultural practices in California could trap about a quarter of the state’s annual carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, according to a new report. These strategies for drawing down greenhouse gases are cheaper and easier to ramp up than technological alternatives, like devices that suck planet-heating CO2 out of the air, and should play a key role in the state’s efforts to address climate change, the report authors argue.

California kicked off 2022 by implementing a landmark composting law. Starting this month, everyone in the state is required to start composting food scraps and other materials in an effort to slash methane emissions. It’s a big change for many cities and consumers in the U.S.’s most populated state—but a lot of hurdles remain to meet California’s lofty composting goals.

Starting Jan. 1, instead of throwing that container of fuzzy strawberries into the trash, a new law will require Californians to recycle their food scraps and other leftovers.

Halloween is a time for playful frights. But a few days later, there’s another chilling sight: people’s garbage bins overflowing with pumpkins.