For 10 years, San Francisco has been decreasing its carbon footprint by diverting 70 percent of its trash from landfills through a composting program known as the “Fantastic 3” system. The idea behind “Fantastic 3” is simple but extremely effective. Residents sort their refuse into three 32-gallon carts: a blue one for recycling, a green one for yard trimmings and food scraps and a black one for trash. The carts are collected weekly. Food scraps and recyclable material are picked up for free, but the city has a pay-as-you-throw system (PAYT) based on how much trash each resident has hauled away. The idea is the more you recycle the less billable trash you will have.
The motivation for the project stemmed from a waste characterization study that showed people were throwing away 200,000 tons of waste each year and that 30 percent of that was food waste. This composting system is the largest in the United States and San Francisco has been able to curb a lot of its emissions by reabsorbing methane and ultimately ending up with viable products to sell to farms, golf courses and vineyards. San Francisco is looking to reach 75 percent recycling citywide by 2010 and remains one of the few cities to initiate citywide collection of food scraps for composting.
Source: BecauseAction.com
