Have your food served fresh and compostable

Three Queen Anne quick-serve restaurants are participating in Seattle Public Utilities’ Green Eats Week program, a week-long promotion through their food and compost program that highlights several Seattle-area eateries that are implementing customer collection of leftover and compostable and recyclable ware and packaging. “It’s not garbage anymore,” the organizers said in a press release this week. The program kicked off this past Wednesday, October 21 when a group of hungry middle schooler

Green-Up your life! Start a compost pile…even in your freezer.

By Kirsten Bokenkamp Did you know that in the United States, the average person throws away around 100 pounds of food scraps per year? According to the USDA, “just over a quarter of the country’s food — about 25.9 million tons — gets thrown in the garbage can every year.” But food is biodegradable, and decomposes in the same manner no matter where we throw it out, right? Wrong. While we should all try to throw away less food, composting what we do toss-out reduces the impact on the env

Mandatory Composting Begins in San Francisco Today

Beginning today, the city of San Francisco will require both businesses and residences to compost food scraps and biodegradable products or risk a fine for not properly sorting their garbage. While other cities require recycling service and participation, the law, which Mayor Gavin Newsom signed into effect in June, is the first nationwide to require the collection of food scraps and other compostables. A study by the Department of the Environment found that 36 percent of what San Francisco

Mandatory Composting Begins Wednesday

It's time to haul out those handy, dandy slop buckets, boys and girls. Starting tomorrow all residents and businesses in San Francisco will be required to start composting or face fines for improperly sorted garbage. Keep an eye open for the arrival of green bins alongside your blue and black bins in which you can dump anything that used to be alive along with coffee filters, greasy old pizza boxes, yard trimmings, and a plethora of other fine compostables that will be rotted down into

A Week Without Garbage: My Visit to the Landfill

My Week Without experiment is soon to end. Read about my adventures with Ziploc bags , lunchboxes , and cellulite-removing coffee grounds , or just find out what I’m up to here . For the past five days, I’ve monitored my every move so I don’t wind up with garbage. (Success? Questionable. I have a Ziploc bag that’s starting to get grungy, a gum wrapper, a plastic tuna cup, and a paper towel I’m convinced will be reused sometime soon.) This afternoon, I headed to the joint that makes my tra

Next Page »