tip_of_month
Tip of the Month - September 2007
As published in the Lafayette Today newspaper.
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Food scrap recycling started in Lamorinda on September 1st! This is an innovative new program offered by the Contra Costa County Solid Waste Authority, that allows you to put all types of food scraps in your green yard waste bin – along with your regular yard waste – for weekly pickup.

foodscrapcontainer2
This is a tremendous opportunity to reduce the amount of garbage you are sending to nearby landfills. About 20% of all residential waste in California is food scraps and in 2005, just the Lamorinda communities sent more than 8,000 tons of food scraps to local landfills. If you do the math on this, it means that by utilizing this new program, a family of four in Lamorinda can prevent more than 1000 pounds of food scraps from becoming rotting garbage in a landfill, and instead become valuable compost for farmers.

Besides reducing the volume of garbage sent to landfills, you also help prevent global warming. When food scraps and other organic material rot, it produces a potent greenhouse gas called methane. Methane is over 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

Utilizing this new program is very simple. First, you store food scraps in the container that you received in August (or any other suitable container). Second, you dump your food scraps into your green bin when the container is full or prior to your weekly garbage pickup.

Just about any food scrap can be diverted from the garbage including: table scraps, fruit and vegetable scraps, meat scraps, cheese and dairy scraps, eggshells, coffee grounds and tea bags, breads/grains/pasta, floral trimmings, and even soiled paper towels and napkins.

The key is to explain to everyone in your family how important this is, and to catch yourself when you’re about to scrape food into the garbage, and instead put it into your new food scrap container. It might take a couple months to get everyone in the habit, but it’s worth it.

For more information about how the new food scrap recycling program works:
http://www.wastediversion.org/foodscrapsprogram.htm

To read success stories about how residents in Lafayette are reducing their waste and living more sustainably:
http://www.sustainablelafayette.net/




pdflink to PDF of Lafayette Today that included article on page 10