Recology San Francisco, Art at the Dump Artist in Residence Exhibitions: Work by Benjamin Cowden, Ian Treasure and Hannah Quinn
The Artist in Residence Program at Recology San Francisco will host an exhibition and reception for current artists-in-residence Benjamin Cowden, Ian Treasure, and student artist Hannah Quinn on Friday, May 17, from 5-9pm and Saturday, May 18, from 1-3pm. Additional viewing hours will be held on Tuesday, May 21, from 5-7pm. Please note the new Saturday hours and additional Tuesday viewing time. Music will be provided Friday night by dj Joshua Pieper and on Saturday The Insufferables will perform. This exhibition will be the culmination of four months of work by the artists who have scavenged materials from the dump to make art and promote recycling and reuse.
Benjamin Cowden: Lunar Cassowaries
The cassowary, a large flightless bird, serves as a point of reference for Benjamin Cowden’s series of kinetic sculptures. Cowden’s works explore motion, flight, and wind-propulsion via unlikely combinations of found materials. Cowden has modified kites, umbrellas, and wind sails to make wing-like forms, but much like the cassowary, these winged creatures don’t leave the ground. They do, however, move or respond to human interaction—often in surprising ways. Cowden has harvested motion sensors from outdoor lights and novelty candles, and in combination with windshield wiper motors, tent poles, fishing reel gears and his own skillfully designed circuits, has created works that not only use, but generate energy.
Cowden explains, “In a society so focused on energy consumption, it seems especially fitting to re-purpose the detritus of that consumption not only into works of art, but into devices which in turn create their own energy.” Cowden’s sculptures also prompt us to think about our relationship to the natural world. The crafting of bird-like forms from the waste stream in turn poses questions about the waste stream’s effects on actual birds and other animals. Assembled together his sculptures appear like residents of a sanctuary for the rarest and most unusual of creatures. But unlike the cassowaries which are truly endangered and whose future is uncertain, these mechanical beings made with objects from the waste stream are here to stay.
Cowden received his MFA in metalsmithing from Southern Illinois University at Carbondate. He is an instructor at the Crucible in Oakland and has been an artist-in-residence at the Appalachian Center for Crafts in Cookeville, Tennessee and at Monochrom in Vienna, Austria.
Ian Treasure: Road to Nowhere
Commonplace symbols and objects so ubiquitous in our lives that we hardly give them a second thought are the subject of Ian Treasure’s work. In his sculptures and installations he employs repetitive forms and modern mechanics in tandem with the playful use of time and duration. Works have an anthropomorphic quality, demanding our attention with sounds and movements filled with personality. Humor and surprise are key components, but works also have an element of poignancy and provide space for reflection on the complexities, as well as absurdities, of life.
In Treasure’s Road to Nowhere a small toy taxicab travels on a never-ending journey. Less a feel good road trip than an existential expedition, the taxi rides along a conveyer belt highway, following an infinite dotted line. Unlike a car, symbolic of individual exploration and freedom, the taxicab speaks to relinquishing or losing control of the journey—be it in our own lives or on a larger, societal level. When placed against the backdrop of the dump, it can serve as a metaphor for loss of control over our consumption and its environmental implications. Treasure’s other works include a group of trouble-maker school desks and a liberated drum snare.
Treasure received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and has been an artist-in-residence at the Djarassi Residency Artist Program in Woodside, California. He has participated in exhibitions in London, at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, and at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art in San Jose, California.
Hannah Quinn: Beyond the Bower
During her residency Hannah Quinn has created functional works that reference the traditions of craftspeople and home hobbyists, while also exploring utilitarian forms. Quinn has scavenged wood of all kinds—from a skateboard maker’s scraps to legs pulled from old tables and chairs—to play with the shapes of benches, stools, ladders and other simple, yet versatile objects.
A homemade stool has served as the model for Quinn’s own series of stools. Years of wear and repair visible in the old stool point to a time when furniture and household items were not disposable commodities, and illustrate how this basic object functioned within the life of those who used it. Quinn’s stools—50 identical forms out of construction-grade lumber scraps— illustrate the abundances of modern life and pose questions about mass-production vs. the homemade. Her stools also pay tribute to the original object’s maker and caretakers, and act as blank canvases for future lifetimes of use and repair.
Quinn, who is an undergraduate studying furniture design at the California College of the Arts, identifies one of the motivations behind her work as the desire to create objects that promote human interaction. Quinn will also exhibit small found items as scientific specimens, highlighting beloved tools and oddball objects found in the discards from home and professional workshops.
The Artist in Residence Program at Recology San Francisco is a one-of-a-kind program established in 1990 to encourage the conservation of natural resources and instill a greater appreciation for the environment and art in children and adults. Artists work for four months in studio space on site, use materials recovered from the Public Disposal and Recycling Area, and speak to students and the general public. Over ninety-five professional Bay Area artists have completed residencies. Applications are accepted annually in August.
When:
Reception-Friday, May 17, 2013, 5-9pm
Reception-Saturday, May 18, 2013, 1-3pm
Additional viewing hours-Tuesday, May 21, 2013, 5-7pm
Where:
Art Studio located at 503 Tunnel Ave. and Environmental Learning Center Gallery at 401 Tunnel Ave., San Francisco, CA
Admission is free and open to the public, all ages welcome, wheelchair accessible.
http://www.recologysf.com/AIR/nextshow.htm
The SF Great Compost Giveaway – Saturday April 6
The Great Compost Giveaway
5 Gallons Free
Saturday, April 6, 2013
8am – Noon
Bring Your Own Bucket!
THANKS FOR MAKING SAN FRANCISCO A LITTLE GREENER.
San Francisco is now 80 percent of the way to Zero Waste thanks to the recycling and composting you do every day.
In appreciation of your efforts, Recology is giving away 5 to 10 gallons of a gourmet planting mix made from food scraps and plant trimmings composted by San Franciscans.
Join us at one of the following locations to pick up your free compost!
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— Amphitheater Parking Lot
John F. Shelley Dr. at Mansell St.
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Parking Lot
850 Great Highway between Lincoln Way and Fulton St.
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900 7th Street at Berry St. (enter on Berry St.)
To register, visit: recology.eventbrite.com.
THIS IS A BRING YOUR OWN BUCKET EVENT!
The Great Compost Giveaway is an annual event hosted by Recology, the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department and the San Francisco Department of the Environment all working towards Zero Waste by 2020.
In partnership with:
San Francisco Recreation & Parks
San Francisco Department of the Environment
Compost collection is a good idea – 75 years in the making
Guest Blogger Robert Reed is the public relations manager for the Recology operating companies in San Francisco. Robert lives in San Francisco with his daughter August and their Boston Terrier Peanut, a.k.a. Cacahuète. This article appeared in Waste & Recycling News as a Guest View on March 4, 2013.
It is just as easy to put your coffee grounds in a compost collection bin, if your city permits, as it is to throw them in the trash. This simple act benefits the environment in multiple ways, is literally changing our industry, and, most importantly, supports the good health of you and your family members.
I know a bit about nutrition, but I cannot name one food that offers 10 health benefits. Yet I can easily list 10 benefits achieved through composting. Here are just a few: Compost returns nutrients and carbon to the soil, gives farmers a viable alternative to using liquid (or chemical) fertilizers, retains rainwater allowing farms to reduce irrigation and energy usage, and softens soil so plant’ roots can travel further and reach more nutrients.
Compost, particularly compost made from food scraps, is rich in nutrients because it is made from a diverse feedstock. In San Francisco’s urban compost collection program that feedstock includes leftover takeout from Chinese restaurants, pasta from North Beach, and, yes, coffee grounds from the many coffee shops across the city.
Compost made from food scraps stimulates microbial activity, which brings new life to soil. To help people better understand why that is important we publish an ad showing an apple core falling into a compost collection (green) bin. The headline on the ad says “Feed the soil. It feeds us.”
Recology, San Francisco’s homegrown recycling company, started collecting food scraps for composting in 1996. The city instructed us to roll the program out citywide in 2001. Customer participation was voluntary. In 2009 the Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance requiring “all properties” to participate, and today Recology collects 600 tons of food scraps and plants a day for composting.
Many cities and hundreds of universities have added food scrap compost collection programs, and the movement, for the reasons stated above and others, is gaining great momentum. The Washington Post told the story within the story on Feb. 3rd in their report titled “Composting efforts gain traction across the United States.”
Writer Juliet Eilperlin reported:
Environmentally minded city leaders have adopted “zero-waste” pledges, noting that traditional trash disposal not only wastes material that can enrich soil but accelerates climate change. Organic matter decomposing in landfills accounts for 16.2 percent of the nation’s emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Vermont, Connecticut and Massachusetts are all phasing in bans on putting commercial food waste in landfills.
It’s time to roll up our sleeves and really get after it. The EPA reports that Americans generate approximately 35 million tons of food scraps annually and of that total only 3 percent makes it back to the farm. The vast majority goes to landfills or incinerators.
Eilperlin insightfully noted these points: Major trash industry operators have sometimes fought government requirements to divert waste because they operate landfills. Many communities have contracts with waste incineration sites, making it harder to develop organic recycling sites. And the nation’s trash disposal system lacks the ability to process food waste on a large scale.
We need to permit more compost facilities and we need to utilize modern technology at those facilities. When we do that, more cities will be able to establish curbside compost collection programs and we will continue turning a negative (landfill emissions) into a positive (returning nutrients and carbon to local farms.)
Are people across the country really going to do this? On Feb. 13th, in his final state-of-the-city address, Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, announced “This spring we’ll launch a pilot program to collect curbside organic waste from single family homes in Staten Island for composting. If it succeeds, we’ll develop a plan to take it citywide.”
This represents a major shift.
Some of the best minds in American agriculture sounded a call, in a book published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, asking large cities to establish food scrap compost collection programs to send nutrients back to farms. When was the book published? 1938.
It has taken 75 years, but cities are responding, and people like it. We are becoming keenly aware of our environmental challenges. Composting at the curb gives us a way to participate in a program every day that makes a positive difference.
Waste engineers report that typically between 40% and 60% of the material cities send to landfill could instead be composted.
“Trashed,” a new film hosted by Jeremy Irons, visits landfills around the world, discusses nano ash that escapes from incinerators, and highlights San Francisco’s compost collection program.
In December “Trashed” received a lot of attention from the New York media, and Irons was asked “What can we do?” His response: “Find out where your garbage goes.”
That’s what the French call “une bonne idée” (a good idea.) Here’s another one: If you are not already doing it, start today. Compost.
The pit that you don’t see
It is safe to say that the work we’ve been doing to create alternatives to landfill disposal has forced a change in the traditional waste industry. And it’s an industry that badly needs to change.
One way that we’ve done this is to show people where their garbage goes, and what’s in it. We often take people on tours of our transfer stations, and show them what they think goes “away” after they leave their garbage on the curb. Most companies would never show the public what the folks at the Recology transfer station in San Francisco call “the Pit”.
Src: Rebuilding Together San Francisco via flickr
The Pit temporarily holds what goes into the garbage can before it’s transfered to a landfill. Most of it is recyclable or compostable. When we look at the pit, we feel the same sense of sadness that others feel when they’re exposed to it for the first time. There’s a lot of wasted material in there.
We don’t hide the Pit for a reason. What folks see in there is an important part of their education about recycling, composting and landfills. And we show it to them for another reason too: to show them what they’re not seeing when they look at the Pit. Fifteen to twenty years ago, the Pit saw about 3,000 tons of waste per day. Today, the number is 1,350. We’ve been able to do this through our partnership with every resident of San Francisco and the Department of the Environment, and the three-bin system that we created, which allows everyone to sort out their compostable and recyclable material from their garbage.
We participate in coastal and city-wide clean up days to make sure what can be recycled is recycled during those events, and try to inspire people to see garbage differently through our Artist in Residence program in San Francisco and GLEAN in Portland.
Of course, there will always be garbage as long as products are made to be disposable after a single use, and as long as that is true, we will need landfills. But, we hope that the landfills of the future are “inert”–meaning no recyclable and no compostable materials go there.
Coming up with new ways to prevent usable resources from being wasted is part of the joy in our jobs. For example, one of the employees at the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) in San Francisco came up with the idea to recover BART tickets that still had some value and to use the proceeds to support Friends of the Urban Forest and the San Francisco Food Bank.
We love that we get a chance to make a real, positive impact on the lives of people in the cities and towns where we work, and on resource conservation and the climate. It’s a tough and dirty job, but we are glad to do it.
Artist in Residence Exhibitions by Beau Buck and Karrie Hovey
Friday, May 18 & Saturday, May 19, 2012San Francisco Dump Artist in Residence Exhibitions: Location: 503 Tunnel Ave. San Francisco, CA 94134 Date/Time: Friday, May 18, 2012, 5pm to 9pm Admission is free and open to the public, all ages welcome, wheelchair accessible. http://www.recologysf.com/AIR The Artist in Residence Program at Recology San Francisco will host an exhibition and reception for current artists-in-residence Beau Buck and Karrie Hovey on Friday, May 18, from 5-9pm and Saturday, May 19, from 1-5pm. This exhibition will be the culmination of four months of work by the artists who have scavenged materials from the dump to make art and promote recycling and reuse. |
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Beau Buck: Honey |
 Beau Buck: Honey Beau Buck has cited identification with animals as an important component in his art, so it is no wonder that the work of bees producing honey is a metaphor for his creative process while at Recology. He has likened the materials in the dump to a nectar, a raw material waiting to be transformed, and he has indeed performed a bit of alchemy turning disparate fabrics and metals into cohesive artworks. Buck’s work conjures up notions of an earlier era—before answers to everything were available at our fingertips—a time filled with lore and a reverence for the unknown, tinged with romanticism and mysticism. Working with bits of scavenged fabrics, leather cut from boots, antique fur coats, worn denim and tattered Persian rugs, Buck has constructed a grouping of life-sized jackrabbits. Each rabbit takes on a distinct character, and this collection of desert drifters, fading beauties, and wily explorers seems gathered to silently lament an earlier era or the passing of a friend, each imbued with the histories and stories associated with the materials assembled to create it. “Each piece instructs me toward an understanding of what it means to be an artist, and where art belongs in our physical and digital world,” says Buck who moved to San Francisco from Philadelphia two years ago. Other work includes a romantic (or potentially claustrophobic), vine-covered structure made from windows and glass-paned doors which houses a small bench, and a series of cast lead feathers. Buck made molds of falcon feathers given to him by Recology’s falconer, Indigo, who uses birds of prey to scare away seagulls at the facility, then melted fishing weights and small pieces of pipe to cast leaden versions. The resulting silvery feathers take on atalisman-like quality as they are exhibited strung together, hanging in groups, like herbs drying to be used in an unknown ceremony. Buck holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and has exhibited on the East Coast and in California. |
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Karrie Hovey: groundcover |
 Karrie Hovey: groundcover During her residency at Recology, Karrie Hovey has made work that addresses the compulsion of humans to alter or manipulate the landscape, while also exploring her own interest in multiples and variations within multiple forms. From the deliberate clearcutting of forests and building of sprawling residential developments to the inadvertent melting of the polar icecap and creation of oceans of plastic resulting from our lifestyles and consumption practices, Hovey’s work alludes to this human urge to modify and meddle and its profound long-term impact on our natural environment. Working with the term groundcover, she has created art pieces that do indeed cover the ground—in this case the floor of the studio—and which suggest landscapes viewed from the air. Hovey has used the glass kiln in the art studio to melt a variety of scavenged, broken glass and has produced forms in glistening, arctic-like colors which have the appearance of melting ice. Like glass, another material in abundance at the facility is atex paint, and Hovey has poured it on flat surfaces, then once it has dried, has peeled it up and sliced it up into shapes and strips. lShe has woven the resulting new material creating grid-like forms that appear like pixels from our Google-mapped, manipulated landscapes. Working with discarded books, she has constructed a field of repeating chrysanthemum forms, and like the flowers which are sometimes associated with grief, this work can be seen as morning the loss of physical books while also suggesting the forests of trees used in their creation. Says Hovey, “as a research-based, site-specific installation artist, I am interested in how a manufactured or created space can destabilize our customary expectations of and interactions with our environment. My investigations have led me to explore the symbiotic relationship between the human landscape and the natural environment. I am intrigued by the impact of global trade, patterns of consumer culture, and the aftermath of our consumption.” Hovey received her MFA at San Francisco State University and has complete residencies in locations around the world, including China, Spain, the Netherlands, and France. The Artist in Residence Program at Recology San Francisco is a one-of-a-kind program established in 1990 to encourage the conservation of natural resources and instill a greater appreciation for the environment and art in children and adults. Artists work for four months in studio space on site, use materials recovered from the Public Disposal and Recycling Area, and speak to students and the general public. Over ninety-five professional Bay Area artists have completed residencies. Applications are accepted annually in August. |
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Directions to 503 Tunnel Ave.Directions from downtown San Francisco & East Bay Direction from The Peninsula Go north on Highway 101 and exit at the first “Candlestick Park” off-ramp. Stay in the left lane and take the first left toward the stop sign. Turn left onto Alanna Way and go under the freeway. At the next stop sign, turn right on Beatty Rd. Turn right on Tunnel Ave. Public Transit The “T” Third St. streetcar and bus lines 8x, 9, 9L, and 56 stop at Bayshore Blvd. and Arleta Ave. (three blocks away). The Caltrain “Bayshore Station” stop is directly across the street from our facility. |
Gearing up for Earth Day
March 31st was a busy day all around the world:
· We set a record-breaking Earth Hour at 8:30PM PST. (Asia took the lead.)
· SOLV, working with Western Oregon Waste (WOW, a Recology company) collected 44,000 pounds of trash from the coast.
· Despite the rain, around 3,000 San Franciscans came out with their buckets, bags, carts and coolers to pick up free compost at the Great Compost Giveaway.
Hayes Valley Farm was happy to host the Great Compost Giveaway, since it shares Recology’s values of zero-waste and community involvement. The farm employs permaculture–a whole systems design approach to growing food and restoring natural ecologies–to minimize inputs and upcycle local waste on its 2.2 acre site in the heart of San Francisco. The photos are from the Giveaway at Hayes Valley Farm.
Now, get ready!
Recology San Mateo County and the City of San Carlos will host the next Great Compost Giveaway event on Earth Day this month.
Three things you can do this week to make life better
Last week, temperatures reached 85 degrees in Chicago. So far, there have been eight days out of 26 where the temperature was nearly 80 degrees or higher. Eight days out of 26 is 30% of the days this month so far. We’re still in March, right? Remember Chicago, the windy city? The city where people don’t go to get away from the cold?
Whether you believe that the climate is changing or not, it’s undeniable that is very strange weather indeed. And whether you believe this strange weather will impact you personally or not in the days and years to come, it doesn’t hurt anyone to consider what you can do to reduce pollution.
All across the globe, people are preparing for this year’s Earth Day celebrations on April 22nd. Because that’s still more than a month away, we encourage you to do three simple things this week for clean air, clean water, trees, birds, fish, farmlands that are neighbor to you or that serve you, sooth you or feed you, and maybe even for yourself:
1. If you live in a community where food scraps and yard trimmings are collected for composting, please compost. Compost makes it possible for people who grow food and plants in healthy soil and reduce polluting gases that emerge from organic materials that decompose in landfills.
2. Turn off all non-essential lights in your house or office, or where ever you don’t need them on for one hour this Saturday as part of the Earth Hour. 8:30 PM Pacific Standard Time. It will save you a few bucks too.
3. Pick up a bucket of compost for your backyard, front yard, your plants or landscaping. You can meet your neighbors and other people who also like to garden or grow things. It’s free.
If you live in San Francisco, this Saturday morning from 8AM to 12PM you can get up to 5 gallons of free compost at the Great Compost Giveaway. San Francisco was recently named the greenest city in North America, having composted over 1 million tons of food scraps, plants and other compostable material through Recology’s green bin recycling program. To help you close the loop and reap the benefits of composting, we invite you to join us at one of four locations throughout the city.
We will be at Alemany Farm, the Ferry Plaza, McLaren Park and the parking lot of Ocean Beach.
Learn more about the Great Compost Giveaway and register for the free event at recologysf.com.
Communities partner to make sustainable organics recycling possible
An article in the December issue of MSW Management titled Rethinking Sustainable Organics included a quote from Henry Wallace, secretary of agriculture to President Franklin Roosevelt. The quote is:
“[n]ature treats the earth unkindly. Man treats her harshly. He over plows the cropland, overgrazes the pastureland, and overcuts the timberland. He destroys millions of acres completely. He pours fertility year after year into the cities, which in turn pour what they do not use down the sewers into the rivers and the ocean… The public is waking up, and just in time. In another 30 years it might have been too late.”
United States Department of Agriculture’s Soils and Men: Yearbook of Agriculture, 1936
In 1936, we already knew that through unsustainable management of cut trees, shrubs, and spoiled or leftover food we were depleting fertile soil of carbon and other nutrients. These materials can be managed to provide a soil amendment that returns minerals and carbon to the ground so that a piece of land will remain fertile despite years of cultivation that would otherwise depleted it. Bob Shaffer, an agronomist, says that only 10% of the planet has land that is suitable to raise crops and fortunately, over time, compost made from recycled food scraps has been embraced by farmers.
Recology has been working for 15 years with the City of San Francisco to make food scraps recycling possible. Now, 60% of what we at Recology touch in San Francisco stays out of landfills. One way we do this is through advanced composting processes, technology and the knowledge we’ve gained over 15 years. Greg Pryor, manager of Jepson Prairie Organics has mastered the process through testing all kinds of technologies and techniques at the composting facility, which opened in 1996. Jepson Prairie Organics is located among agricultural lands in Northern California, and has created 1,100,000 tons of compost since it opened. The composting processes that Recology has developed have resulted in VOC emissions that are far below state minimum requirements, prevent the creation of methane gas, and create a specially-blended compost and compost teas that are useful to biodynamic farmers.
Closing the loop on sustainable farming is possible when communities that consider sustainability issues as they plan their garbage programs–or resource recovery programs in the case of San Francisco–are willing to partner with companies like Recology in this great experiment of human social and ecological survival. We are glad that more and more cities are catching on.
Junk: a symphony, a book, a treasure
New Music
In the spring of 2010, Nathaniel Stookey, a participant in the Recology San Francisco Artist in Residence program, performed a composition called Junkestra at the San Francisco Symphony. It was played with more than thirty instruments made entirely from objects that were discarded at the San Francisco Dump. Among them were bird cages, bicycle wheels, drawers, sewer pipes, railings, saws, and fixtures. And somehow, Stookey pulled it off. Cnet.com published a nice article about the project, which included a link to the composition’s third movement that you can download here (3MB). Just two years earlier, in 2008, the composition was part of the opening of the California Academy of Sciences building in Golden Gate Park, and was made into a CD performed by the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra.
The Book
There are other treasures that have emerged from the Artist in Residence program. For over twenty years, the program has inspired artists and the public to see garbage in a different way. Through the program, artists scavange the “junk” that people throw away–sometimes the volume of useful things can be overwhelming–and they transform what they find into works of art. Last year, Recology produced Art at the Dump: The Artist in Residence Program and Environmental Learning Center at Recology, a book that profiles the 78 artists who had participated in the program since its founding.
Cultural Treasure
The program has won numerous awards and recognition, including the Best Art from Trash – 2011 award from SFWeekly, The Acterra Business Environmental Award in 2009, inspired Recology’s GLEAN (formerly the Pacific Northwest Art Program) in Portland, RAIR (Recycled Artist in Residence) in Philadelphia, and was recently profiled for being the nexus of environmental activism. The program has become a beacon of culture, education and entertainment in San Francisco.
Join us for the first exhibit of 2012! 503 Tunnel Avenue in San Francisco.
- Upscale by Kaiya Rainbolt
1 Million Tons of Food-Scraps
Photo: Sarah Rice / Special to The Chronicle
Today, Recology San Francisco collected it’s 1 millionth ton of food scraps for composting.
Since the pilot program launched in the mid 1990s, the program has grown in popularity and acceptance. It was in 2009, however, that participation in the program became a requirement. Following San Francisco’s example, over 90 cities across the world have created similar laws, says the San Francisco Chronicle.
Photo: Sarah Rice / Special to The Chronicle
The food scraps—what is leftover from dinner at a restaurant or what went bad in the refrigerator—are composted and sent on to farms and vineyards in Northern California. Besides increasing San Francisco’s landfill diversion rate up to 78%, compost may be said to help prevent further desertification in the United States. The USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service provides a map of the regions that are vulnerable to desertification. The state of California is one of them.
This Thanksgiving, remember to compost your food scraps. We need them for next year’s crops.
Composting tips
1. Place a paper bag inside the kitchen pail provided for compost, or line it with newspaper to avoid a mess. Remember not to use plastic bags – they’re not compostable
2. Sprinkle baking soda on the compost if it starts to smell.
3. Deter flies with citrus, lavender, eucalyptus or lemongrass oils by placing a few drops on a cloth and leaving it inside or on top of the pail.
4. Check to see if something is compostable before you throw it away. Take-out containers, pizza boxes, coffee cups and wine corks are all compostable.
5. If you generate almost no garbage, you may be able to utilize the 20-gallon cart service, which can save you $2 per month.
(src: Recology San Francisco, the San Francisco Chronicle, page C2)
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