I have been a hardcore composter for a few years now and it is one habit that makes me feel really virtuous. Pretty soon, though, composting won’t be a way for me to earn my angel wings. Here in San Francisco it will be the law.

This week, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors approved Mayor Gavin Newsom’s radical proposal to make it against the law not to compost.  The legislation, which will begin being enforced next summer, calls for every residence and business in the city to have three separate color-coded bins for waste: blue for recycling, green for compost and black for trash. A failure to properly sort your refuse could result in a fine of up to $500 (after several warnings).

This is the most comprehensive mandatory composting and recycling law in the country, and is part of San Francisco’s effort to cut the city’s greenhouse gas emissions. Newson has pledged that by 2020 the city will be sending nothing to landfills or incinerators. Nothing. Imagine that.

For more on the new composting law, read the story that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle , or commentary on the topic from the New York Times’ Green Inc. blog.

Tags: compost, compost law. San Francisco, eco, Eco to the People, eco-friendly, green, Green Inc., New York Times, organic, San Francisco Chronicle

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 13th, 2009 at 4:00 am and is filed under ecoThinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.