Hauling off green waste to recycle or compost doesn't make sense. Photo by mecookie.
Here in San Antonio there’s a pilot program for green waste pickup.
While I applaud the efforts to reduce waste in landfills, any program which hauls green waste to a central location is stupid.
This type of program is built on several false assumptions.
Green Waste is not Waste
The first of which is that green “waste” (organic household garbage) is an undesirable by product and needs to be hauled off somewhere and properly handled.
In truth, green “waste” is not “waste” and can be easily handled by the producer of the “waste” on site.
Remember when everyone bagged grass clippings and threw them away? Then it was discovered or concluded that leaving all that nitrogen rich organic matter on your lawn was beneficial. Now almost everyone mulches as they mow. I won’t get into the discussion on what purpose a lawn serves.
Same deal with kitchen waste. Kitchen waste can be very efficiently composted by composting worms with very little effort on the part of the home or apartment dweller. Neighborhood or apartment wide composting can further reduce individual effort.
There are ways for composting worms to compost meat and grease without spreading pathogens and bad smell (more on that in another post). As well, meat, dairy, and grease can be easily handled through the bokashi process.
When individuals or small groups start composting green waste and using the end product, the “waste” suddenly becomes a resource. Small steps like these can help change our throw away society mindset which has created substances that really need dollars and manpower to be properly handled.
We Can Afford to Haul off Green Waste
One of the criticisms of the program is that the program will require yet another bin and another truck route to operate. There’s no getting around it, hauling off green waste requires dollars.
But of more concern is that hauling off green waste will require more fossil fuels to be burned in the form of trucks. Unless we want to employ a fleet of bicyclists with trailers or electric vehicles (quite doable in some locales), adding another trash route for green waste is not a sustainable option.
It’s more cost effective and sustainable to provide worm composting and bokashi know how to neighborhoods, apartments, and small groups and let them run with it.
There’s No Limit to the Amount of Sorting a Person is Willing to Do
Here in San Antonio, we don’t sort or recyclables that go into the blue bins. That’s right, paper, aluminum, plastic, it all goes in one bin. Why? Because people don’t want to sort their recyclables. To this day, my dad still puts glass in the bin, even though it’s not recyclable.
Do you see the problem? Adding a green waste bin is another sorting challenge. Granted, the homeowner will have to sort out the green waste in order to compost it with worms. But, being engaged in the process makes that sorting more likely and more relevant to the person doing it. Once they get the end product, worm compost, there’s no turning back. The cycle is then complete and the value defined. It’s not just another up charge on the garbage bill.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
You have a point and your article is thought provoking. But I’m glad the council didn’t allow the best to be the enemy of the better. I can see how neighborhood composting could develop once the green bins are in place where there is interest and expertise. I believe the city plan allows for that. By the way in San Antonio glass is AOK in the blue bin. It wasn’t always and I don’t know if there is a market for it but they are collecting and separating it at the plant.
In my county they collect yard waste (only) in large double-walled paper bags you can buy at area stores… At first I thought they would use the compost in city parks. Nope, they spread it on the landfill. !!??
Wayne has a point too… People have a tendency to want to burn leaves, but municipalities don’t want them to. This gives them another option, and also raises awareness of composting in general.
On the other hand (said Tevye), it might just give people the illusion of being “green”.
Wayne, I don’t live in San Antonio proper, so I recycling is similar but not the same. We can’t put glass in the recycling bins. Milk cartons either.
Terri,I don’t think you’ll get too many leaves in the green bins.
Like many things in life it depends on where you live. Folks in rural areas are used to dealing with “green waste” via burn piles, chickens, or compost piles out behind a building (cold, or hot rot piles). City dwellers may not be as connected or partial to outdoor activities like getting your hands dirty in a garden, much less maintaining a compost pile (if they even have a yard space) or a worm bin.
I live in a suburban area where there is garbage, blue recycling bin, green yard debris, and even glass pick service. That’s 4 trucks that roll through the neighborhoods; only the green yard debris can is picked up every two weeks, the other 3 trucks come weekly.
The waste management companies have a market for the recycling (metal, plastic, paper, glass) and the yard debris, so they actually make money off these; they consider all these a resource. The garbage they pick up is only an expense for them to get rid of, and only make a profit from it through the rates they charge. Garbage typically is not a resource to them. When they start picking up kitchen waste that is normally put into the garbage can, they’re doing two things; 1) They’re picking up another resource they can make a profit on by composting it like they do with the yard debris. They’ll make money off this. and, 2) They’re reducing they’re expenses with having less garbage waste to process, and dispose of.
So here in Portland, OR the city is rolling out a kitchen waste pickup service to residents and businesses. For residential households they’re telling us we can put kitchen waste into our green yard debris roll carts that will picked up weekly vs. bi-weekly as is currently done. They’re also changing the garbage pickup from weekly to bi-weekly, since they assume you’ll have enough room from not putting kitchen waste into the garbage can.
The catch is that they’re not lowering their rates at all, and yet they’re making more money off our waste. And, they make more money off those residents that currently compost all their kitchen waste and won’t have much at all to add to their yard debris can (except some meat bones, spoiled bread, liquids, or other items they don’t add to their compost pile) because now they need a bigger garbage can to make it through the two weeks between garbage pickups.
By now you can tell that this is a hot button issue with me. We compost and vermicompost all kitchen and yard waste, and have done so for years. We’ve right-sized our garbage can for the amount of un-recycleable waste our family produces. We will have to pay a higher rate for a bigger garbage can to make it two weeks between pickups. Again, they make more money off us, and don’t offer any type of rate reduction at all.
“Green waste” is a resource folks! Use it to your advantage and start a worm bin or two, or a compost pile. Your garden, flowers, trees and lawn will love all the rich material you’ll be paid in for your efforts.
Great topic Cassandra! Thanks for bringing it up. This is happening more and more across our nation, mostly in the big cities… were the waste resource is most, and waste companies can make more profit off it. Individuals that create the waste should make their own profit off it from composting.
Thanks for all the comments everyone. There’s definitely more than one way to do it. Wouldn’t it be great if the garbage man was like the Maytag man, sitting around with nothing to do?