‘Like death and taxes, composting happens – whether we want it to or not.’  I love this quote taken from composters.com.  If you live in San Francisco, composting will be required by law on Oct. 21^st.  Here’s what I found out—there is a big difference in composting for your garden and composting for San Francisco’s green bin.  Composting for San Francisco seems to be straight forward—in terms of food scraps, put anything that used to be alive in the green bin.  This includes meat scraps and citrus fruits, two items that I would not put in my garden compost.  Meat scraps, greasy food and dairy products attract rodents (ick!) and citrus fruits have naturally occurring chemicals that inhibit the composting process, so skip it for the garden.   Do not put any ice or liquids in your green bin.  However, leftover liquid from steaming vegetables or cooking pasta is perfectly acceptable for home compost.  Include coffee grounds, pizza boxes, soiled napkins etc. in your city composting pile. Never put any cooking oil, animal feces, kitty litter or diapers in your green bin or home compost pile.

For a complete list of what to compost for the city go to sfrecycling.com.  You can purchase a kitchen pail at any local hardware store—just make sure that it has a good seal to keep odors to a minimum. There are many websites that offer lots of information about composting for the home and garden.  I liked composters.com but let me know if you have any favorites.

Good Luck and Happy Composting!

Tags: Compost, Compost bin, Food industry, Garden, Home, San Francisco, Shopping, Soil and Additives

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under A Taste of San Francisco/Chef Phoebe's Favorite Recipes. 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.