Berkeley, California, is proving that municipal composting of urban food and yard waste is possible—but the city’s program is also experiencing growing pains, according to “Compost Confidential” in the Northern California environmental magazine Terrain:

Good ideas—like enriching the soil of organic farms with compost made from urban food waste—are not necessarily meshing with other good ideas, like using compostable plant-based plastics rather than disposable petroleum-based plastics. Pesticides approved for use on lawns are persisting all the way through the industrial composting process and contaminating the end product, making it unsuitable for organic agriculture. And the development of alternative composting technologies—namely biogas digesters—is provoking a debate over what food and yard waste should be used for.

In other words, large-scale composting is not as simple as it might seem—and it might not always be as grass-roots as some advocates hope. Terrain points out that “composting is an up-and-coming industry” that corporate waste haulers are eager to get into. Texas-based Waste Management Inc. has invested in British Columbia’s Harvest Power, the largest food and yard waste composting facility in North America.

Other cities are getting into the act. Portland, Oregon, plans to start a pilot food-waste program this spring, according to Sustainable Industries, which also reports that Portland, Corvallis, and Salem, Oregon, already have limited commercial food-waste collection.

In related news, Grist reported on April 1 that McDonald’s ditch a planned composting program “after scientists confirmed that no item on the McDonald’s menu is compostable.” Now that smells funny.

Source: Terrain, Sustainable Industries (article not available online), Grist

Image by John Winfield, licensed under Creative Commons.

The public art project TRASH: anycoloryoulike, launched this summer by the artist Adrian Kondratowicz, replaces traditional black trash bags with bright, colorful, biodegradable bags. Kondratowicz hopes that, in addition to making city streets look a little better, piles of flashy pink and white polka-dot garbage bags will get people thinking about how much they throw away.

“People are sensitized to seeing mounds of black trash bags lining sidewalks,” writes Kathryn Kondracki at the Next American City blog, “but the use of multi-colored bags will hopefully make by-standers stop and think about the impact.”

Individuals and businesses can sponsor city blocks or schools for one or more trash-collection days, and Kondratowicz can produce bags in just about any color.

If you want to see the pink polka dots in action, head to Brooklyn on August 21—the bags will be out on Broadway between Marcy Avenue and Hewes Street.

Images by Gina Marie, courtesy of anycoloryoulike.biz.