March 18, 2009

Good Veggies Gone Bad


This week's theme is Vegetable

veg·e·ta·ble
noun
A plant cultivated for an edible part.


Just back from California, the United States' home for innovative green thinking. The city of Oakland promotes food waste scrap recycling by offering small pails to be used in the kitchen to collect food scraps which are then dumped into the larger recycle bin for weekly pick up.


According to their website: Home composting diverts 543 pounds, per household, per year from the landfill. That's 2.7 tons over 10 years.

Now that's impressive.
What are you doing with your vegetable scraps?

“Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

33 comments:

Megan said...

Nor Cal is way ahead of So Cal in this effort. Sometimes I wonder why I ever moved down here...

Robynn's Ravings said...

O, I sooo miss my chickens for this little issue. Loved sending tops of carrots and bits of leftovers to them. They were always so excited. And when I find a grub or cutworm in the garden and throw it in it was like Christmas!

Want to build a composter now.

Chairman Bill said...

Been saving them for compost for over 2 years now. Makes sense. Took me a while to realise that bottles, cans and meat are not ideal composting material though.

tony said...

Interesting........waste not want not

Ronda Laveen said...

"Honey, you may be wilted. But you're still wanted..." My husband told me that just this morning. I live about 2 1/2 hrs north of Oakland and the waste pail hasn't migrated north yet.

Unknown said...

Intersesting..unfortunately, recycling effort here is still not strong..let alone vege scraps. Hopefully soon :D

A Cuban In London said...

I loved that caption. It could be applied just to anything, or... anyone :-). Many thanks for such an uplifting post so early in the morning here in GB.

Greetings from London.

Michelle Engel Bencsko said...

I've just been researching composters. They look good in theory, but I wonder how dedicated I'll be too making a real go of it. No matter how easy the process/system, you still need those few minutes of time in the day. I LOVE the idea of the community service.

Golden West said...

First I've heard of this... Seems like the large container would smell pretty "ripe" by the end of the week...

Tess Kincaid said...

Now that's a great green idea! I've always meant to start a compost pile with my veggie scraps, but just never started.

Two Dog Pond said...

My vegetable scraps go to my sweet chickens. Like Robynn said, they love them like it's Christmas presents! Sometimes I grow sprouts for them just to make them happy. "Happy Chickens = More Eggs" They really are more than just yard art.

Brian Miller said...

we try to use out scraps as well to fertilize. circle of life and all. the deer around here don't care much for it though as they will eat wilted or not.

Victoria said...

Great community idea. I keep a bowl on the counter to collect our produce scraps and then dump them into a large black container out by our shed. The container was left over from when we planted one of our backyard trees. I just turn it all with a shovel and it composts very quickly and nicely. I also dig small holes in my garden beds and dump scraps right in the ground, and cover them back up. Easy-schemsy.

The Clever Pup said...

I always compost except for the months that my composter is frozen shut. December, January, February.

Toronto's getting much better at diverting it's trash.

If it wasn't for the dog poo we'd have next to none.

Reyjr said...

we put ours in the backyard and use as fertilizer for the flowers. :D

Home Deconomics said...

Community composting?? In Oakland?? I had no idea. How wonderful!

Wings1295 said...

We don't have much left over, and what is goes to our Bottomless Pit Hound, Max.

Alicia @ boylerpf said...

Being raised on a farm as a young girl, we always saved out scraps for the livestock. Of course, now living in a city, we just trash it. Many people around here have a compost but then again..they garden too.

Anonymous said...

We used to compost all our food waste, along with the yard clippings. That is, when we had anything left over. Mainly peelings. But always had a productive garden :)

Cuppa Jo said...

I live in San Jose, maybe 50ish miles away from Oakland and I have been waiting for SJ to begin a composting program for years. San Jose can be so backward sometimes.

Mom in High Heels said...

We live in Germany where they are ALL about recycling. We have 4 bins in our garbage island. One of them is dedicated to compost. All of our food scraps are supposed to go in the compost bin. The other bins are for non-recyclable, paper and the yellow bag, which is for plastic and aluminum. We separate all our trash, because we have a garbage inspector who comes to our garbage island once a week to check up on us. If stuff is on the wrong bin, we get in trouble.

New Yorker wannabes said...

Interesting Theme Thursday post. Thank you, I enjoyed reading and learning about it!

Take care
xoxo

picciolo said...

we have those bins here too!
: )

tut-tut said...

Thanks for the link! We are trying to find ways to be more "green" both at home and in our town. Happy Theme Thursday!

Tom said...

...mostly throwing them in the trash...but this is an idea that is sure to become more widestream. I hope.

Jill said...

I had a compose pile I fed for quite a few years but it never turned into the black gold like it should have because it just didn't get enough heat and moisture-way too open-even though I followed directions. You really need a closed tub. Still want to get one going.

Leah said...

We have pretty good recycling here in Brooklyn, but I'll have to look into veggie composting. Thank you for giving me the idea!

Cynthia Pittmann said...

I'm taking my scraps out to the garden hole everyday. I suddenly realized this year that even if I don't offically have a compost pile, I could still participate in giving back to the earth-adding to the soil- by placing my vegetable scraps outside...they break down so rapidly! <3

Kris McCracken said...

Eat the scraps! That's what the chickens do.

Lisa's RetroStyle said...

We compost ours for our garden.

Unknown said...

Very cool. Will look into this further, thanks!

Dakota Bear said...

I have attempted composting in the past, but it was too much work to remember to turn the layers. I guess I should get one of those rotating containers.

Anonymous said...

We've been composting now for 20 years. When we bought our house, we budgeted about $200 to put in a garbage disposal. But when we started the compost heap, we put that money back into the bank. Sweet!

One thing we've done with the compost is to make a "compost tea". We take an old pair of my nylons, fill with compost and then tie them off. We put that in a rain barrel full of water an let it steep. Then we water the gardens with it, and refill the barrel to keep the tea going all summer. The gardens positively scream "THANK YOU!"

Kate