Whenever I travel to other states I am shocked by the lack of recycling. I take for granted that blue bin out behind my house. Many weeks I have more recycling than trash. It is jarring for me when I visit relatives out west where everything (plastic and all) goes into the burn barrel. Out of sight out of mind I guess but all that pollution blows east to Minnesota. There is a great story on Minnesota Public Radio's NewsQ about the next step in recycling, curbside food waste pick-up. Duluth has a program but apparently the Twin Cities are still looking at the logistics of such an operation. I'm all for it. Food waste, including paper towels and pizza boxes, makes up a large part of the waste stream. I have a small compost pile but properly maintaining a home compost pile with sufficient heat, mass and oxygen to create a good end product actually takes work. You can't just throw in all in a pile and let it rot. My pile is mostly a rot pile right now. Even if it did work properly, what am I going to do with 50+ gallons of compost every year? Curbside compost pick-up would be far superior. I currently take my yard waste to the Ramsey County Yard Waste Site to be composted but they probably wouldn't appreciate a pizza box in with my petunia clippings.I'm happy our cities are setting an example to look into these ideas, I just wish the rest of the county would do something as simple as recycling aluminum cans.
~Kirk
1 comments:
I've been envying my relatives in Berkeley for their routine curbside pickup of both food and garden waste. I hadn't heard that Duluth now has kitchen waste recycling, but that's a good sign.
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