Food Scrap Recycling - Coming to a Bin Near You

We read in The News Tribune today that Tacoma residents will soon be able to toss food scraps in your yard waste bin, further minimizing the amount of stuff that finds its way into the landfill. This move comes as a part of a larger conversation about moving the city to a twice-monthly garbage pick-up to decrease costs for the city and encourage increased recycling. If bi-weekly pick-up passes City Council in 2012, we’ll probably be seeing it implemented by 2013.

You’ll start seeing a public awareness campaign telling you the “dos and don’ts” of recycling food scraps, but it looks like most normal kitchen waste will be acceptable. According to the TNT most food waste, including meats, bones, and starches will be taken, but “artificial combustible materials, such as pizza boxes” will not be. This is great news for those of us who get composter’s guilt every time we have to throw out food scraps that can’t go in the compost bin, and it’s good news for the lazy environmentalist in all of us, who just wants to do good things for the planet while making the least possible change to everyday routines.

Read the full story from The News Tribune.