In response to the article about California buying electric fire trucks, our West Coast reporter Bill H. adds:

Electric fire trucks is trivia in the catalog of California crazy.

San Diego is spending $30 million to buy 250,000 recycling bin and kitchen pails so city residents can comply with a new state law that requires them to begin recycling food scraps. The city faces millions more in ongoing costs to buy, fuel and service new trash trucks to and to hire drivers.

The idea is that residents will keep the pails, which have lids, under the sink or somewhere else in the kitchen, and periodically empty the pails into larger recycling bins kept outdoors or in the garage. The pails "generally work pretty well at controlling odors," according to the article. And there is a summer sale on the Brooklyn Bridge. I’m accepting bids for two more weeks.

The article notes that most cities send their food waste to "anaerobic recycling centers” which turns the waste into "clean fuel,” which might actually work. But how much fuel, used by whom, and at what cost per gallon?

San Diego, however, will add its food wast to the composting operation presently in service for green waste, which is inside the city limits. Composting is an aerobic process, and cannot accept meat (for instance, among many other food items) because when exposed to air it will rot instead of compost, creating a disasterous stench and drawing flies, beetles and a host of other pests. It will, in fact, render the rest of the compost unusable.

San Diego council members apparently didn’t bother to find this out, were only interested in avoiding the cost of investing in the "anaerobic recycling center.”

I would expect a state law soon that would ban installation of garbage disposals in new construction.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 07:08 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 306 words, total size 2 kb.