Miss Jo's San Francisco

MISS JO TODAY SHAVED ALMOST $71 OFF THE ANNUAL GARBAGE BILL, while reading up on what happens to the compost created from kitchen and table scraps collected from San Francisco’s 800,000 residents and restaurants, which fittingly account for a third of this food-crazed city’s waste.

As loyal recyclers, Miss Jo and Jeff generate only one bag of garbage a week. And as a reward, Miss Jo discovered they qualify for a 20-quart garbage can instead of the standard-issued 32 quart. The difference means a $5.86 monthly savings, bringing the bill to $19.62 from $25.48.

Beside that great satisfaction of cheating the recession, this was the first time Miss Jo felt that making green choices is no longer part of some fringe, high-brow movement.

In another green bonus, she also learned the organic CSA farm from which the two Js get their weekly produce box, Eatwell Farms, fertilizes with Fog City compost—- one of hundreds of northern California farms and vineyards that buy the super-nutrient stuff. The compost itself is certified organic after three months of decomposing at high temps and sifting.

Miss Jo and Jeff’s fruit and veggie parings, meat fat, chicken bones, egg shells and food-soiled paper, are first collected under the kitchen sink in a grocery paper sack or cardboard box lined with newspapers. The bag is dropped daily in a covered green garbage bin in the garage, next to the blue bin for all mixed recyclables and the black one for plain-old garbage.

Does the green bin ever smell ? Sometimes a little, when SF’s breezy, year-round 55-75-degree daytime temps inch into the 80s. But the odor doesn’t reach the house. Ants and wildlife also leave the green bin alone.

On Tuesday mornings, the city’s garbage contractor empties all three bins in alternative-fueled, narrow trucks that nimbly navigate San Francisco’s hills. The 300-ton daily haul of “compostables” are next trucked an hour north of the city to do their thing.

Photo by Miss Jo, the weekly farm box earlier this summer.