Will L.A. Love Composting?

Exciting News! In September, Los Angeles will begin a trial run of household food scrap collection.

The city will give 2-gallon kitchen pails to residents in three areas of the city. It will encourage folks in about 5,000 households to dump their kitchen food scraps into these pails and, ultimately, their yard waste bin that’s already being collected at curbside.

Mixing food scraps with yard waste is a relatively low cost way to grow food waste recycling–there are no added trucks or routes. The pilot program will cost $140,000 and expanding it to the entire city would require $13 million.
I’ll admit: I’m skeptical that L.A. residents will take to composting with the same vigor as Bay Area residents. Take that as a challenge, Angelinos!

As we read in the L.A. Times article, a 2002 survey found that food scraps were a whopping 27 percent of trash from L.A.’s single family homes. That’s more than double the national average of 12 percent! Los Angeles, here’s your chance.