| Organics Recycling for San
Carlos . . .
Opportunity to Reduce our Waste Stream by up
to 20%
Did you know that:
- Food waste makes up over 20% of our landfills?
- Our waste creates Methane Gas which is 21 times more potent
than Carbon Dioxide as a greenhouse gas?
- San Carlos has one of the worst waste diversion rates on the Peninsula?
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On August 11, the City Council voted to accept
Allied Waste’s proposal to collect our food waste (including pizza boxes, food
soiled paper packaging, paper towels, bones, cheese, leftover meat, etc.) in our
green yard bin every
week instead of our garbage bin. This makes San Carlos the FIRST city in
San Mateo County to have curbside food waste collection for compost. By
putting our food waste in the yard bin it will be sent to Newby Island in
Milpitas to be composted.
If it stays in the garbage bin, it will go to Ox Mountain to be dumped in
the landfill.
There is huge support for the program within the San
Carlos Green community. Many folks spoke at City Council and many more signed
the petition. We
have organized a community outreach task force of 12 San Carlos Green members
who are interested in helping to educate the public on this program.
Though both Mayor Brad Lewis and City
Council Member Omar Ahmad had hoped the program could start before the holidays, because of legal
rules, the requirements around getting the notice of a rate change out to the
residents, and
the need for Allied to have time to secure two trucks, the program won’t
actually start until April.
The notice will go out in the November garbage bill.
It is disappointing to think that all that holiday food will go to the
landfill, but it does give us some time to work on a great outreach
program.
I’ll be contacting everyone who has volunteered to
help get the word out. If you are interested in aiding our outreach efforts,
please email pat@sancarlosgreen.org.
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