We looked into several options for increasing organics recycling. For home use, our collection agreement requires the waste hauling company to offer home composting bins at cost. However, for large-scale organics/food waste composting, I would recommend building this service into the curbside collection agreement. Food waste collection is often stymied by high levels of contamination that should be left to the hauler and ultimate processor to remedy. Our concern from a nuisance standpoint is that leaving composting to each resident, rather than removing from the curbside/property on a weekly basis, would invite flies, rodents and odors. The City of San Francisco has the most robust food waste collection program of which I am aware. The City's food waste is transported to adjacent Solano County, to the Jepsem Prarie Composting Facility.

I just completed the new collection contract for Monterey County. While we do not yet have sufficient processing capacity for county-wide collection, we did build food waste collection into the agreement and will amend the contract once the processing location is known.