Illicitly Saving the World

 

The houses in our neighborhood have three different bins. The black one is for trash, green for yard waste (no food, no succulents, no palm fronds), and the blue is for recycling (big list of no-nos for that, too). Shown is a mix of the old style on the left and the newer style for the other two.

photo credit Claremont-Courier
The trucks drive by and pick collect them, and if you are with a friendly toddler they will honk and wave.

The city has started a pilot program to collect food waste in these bins with yellow lids. The program will be mandatory by next January, which will be great for me even though we have our own backyard bins. 

Orange peels and pineapple rinds take too long to break down in our little bin, so I have been helping the city cut down on its garbage by taking these to a yellow bin. I don't think it is actually illegal, but I haven't asked permission, either. Even though the bags shown say they are compostable the city requires food to be in clear bags, which I have been using.

This is a much easier way to save the world than by trying grow my own vegetables.

Gardening

 I see so many people talking about vegetables they are planting and I admire their talents. All of it - finding the right place, finding the right soil, giving the plants the right amount of water, and dealing with animals with two, four, or six legs that also want to eat the vegetables - makes me want to support the local farmers.

But look what I did in one week! 

In the end I gave up and gave it to a neighbor who will deal with the hard parts.

Soon I will need to deal with the lettuce

and these surprises I found in the compost bin.

Then and Now

We have been composting since we had our first apartment in Boulder.  I can picture the container in our neighbor's backyard, but I can't picture what we had in the house to collect the scraps.

We have had this container on our counter for many years.  I probably started putting fruit stickers here because I needed a place for them before I washed the fruit.  It was fine for a while, but it meant the container couldn't go in the dishwasher.  Time for a new one.

It looks so simple, but it was hard to find one that wasn't clear and wasn't $30.  For now I am buying fruit at farmers' market so I don't have fruit stickers, but I'll need to come up with a new place.