December 22, 2004
Gregory Dicum
SFGate.com
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It is necessary to set up positive-feedback loops that will engender whole new ways of living on Earth. And in 2004, one such system began to coalesce.
In April, the City of San Francisco announced that recycling there has hit an all-time high, well ahead of state and city targets. Sixty-three percent of waste that would have gone to landfills was diverted, much of it through the City's ambitious municipal composting program. The most successful of its kind in the nation, the program collects food scraps and yard trimmings from 75,000 homes and more than 2,000 businesses for composting at a facility in Solano County.
San Francisco is now a major
supplier of organic compost, selling everything it can produce to regional farms and vineyards. In turn, these farms put food on our tables through the Bay Area's growing collection of
farmers' markets: 77 of them by year's end. Farmers' markets facilitate direct sales between hundreds of small family farms -- many of them producing organic crops -- and tens of thousands of discerning Bay Area shoppers.
The wins inherent in closing the food loop like this are manifold: this system simultaneously keeps material out of the landfill, provides much-needed compost for organic farms, gives shoppers great food at reasonable prices, helps small family farmers stay in business, gives agricultural open space a fighting chance against suburban sprawl and reduces the agricultural chemicals tainting our water. Yet it was not centrally planned: it is evolving organically, as uncounted thousands in the Bay Area think globally and act locally.
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