Posted on 03/06/2015 10:57:50 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
SEATTLE — The nation’s first citywide composting program based largely on shame began here in January.
City sanitation workers who find garbage cans filled with aging lettuce, leftover pizza or even the box it came in are slapping on bright red tags to inform the offending household (and, presumably, the whole neighborhood) that the city’s new composting law has been violated.
San Francisco may have been the first city to make its citizens compost food, but Seattle is the first to punish people with a fine if they don’t. In a country that loses about 31 percent of its food to waste, policies like Seattle’s are driven by environmental, social and economic pressure.
But mandated composting reflects a deeper shift in the mood of the nation’s cooks, one in which wasting food is unfashionable. Running an efficient kitchen — where bruised fruit is blended into smoothies, carrot tops are pulsed into pesto, and a juicy pork shoulder can move seamlessly from Sunday supper to Monday’s carnitas to a rich pot of broth for the freezer — is becoming as satisfying as the food itself.
The ethos stretches from Manhattan’s best restaurants to the homes of people like Kathleen Whitson, 44, who cooks for her family of four in West Seattle.
Ms. Whitson, who didn’t discover fresh garlic until she was out of college, now drops vegetable trimmings in a compost bucket on the counter and keeps a list of what’s in her chest freezer on the refrigerator door. A stockpot simmers on the stove and kombucha ferments in the pantry. She cooks more like her grandmother than her mother, a woman she said raised her to believe in the magic of processed food.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Oh, man. I just LOVE this stuff. Shaming people into composting - when I’ve been doing it for 30 years! Cooking from scratch - when I can’t remember a meal I’ve eaten at home that wasn’t. Growing your own, canning, hunting, fishing. How anyone can live differently has always amazed me.
while I AM a serious ‘Conserve’-a-tive, the Food Nazi’s ALWAYS go too far...
I really have to laugh at “progressive cities” revelations about such things like this. We’ve been doing this for 40 years. All food waste goes in the compost, gets ground up and then into the garden again. It’s funny when “progressives” discover this. I wonder what they have been doing all these years? Smoking too much pot? Spaced out? Not very progressive
Translation: They want us to live an 18th Century Eastern European peasant lifestyle while they throw Wagyu beef, lobster and arugula down their necks, crank the air conditioning in their 4,000 square foot homes and drive Lexus and Audi SUVs.
Eating better may cost more, she said, but an efficient cook can make up the difference. “We are so price sensitive in the store, and 10 cents will swing us one way or other,” she said. “But in the kitchen we throw out so much money without even thinking about price.”
It’s true. Most people DO waste a LOT of money tossing out food that could be used for something else.
“My Mother served us Leftovers for 30 years. No one has ever found the original meal.”
Ba-Dump-Dump! :)
Ask me how many meals I can get out of a chicken. Just ASK me, LOL!
Pretty much! :)
In my life, most of my waste is delivered in the mail.
What do apartment dwellers do, since they can’t compost in their yards?
oh there will be "e-vouchers" that will allow you to purchase convenience foods or eat out a small amount but markets will require the use of an EBT like card in order to buy to make sure you are making the proper choices
This is the price of socialism.
From garbage pick up to landfills these services should be private enterprise.
When I was a kid our garbage was picked up by a man who had a small pig farm.
We separated our garbage from our other waste and for a small price the farmer picked up the garbage and fed it to his pigs.
One man’s waste is another man’s pig fodder.
Given freedom of action creative people can turn problems in to marketable goods and profits.
Anecdotely, I'd say conservatives are "greener" than the libs - seems a larger percentage compost, garden, recycle/reuse, can, mend, etc. than the libtards I know.
Progressives, on the other hand, compost it because if makes them feel superior to those that do not. Then they want to force composting on people, and in the process develop a government bureaucracy and levy taxes. Progressives read and write propaganda related to composting.
Ms. Whitson, who didn’t discover fresh garlic until she was out of college
You got to laugh, only a liberal would wear this on
their sleeve like a patch of honor.
yep
They would have us all living in caves if they could get away with it
The garbage disposal solves the ticket on the garbage can problem!!!!
Seattle sanitation workers, the new arbiters of fine cuisine.
What next? Oh I know: Garbage cans on their own electric burners so we can cook in them — all those yummy leftovers in mouthwatering stews, right there at the ends of our driveways. I am going to propose mandatory linen napkins at the next Seattle City Council meeting.
“Given freedom of action creative people can turn problems in to marketable goods and profits.”
BUMP!
“I am going to propose mandatory linen napkins at the next Seattle City Council meeting.”
Perfect! Do it! :)
Yorty got elected mayor of Los Angeles by promising women they would no longer have to separate their garbage.
It also put Agagagian out of the pig farming business since he got all of Los Angeles’s garbage for free!!!
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