Los Angeles City officials voted this week to experiment with a new garbage pickup program requesting that residents have yet a fourth bin in their refuse repertoires. Those living in Lincoln heights, Harbor Gateway, and South Los Angeles will be the L.A. County test group, pioneering a program already in place in the progressive city up north, San Francisco. A small indoor bin for leftovers, food scraps, egg shell, tea bags, coffee grounds, and anything even Fido won't touch will have its trial run on the city's plan to reduce the amount of waste going into the Sunshine Canyon Landfill.
The plan is for sanitation officials to go door-to-door, distributing nearly 5,000 2-gallon kitchen bins in the selected areas to encourage what will become a household version of the eco-minded practice of composting, eventually landing those bio-degradable morsels at a site near Bakersfield. The goal is that the 2-gallon city-issued kitchen bin be emptied into the curbside 60-gallon version to be hauled away and recycled into mulch and other useful soil-enriching compounds. Should this program prove itself, an estimated 600 tons of landfill blockage could be diverted and handled as "green waste." If Angelinos are anything like their Northerly neighbors, this program will catch on and residents will proudly contribute to California's ongoing statewide conservation efforts. Known as the forerunner in all things green, once again, The Golden State is true to form.