City Hosts Food Scrap Seminar Tuesday

With participation in the new composting service off to a slow start, Mill Valley Refuse Principal Jim Iavarone said the company has its work cut out for it.

They'll continue that outreach tomorrow night at City Hall with a curbside composting workshop from 7 to 9 p.m. Iavarone, Mayor Stephanie Moulton-Peters, Marin Master Gardener Joan Irwin, Mill Valley Sustainability Director Carol Misseldine and Jessica Jones of Redwood Landfill will be on hand to address the benefits of composting, how the program works and how residents can lower their monthly bill by decreasing their garbage can size to account for the food scraps going into the green bin instead.

"Participation is quite low in the compost program so far," Misseldine told the City Council earlier this month.

The main issues so far, Iavarone said, have been timing and education.

The company launched the service in August, when many families were still in the midst of their summer vacations and in a traditional routine at home. And there is a learning curve in terms of how residents implement the service in their homes.

"People are still trying to mull over how they're going to get the food scraps from the kitchen to the can," Iavarone said. "It's about setting up your kitchen to manage the transfer of the food scraps from the kitchen to the outdoor containers and the best way to do that."

Iavaraone said he plans to put information on his company's Web site about where people can buy small kitchen receptacles for the food scraps. He also said the company needs to do more to inform people that green can pickup is now weekly, not every other week as it had been before composting service began in August.

He will also encourage customers to reduce their can size, both for garbage and for yard waste and food scraps since service is now weekly. Customers can downgrade from a 60-gallon green can to a 32-gallon one, Iavarone said.

"I used to spend Thursday night standing on the garbage can trying to push everything down into the can," Councilman Andrew Berman said at a council meeting earlier this month. "The level of garbage going out has gone down dramatically."

The city is working with the Environmental Forum of Marin on a project that hopes to jumpstart interest in composting in Mill Valley. The forum provides students with on-the-ground job training in the field of sustainability, according to Misseldine.

For this project, students will visit residents and teach them more about the program, she said. The project will focus on a condo development, as compost participation is traditionally not as high in multi-family residences, condos and commercial buildings as it is in singe-family homes, Misseldine said.

The council agreed to back the project and help it get visibility when the work is completed. The work likely will take place between January and April 2011.

The council's discussion did highlight the ongoing need for education about composting, even for city officials.

"We have to find out what to do with those cantelope rinds," Councilman Ken Wachtel said about his family's composting. "And what about the chicken bones? We have a bunch of different kinds of food."

When Wachtel was informed that it was fine to put all food scraps into the green bin, he'd made the case that the city and Mill Valley Refuse still have some work to do in educating the public about composting.

Tomorrow's workshop starts at 7pm and will be held in City Council Chambers at City Hall at 26 Corte Madera Avenue.