The Latest

Graphics Highlight Recycling

Compost your turkey bones, other food scraps

SAN FRANCISCO: A new effort to help people see garbage in a different way is rolling through San Francisco neighborhoods just in time for Thanksgiving, the biggest food week of the year.

Glance at a recycling truck in the City today and you may see a truck that looks like the sides were removed. That's because 3D graphics on 13 collection trucks give the illusion that you can see all materials inside.

Near the middle of the image is an outline of a curbside bin filled with environments we want to help protect: a redwood grove, a pristine beach, a lush vineyard nourished by compost made from food scraps.

The idea is to encourage people to see that most materials thrown away are not garbage at all. Look closely. You will see paper, metal, glass, and food scraps - all resources that should be recycled or composted.

In recycling, the moment of truth is when you toss individual items in a container. A chicken bone tossed in a garbage can goes to a landfill, decomposes and produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas. That same bone tossed in a green cart goes to a modern compost facility, where most of the carbon in the bone is preserved in the finished compost and returned to the land when the soil amendment is applied to local farms.

Keep an eye out for collection trucks with these detailed photographs; they offer a new point of view.

The graphics where conceived and designed by Singer Associates. The special graphics will be applied to 20 trucks operated by Sunset Scavenger and Golden Gate Disposal & Recycling companies.