SF Compost Giveaway

From the Bay Citizen

Yesterday’s banana peels and coffee grounds will be offered for free on Saturday in San Francisco at the Great Compost Giveaway. Of course, it all has been transformed into rich, dark soil amendment, the kind that urban gardeners love to pile into their vegetable beds.

The event is being hosted by the city’s garbage haulers, formerly known as NorCal and now called Recology. Recology boasts that since green waste recycling first launched in 1996 as a pilot, the city has turned food and plant waste into 95,000 cubic yards of compost annually.

Here are the locations in San Francisco where, from 8-noon Saturday morning, April 16, you can pick up a load of compost for your garden this summer:

Alemany Farm, 700 Alemany Blvd. off 280 South. Map and Driving Directions

Hayes Valley Farm, Oak St. and Octavia Blvd. parking lot, enter off Oak St. Map and Driving Directions

McLaren Park, Jerry Garcia Amphitheater, upper parking lot, John F. Shelby Dr. at Mansell St. Map and Driving Directions

Ocean Beach Parking Lot at Golden Gate Park, 850 Great Highway between Lincoln Way and Fulton St. Map and Driving Directions

Read more at the Bay Citizen

FYI: You can also pick up free compost Monday thru Saturday, at Bayview Greenwaste, 1300 Carroll Ave

What U.S. Municipalities Can Learn From San Francisco's Urban Farming Movement - Huffington Post

Francesca Vietor, President, The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, writes,

In 1995, San Francisco's now-thriving Alemany Farms was a four-acre, illegal dumping site growing tires, cars and refrigerators. Community leader and former San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners Director Mohammed Nuru spearheaded a unique, community-based collaboration to put at-risk, low-income youth to work transforming the vacant lot into an urban farm. San Francisco's first "urban youth farm" was planted, providing 50 lucky teens with business, landscaping and non-violent resolution skills while offering a healthy alternative to a life of drugs, crime or violence. Today, Alemany Farms stays true to its original vision; growing organics foods and creating green jobs for residents of low-income communities with the values of environmental justice and social equity firmly rooted.

 Read more at Huffington Post