City Slicker Farms

Thanksgiving arrives this week! But with this annual ritual often comes a swell of food waste in our community. Every day residents of Alameda County generate tons of food scraps and food-soiled paper, and the holidays can contribute a disproportionate amount of this. In fact, food scraps and food-soiled paper represent 35% of the stuff that’s going to our landfills.

But it doesn't have to be that way! Unlike many cities in the U.S., here in Oakland we can divert food waste from becoming waste at all – by putting food scraps and food-soiled paper back into the nutrient loop in the form of compost - through the municipal green bin system. That compost comes back to City Slicker Farms, a nutrient-rich soil amendment we add to all our urban farms and backyard gardens. Alameda County offers curbside recycling for compostables, which means items such as paper coffee cups, meal leftovers, coffee filters and pizza boxes can go in the green bin and be mixed with yard debris to help create rich and valuable compost that is used on California farms. Here at City Slicker Farms our program participants benefit every year from thousands of pounds of locally produced compost to nourish their gardens.  What we ate yesterday can be composted today to help feed our community tomorrow. 

You can also collect food scraps and other organic material in your own compost bin at home for use in your own garden.

City Slicker Farms recently received a grant to help support our work in the community, and to promote food scrap recycling. By all of us committing to recycle our food scraps we can support recycling and urban agriculture in Alameda County. All of these efforts help achieve StopWaste’s ambitious goal of keeping 90% of recyclable materials out of the landfill by 2020. As of January 2014, Alameda County is keeping 63% of recyclables out of the trash, so we have a long ways to go to reach this goal – and we can start by doing better today.

Alameda County residents can pick up tips about food scrap recycling by visiting ReadySetRecycle.org. The website, created by StopWaste, also offers incentives and rewards for recycling food scraps, including opportunities to win prizes through games and challenges designed to test recycling skills.

Visitors to the website can find a variety of tools to help spread the word such as educational videos and a clever sign maker feature. This allows residents and businesses to create instructional recycling signs, which are great for use at parties, at work or in multi-family buildings like apartments and condominiums.

For more information, visit www.ReadySetRecyle.org