When Food Scraps Dream

I did not know an ad campaign could be endearing. One does not expect to gaze up at a billboard, enchanted. And the kinds of ads that purport to serve the public with positive messages are usually the most loathsome. So I can really appreciate the triumph that is:



This was the first ad I saw of the Alameda County Waste Management's Food Scrap Recycling campaign, and, as we say on Passover, it would have been enough. It came out around the time when a compost fairy visited every house in the land and left little green pails at the curb. (Free green pails! Eee! Talon hands!) In the early days, they were just warming us up to the idea of "recycling" food scraps. The scraps go in the pail, that they may someday become joyous sunflowers.



The old artichoke goes back to the farm. (Technically, I think its re-ordered molecules--sorry, I don't understand science--go to local gardens via the Davis Street Dump, but I quibble.) They went seasonal in October, which was more than awesome:

I regret that I never saw this versión en español in action: (If it wasn't on a bus shelter on Fruitvale or International Blvd, where was it?)

Aren't you glad to live, or don't you wish you lived, somewhere with ads for composting spent jack-o-lanterns that say "Qué te pasa, calabaza?"

The shitty economy is a boon to PSAs. No one can afford to rent that billboard space any more. So Waste Management can just churn out the quippy food scrap recycling ads with abandon. I do wonder why they don't call it composting. Does the word carry some stigma I'm unaware of? Sound too dirt-nasty? Or did they use the word "recycling" to make a quick link in the public brain from the gray bin to the green one?


Okay. Here's where they go advanced. So we get it about the banana peels and the corn husks. They go in the green pail, which then gets dumped into the green bin at the curb and gets turned into compost--or, to be coy, "goes to the farm." Now we are ready for some next-level ish: bring on the food-soiled paper products. Used paper coffee cups, for instance.

Or pizza boxes. For the coup de grace, Waste Management has even put out a custom pizza box, instructing its holder to place it in the green bin when the fun pizza times are through. I only know about the boxes because yesterday one such was stuffed, ironically, into my gray recycling bin. (Ooh: so close.)

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