As of January 1, residents of Vancouver who live in multi-family dwellings (apartment buildings, condominiums) can put their food scraps into their yard trimmings bin. It’s hard for me not to be policing our bin in the back alley and I’ve noticed a few misdemeanours already. For those of you new to the process, plastic bags don’t count as “green waste,” so please just dump your food scraps into the green bin. Then you can rinse out the bag and reuse it or recycle it (at Safeway). I keep a lidded food scraps container under my sink. I line it with newspaper to make it easier to clean afterwards. It also helps to absorb the liquids from the foodscraps. Then I dump the container into the green bin once a week. I would be composting my own food scraps but my community garden only permits garden trimmings. It would be nice if us compost cops had some sort of official badge we could flash at the perpetrators when witnessing a compost crime. Here’s a complete list of what can go in the bin.