Why is there no separate trash pickup for decomposable material?

I don’t have a definitive answer, but I can offer a couple of observations:
1) It would add to the cost of trash pickup. You’d need to add either a second route or an extra bin to the truck. In my area this latter is sometimes done; you see garbage trucks cruising around with a dumpster on the forks while also doing curbside pickup with the lifting thing on the side.
2) it’s probably best to do composting in a decentralized way. Rather than toting all the compostable matter to a central location and then shipping it off to where it is used, it might work better for a group of people in a neighborhood to pool their compostables for use by local gardeners.
3) Not all decomposable materials are suitable for compost, and not all garbage-collection customers know what’s what. If you mix dirty or non-recyclable materials in with the recycling, it costs more to process it but the unsuitable stuff can be sorted out. If compost becomes “tainted”, it’s a lot harder to separate out the bad parts, and it’s impossible after mixing.

In some places there is. Where I lived in California (Temecula) the trash collection was handled with three bins: black for non-recyclable trash, blue for recyclable plastics, paper, cardboard, wood, etc., and green for lawn and garden waste.

We do have a separate bin provided by the city for compostable refuse – namely plant materials. They get irritated if you put the wrong type of trash in that bin (my neighbor had his taken away) but it works out really well if you follow the rules.

Los Angeles has the three-bin collection described by @CyanoticWasp .

I’ve lived a couple of places which had green bag collection, and you could visit the county compost site for all-you-can-carry fertilizer. They also used it around county buildings and parks.

In Seattle, there is lawn and yard waste separate from trash pick-up. Also, recyclables are separate.

It is common for people with an ample backyard to make a compost area for themselves. If you want to help the earth a little bit more, but aren’t ready to handle long term decomposition, you can always start with food items like the skins of fruits and egg shells!

IN Philly we have single stream recycling. Just put all your metal, glass and plastic in one bin, and they separate it at the plant.

Today was leaf day, and everyone was out sweeping leaves up from the street and putting them in brown paper bags handed out by the city.

As to wet waste and solid waste, I think the only wya to do it is with separate bins. I use the underneath of my back deck as a composter, and I’ve got a lot of the good stuff to spread around the flower beds.

So mostly I think it’s best if you make a campaign for people to compost their own waste if they can. That doesn’t work in central city areas where there is no place for composting. I think that if people could understand how useful the compost is….. well, actually, if the city charged by the pound for waste removal, we might have more interest in removing more stuff from the waste stream.

Northern California: Three bin pick up, throw away trash weekly, alternating weeks for yard waste and recycle waste.

My state has at least banned yard waste from the landfills as of about two years ago. I live in the ‘burbs and we are responsible for our own trash pick up so I don’t know what other people do but my trash service works basically like @YARNLADY.‘s The regular trash gets picked up weekly, on fridays and the recycle gets picked up on tuesdays alternating weeks between regular recycle and yard waste.

But logistically, people are probably going to need to compost their own wet and solid waste voluntarily, as @wundayatta mentions. There are a lot of people who don’t care to or won’t trouble themselves to separate their trash from their recyclables so getting them to separated their icky food waste into what can be composted and what can’t just ain’t gonna happen anytime soon, I don’t think.

If you want this type of service in your area, you should ask whoever provides your community service.

In California we have yard waste, recyclables (paper, plastic, glass and cans) and trash pick up. You can go to the dump and get free compost for your yard.

Thank you all for your answers. For those who have yard waste picked up, can you include waste from fruits and vegetables?

@LostInParadise I really don’t know whether or not I can include fruits and vegetables in the yard waste that my trash service picks up. It’s a great question though, one that I never even thought about until you mentioned it. I will have to call them and see if they will accept it. It would be great if they did as I am not set up for composting and am pretty much just plain too lazy to do it. :-)

Maryland specifies that lawn and garden waste be placed in special paper bags, for just this reason. They did not allow kitchen food waste to be included because, if I remember correctly, it would be too difficult to ensure that nothing got in there that shouldn’t be, like meat scraps.

@LostInParadise I’m sure that you can. Think of it in terms of “process”. The bin is picked up by a robot arm on an automated truck, and dumped in with everyone else’s waste. There is no camera or sensing device to check “Is that an onion peel? Stop the process! Reverse the dump! Fine that man!”

No. No one is going to even see your kitchen waste, much less examine it. And to continue with the “process” thing… this is all waste that’s going to be composted, anyway. It may be shredded and ground up to facilitate the decay process, but it’s just going to be compost. Your kitchen waste is as good for compost as anyone’s yard waste, and don’t let anyone tell you any different.

You should, however, avoid meat products, bone, oils and highly processed foods. The meat products will attract animals to the compost location, and that’s not wanted. The oils and highly processed foods don’t compost as well as ‘raw’ and fresh vegetable waste.

In Ontario, we have 3 types of pickup as well: regular garbage, recycling and compostable waste. The “green bins” are fairly new around here, so maybe it’s just a matter of time until you get the facilities where you are.