Over at Clean Technica, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom has posted about the city’s recent composting bill, which he signed into law on Monday. The law is the United States’ first mandatory composting initiative and continues San Francisco’s long tradition of environmental legislation. Though it is expected to help the city reach its “zero waste” goal by 2020, the new law has caused its share of controversy. In an NBC Newsvine poll, more than 80% of voters thought the law goes too far. Mayor Newsom responds to this skepticism by citing the bill’s positive outcomes:

We recently conducted a waste-stream analysis and discovered that about two thirds of the garbage people throw away—half a million tons each year—could have been recycled or turned to compost. If we were able to capture everything, we’d be recycling 90 percent—preventing additional waste material from going to the landfill, and creating hundreds of green-collar jobs.

Read the mayor’s full post here.