The city of San Diego recently completed a pilot program in which people transitioning out of homelessness were hired to pick contaminants out of organic waste collected in the city’s green bins, it was announced Monday.

The two-week program, which concluded Wednesday, was intended to improve the quality of compost generated by Miramar Greenery. The “Follow The Compost Pile” project employed homeless people, working through the East County Transitional Living Center, who were tasked with removing any non-organic material brought to Miramar, including plastic bags, scrap metal, glass bottles and more.

“If we are able to implement this process moving forward, we can lower the number of contaminants at the end, improve operational efficiencies, and in turn produce better compost to put out

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