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Last month, the millionth ton of food scraps, coffee grounds and soiled paper from San Francisco’s mandatory composting program returned to residents’ dinner tables in the form of fresh, organic foods grown by local farmers using the city’s nutrient-rich compost as fertilizer. Coming on the heels of the city’s 2009 municipal ordinance requiring city-wide source separation of all organic materials, the first large-scale urban food waste and composting program in the country has not only helped reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions to nearly 12 percent below 1990 levels; it’s also catapulted San Francisco to a staggering, nation-leading 78 percent waste diversion rate.

Just a few years ago, a zero-waste city was considered a futuristic scenario. Now, the city by the bay is on track to be the first and only North American city to achieve this impressive goal — and it plans to get there by 2020.

For San Franciscans like myself, life without the “Fantastic Three” — the simple, color-coded cart system consisting of a green composting, blue recycling and black, often smaller trash cart — has become unthinkable. Putting banana peels and used tissues into an empty quart of ice-cream is part of our routine. Trips to cities without composting bins feel like visits to strange planets in distant galaxies. The fact that we could so quickly get used to skittle-sized garbage bags while our compost bags are bulging with leftovers speaks not only to a well-conceived program and the adaptability of San Francisco residents, but to the potential of reaching similar milestones anywhere else in the U.S or abroad.