Monday is the first day Portland runs its new curbside food composting program.

But, much of what’s collected will be trucked 80 miles to be processed.

April Baer / OPB

For people befuddled by the city’s program of colorful bins and staggered pick-up times, this is a bit of a “yin-yang” story.

Your green yard debris bin now takes food scraps and it’ll be picked up every week — so you don’t have to remember when to roll it out. But your garbage can, which used to take food scraps, will now only be collected every other week.

Some of the debris will be driven to Corvallis. Paul Ehinger of Metro says it’ll be split with another processing facility in North Plains. But he’s says that’s preferable to sending it to Seattle, as Portland used to do.

“It’s our hope that other kinds of facilities come on line that are shall we say, nearer to the Metro region. But if not, it’s possible that these are the two facilities that do the most to serve NW Oregon for sometime into the future,” he said.

In theory, the new composting could divert as much as 30 percent of the garbage now headed to landfills. But that’s only if everybody in Portland takes part.

This story originally appeared on news.opb.org.