In the past two years, the amount of food kept out of landfills through the city of Seattle’s commercial organic composting efforts has more than tripled. The number of participating businesses has jumped from 330 to more than 800.

One of the restaurants participating is Magnolia’s own Palisade where kitchen staffers now throw everything from fish scraps to vegetable ends to wood chips burned in the oven into compost bins. The restaurant says the biggest downside is the space the bins consume but they have reduced the amount of regular garbage hauled away by 70 percent according to an article in today’s Seattle PI.