It'll become second nature in no time.

The decision this week by municipal hall to finally jump aboard the food waste recycling bandwagon means curbside collection will commence in Delta in less than two months. Given that food waste accounts for roughly one-third of a home's garbage, the decision to do what 10 other Lower Mainland communities are already doing was a no-brainer.

The pilot program undertaken in Ladner a couple of years ago didn't have, to put it politely, tremendous success, so I imagine that blunted Delta's desire to roll it out to the wider population.

However, with the very real possibility of diverting 4,000 tonnes of food waste from the Vancouver Landfill annually, the Green Can program is crucial if the municipality is to reach its waste reduction targets.

The trick now will be to incorporate this green initiative into our daily lives. I'm not under the illusion that every food scrap from every household is going to end up in the correct bin from the getgo, but I suspect over time people will become as accustomed to putting potato peels in the green can as they do newspapers in the blue bag.

It wasn't that long ago - OK, so it's been more than 20 years - that residents were forced to take their recyclables to depots set up at the community centres. Most didn't make the trek, opting to throw their bottles and cardboard boxes in the trash can as they'd always done.

Even when the far more convenient curbside collection was introduced, only a certain percentage of households initially took part, but now on garbage day you're hard-pressed to find a home that doesn't have a blue bin at the end of the driveway.

The same goes for yard waste, which up until fairly recently was only collected a few times each spring and fall. Now picked up every other week, you can tell the program is definitely catching on by the number of cans and paper bags lined up at the curb.

If we are to further reduce our environmental footprint, then food waste is the obvious way to go. When I'm in the kitchen and I'm scraping what's left on the plate into the garbage can, I can't help but think there has to be a better way. Yes, I know I could set up my own compost in the back yard, but clearly I'm too lazy for that. I can, however, put stuff in a bin and drag it to the curb every week, just like I do for the other recyclables.

I suspect a whole lot of others will be doing the same thing come April and in the years ahead.